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I just finished reading ServiceMagic’s Home Remodeling Survey, covering the first 6 months of 2011. It confirmed what we – and many of you – have seen so far this year: softness in the market with a few bright spots.

I take away both good news and bad news from this survey. Leading with the positive, homeowners still want energy-efficient and savings-related home improvements. Specifically, solar installations are gaining popularity, and were tagged as the most popular remodeling category so far in 2011.

Can having too much knowledge about a prospect actually be bad for your business?  In the land of the Internet, that may well be true.

My last post considered how remodeling companies use Google to qualify prospects who are considering exterior home improvement projects.  For instance, roofers, siding companies, paving firms and solar dealers regularly use Google Earth to assess properties right from the comfort of their offices.  They take the time to drive out and meet with homeowners only if their initial review of the property indicates that it could be worthwhile.

How much time do homeowners spend on your Web site?  Well, it’s generally a lot . . . or a little.

Which is better?  When it comes to lead generation for home improvement companies, that depends on many factors.  All of which I summarize in today’s video blog post as “The Dumbbell Effect.”

The press release is as old as newspapers themselves. Now the Internet has put a new spin on this trusted marketing tool – and you can put it to use to boost your Web site’s rankings.

Why? Because press releases offer terrific opportunities to generate all-important backlinks to your Web site. And typically the more backlinks you have, the higher your Web site’s rankings in the search results.

But to take advantage of press releases in this way, you need to keep a few key points in mind. Here they are:

I’ve written about how important Google Maps are becoming to home improvement dealers; see “The New Rules of Local Search”.  More and more, those maps show up in Google’s search results.  In fact, homeowners are now using Google’s maps much like they have used the Yellow Pages in the past.

Having presumably acted on that great advice, you hopefully now have your company’s Google Maps listing up and running.

But the next question is: how can you improve your ranking on Google Maps?  Well, while that’s something of black magic, here are three tips that consistently prove their worth:

In these blog posts, I generally take on topics of online marketing as they relate to home improvement marketing. This week, however, I’m going to stray a bit from that theme and consider the changing strategies for leveraging broadcast media for lead generation.

First, it’s great that home improvement manufacturers are working hard to generate leads on behalf of their dealers. This is more and more important as media channels continue to fragment and the buying power of a centralized, national entity becomes an essential element for media success.

I’ve received a number of reader inquiries about latest change to Google has made to its search ranking algorithm.  Dubbed the “Panda Update” by online geeks, these revisions represent a major shift by Google in terms of how it ranks Web sites on its search results pages.

Why did Google make these changes?  Because over the last three years, a number of Web sites produced lots of cheap and low-quality content on every subject imaginable and became known as “content farms.” Their business model is to simply attract lots of visitors and sell online ads that market to that traffic.

As a lead generator for the home improvement industry, I often find myself swimming in dirty waters.  “Dirty” in that a lot of other lead providers use what I consider to be questionable tactics and sales pitches to get a piece of your marketing budget.

So what works and what doesn’t? To answer that, I’d like to point you to – of all things – a recent post from a striped bass fishing forum.  And, before I go any further, let me say that we had absolutely nothing to do with this posting. Moreover, we don’t even know who the poster, “Michael P”, is:

Last week I shared the stories of some major brands Google has blacklisted for buying and selling in-bound links in an effort to improve their search engine rankings.

Today, I share with you how to avoid the same fate.

When many home improvement owners and managers decide to invest in improving the ranking of their Web sites, they often turn to consultants who specialize in the field of search engine optimization.  And it’s the right thing to do, as those owners and managers are running home improvement companies, and just don’t have the time or expertise to do what’s required to make that happen.

Industry observers knew the day of reckoning would come one day.  For years, Web site operators had secretly and not-so-secretly bought all-important inbound links.  Their objective was to game Google’s search ranking algorithm to secure high search rankings for their Web sites.

And for years, buying links worked like a charm. So well, in fact, that the practice became widespread.  And then one day, Google decided to down on Web site operators trying to buy their way to the top.  In fact, the problem had become so widespread by that point that Google used the opportunity to make very public examples of some very prominent Web sites.