With industry revenues exceeding over 1.3 trillion, it isn’t any wonder why so many construction companies exist. A frustrating fact for the skilled general contractor running a construction team. These “new” companies make it a noisy industry and rarely provide a quality service for the client.
Whether you have an established construction company or are just starting out, as long as you perform quality work in your local community, then this article is for you. This local guide to contractor SEO covers each aspect of search engine optimization. When finished, you will understand how to use SEO for lead generation and client acquisition through organic search results.
Ready to Grow Your Construction Business?
Silly question, right? But hear me out.
I’d bet money that you get referrals from your satisfied clients. While this steady stream of income provides for your family and the families of your construction crew, you firmly believe that your business has more potential.
There are plenty of ways to market your business. You can use magazine ads, coupon books, tv commercials, Facebook ads, pay per click ads, and more. The problem is, apart from capturing leads, these forms of marketing require an investment of increasing costs.
Local SEO is the most sustainable way to scale your business. Through organic search optimization, you get the benefit of reaching potential customers and adding value to your existing ones. You build trust and reduce long term marketing spend all at the same time.
What is Local SEO?
SEO stands for search engine optimization and Google has specific algorithms for local businesses. Google uses these algorithms to separate people using local search intent from those searching for general information.
For example, a client searching for “contractor services in Paso Robles” gets a different result from someone searching for “contractor services”. But searching for “contractor services” gets a different result from someone searching for “what contractor services do I need?”.
Local Intent: Searching for “contractor services in Paso Robles” indicates needing someone around San Luis Obispo’s north county area. Google understands this and displays results for companies on their business listings. In their organic search engine results, there will be a mix of company websites, best of articles, and online directories.
Fractured Intent: Searching for “contractor services” confuses Google, which creates a fractured intent. The search engine does its best to provide the top options for all “reasons” we search a topic. This includes guides, related services, directories, news, and more.
Informational Intent: When someone searches for what is, how to, or other query related terms, they get a result with information about that exact topic. Some assume that local SEO is not involved here, but that isn’t true. Content marketing is important for a contractor SEO strategy for multiple reasons and this is one of them.
Local SEO for a Construction Company
The construction industry is one of the best industries for local SEO marketing. In fact, most cities have low keyword difficulty scores, making the search result page attainable. Now, the top spot in a Google Business Listing is admittedly more challenging, but with the right strategy and timeframe, we will get you the top position.
Construction SEO involves every aspect of organic search engine marketing. So let’s dive right in to discuss each aspect, and what you should receive with your paid SEO service.
Construction Keyword Research
Put the right plan into place before taking any long-term actions. Through keyword research, you will identify what terms are easier and harder to rank for. This research helps you formulate a plan, providing both quick wins yet setting realistic expectations for the tougher to capture terms.
Keyword research for the construction industry has a few search intent challenges. Many of the highly searched terms compete against DIY construction and home improvement retail websites. Don’t worry, we can help you with that.
The end of your keyword research creates groups of articles based on what your local market searches. Keyword research also unpacks the most important pieces of content every construction website needs. How you intersect these two categories determines the total impact of your SEO strategy.
Google Business Profile
Most companies might assume that the first step to online marketing is building a well polished construction website. Those people would be wrong. Construction marketing begins by optimizing your Google Business Profile (formally known as Google My Business) with the right keywords, topics, and information to get you seen – right away.
Like we said, Google MAP Pack isn’t easy, but you can beat most of the competition by using the right words, phrases, and questions in your profile. In fact, you can beat at least half the competition by simply filling out each information box.
A search for “construction companies in Santa Barbara” results in 206 business listing options. That is some heavy competition. However, since some are lazy (didn’t fill it out), others are cheap (didn’t pay an SEO company), and many hire SEO frauds, there’s room to catapult your rankings.
Directory Listings
This may surprise you, but more search engines than Google exist on the internet. In fact, we consider any website with a search bar to have their own search engine. With that said, people are searching for construction services outside of Google, which is why directory listings are an important part of your SEO campaign.
Being listed in local directories, industry directories, and popular national directories helps your business. To start, more people needing the help of a contractor will find you. But this isn’t the only reason it is important.
Having your NAP (name, address, and phone number) be consistent among many directories is a trust signal to Google. Like social media, trust signals are not as” important to Google as ranking factors but can be the difference maker for reaching the number one position.
Having your construction SEO keyword list on hand, we will carefully place the high volume search terms in directories where potential customers are looking for your services.
Online Reviews
Did you know that 60% of companies with the top spot on Google maps have more Google reviews than their competition?
While some reviews happen by chance, we earn the most through reputation management. This is a service that any good SEO agency provides as a part of their local SEO strategy. Sometimes requiring a one of a kind approach, we stop at nothing (ethically of course) for getting your business reviews online.
These reviews are another trust signal for Google and include valuable keywords letting search engines know the services you offer and how you are performing those services.
Technical SEO
There are fundamental steps a contractor needs to take when building a house. The same is said about web design. A house may look beautiful from the outside but crumbles because of poor plumbing, electrical and framing.
There are some aspects of technical SEO that a quality web designer understands, but there are others that only a technical SEO specialist can execute.
If you want to gain website traffic through search engine optimization, then build your website on a solid technical SEO foundation.
Things like cheap hosting with slow website speeds, missing meta information, and improper URL structures make it significantly harder to rank in search engines. With our SEO firm, our technical team builds your website’s infrastructure at the same time that our local SEO team sets up your Google Business Profile.
You can learn more about technical SEO in our comprehensive article.
Content Marketing
We teased you earlier about how content marketing impacts local search results. Google is now taking geotagging to a new level and includes articles written within a local community into the search result. Look hard enough and you will see them on the first page of Google, even when better articles from authoritative websites exist.
But this isn’t the only reason content marketing is important for SEO. SEO keyword rich articles showcasing expertise on a subject are signals to Google that your company is an authority subject matter. One of the most important ranking factors is the E.A.T. (expertise, authority, and trust) of the writer. This score considers both the website where you published the article, and the author of the article.
Another important part of content marketing is its ability to drive traffic back to your service pages. We know this as internal linking. Links from within your website are important for helping search engines understand more about the service than what it says on the page.
Example: By using anchor texts (words that include the link) you’re letting Google know that your kitchen renovation services include “moving a gas line in your kitchen remodel.”
Link Building
We have talked about internal linking, but now it’s time to address links from outside your website. Inbound links are when other sites mention your website by providing a link from their article, news piece, or any piece of content. This link includes a specific anchor text that speaks to the page on your website where it is pointing.
Your home page might end up with a backlink from an article titled “the 10 best contractors in Ojai, California.” This type of backlink typically includes the name of your business as the anchor text. Backlinks like this are very important for your SEO success because it alerts search engines that your website matters to the internet.
It is one thing to put yourself on the podium, but it’s another for local review sites to suggest that you are worthy of a mention.
Social Signals
No matter how you feel about social media, you need a baseline presence to establish trust in the eyes of a search engine. Think about it. How common is it that a website does not have an Instagram account?
While not a heavy ranking factor, it negatively affects your SEO when you’re invisible or deceased on social media.
The good news is that having a basic social media strategy is easy for construction companies hiring a qualified SEO agency. When combining before/after photos, blog articles, and testimonials together, you get plenty of social media content to keep profiles looking alive and well.
SEO Strategies for Construction Companies
Now that you know the fundamentals of SEO, it’s time to get into some specific SEO strategies important for construction businesses.
Location Pages
Since it’s unlikely that your business operates only in a single city, each neighboring community you serve should have its own location page. This is important because showing up in the Google Map Pack is partially determined by how close you are to the person searching. So if your Ventura business offers services to Valencia, it isn’t likely you will rank in Google Maps for people searching within the Santa Clarita communities.
But this isn’t true for the organic search results page. If you have a location page with backlinks that talks about your specific work in Valencia, California, you can show up on the first page of Google. This is a strategy we run to get potential clients from the tri-counties in the 805 area code.
Here are tips on how to enhance your location pages.
- Do your keyword research and find the important topics for this community, such as heat resistant roofing.
- Add examples of completed work to the page for specific subtopics, such as bathroom remodel Valencia.
- Rather than lying about your office location, position yourself in a way where doing business with a Ventura company sounds like a great idea.
Become The Construction Expert
There are thousands of things that can go wrong with a house or commercial building. We can avoid much of which with a little education on preventative maintenance. Do you know anybody who has the expertise to talk about such subjects?
Connect in your local community and help people make better decisions when caring for their home.
Being known as the expert in your community leads to backlink opportunities through local news, bloggers, and other media organizations. It is never bad business to be the most helpful within an industry. This is one reason I love SEO, because it rewards businesses who do good things.
Why Invest in SEO For Your Construction Business
You may hope that your children will one day inherit your company and keep the legacy alive, and we hope that is true. But having an exit plan is a good idea for every business. This is one reason you should invest in search engine optimization.
SEO is a long-term asset you can sell right alongside your business.
Almost all potential buyers will ask how much you spend on digital marketing. You will breathe a sigh of relief once you sense the excitement after telling them you made most of the investment years ago. Yes, SEO takes continued effort, but this effort builds upon itself, creating a snowball effect that continues to improve your online presence.
What Can You Do to Improve Your SEO?
Let’s say that you want nothing to do with our agency. The first thing you can do to improve your SEO is look at your offline activities that impact your SEO success. Take the information we have listed above and ask yourself the question “what am I already doing that I can immediately act upon”.
Content marketing might be tough, but can you do a better job asking clients for reviews? These reviews help a potential client better understand the quality of your work, leading them to click the call button.
Your Construction SEO Specialists
Based in Central California, we help construction companies all over the world with their SEO. Our search specialists build custom strategies based upon the communities you serve, what makes your company special, and what potential customers are searching for.
We take care of everything from website development to creating custom content so that you can focus on more important things such as… running your business. Fill out the form below for a free website audit and SEO strategy call.