Word-of-mouth isn’t the only way to get new customers in the construction industry anymore. If you’re an SMB contractor working on growing your construction business, there’s a whole world of digital marketing tools out there you can use to help people find you, from Google to your website and social channels. With a little know-how and effort you can get a leg up on your competition and in front of more potential customers. Before you start looking into those though, you need to lay a good foundation for your company’s online presence, and that means building a strong company website that your prospects can find in the vast ocean of Google.
Good websites don’t just tell people about your business - they help potential customers find you on Google. Your SEO, or “search engine optimization”, is what makes it possible for people to find you. Think of your SEO as a lighthouse guiding people to your website. The better your SEO strategy, the brighter your lighthouse will be.
If this all sounds a bit confusing, don’t worry. You don’t have to be an SEO expert to optimize your website. In fact, before you go pay for SEO services, try implementing some of these SEO tips and see if they get more eyes on your business.
Key Takeaways
- Investing time in SEO is an important part of any business’s marketing strategy. The better your SEO, the better your search engine rankings will be on sites like Google.
- Unlike big brands that do business across a large area, most construction SEO is local or regional, which means it’s focused on getting website traffic from a specific geographic area or areas.
- Adding your business listing to other directories like Yelp and the Yellow Pages will make it easier for your business to show up on the first page of Google.
Is it Even Worth Investing in SEO for Construction Companies?
Any company can (and should!) follow good SEO practices, but the size and location of your business plays a big role in what type of SEO strategy you should follow. If you’re a multinational corporation like Coca-Cola for example, your SEO strategy is going to cast a wide net, and be generalized for a large target audience.
Local businesses, on the other hand, need SEO that’s more specific. If you’re based in Austin, Texas, you don’t want to market to someone in California. People looking for your services are likely looking for someone who services their area. This is where local SEO comes in - and it’s something every construction company can benefit from.
If you want to go beyond word-of-mouth referrals, you’ll need to work on how you show up in local searches. And just to clarify, we’re not talking about expensive pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns. We’re just talking about using SEO best practices to bring organic traffic to your business from organic search results.
With that in mind, let’s talk through the foundational elements that will help you show up in local searches.
Key Components of Local SEO for Construction Companies
You can easily go down the rabbit hole when it comes to SEO strategies, but for simplicity’s sake, here are the foundational elements you need to get right for local SEO.
Directories
Let’s say you’re a general contractor doing business in Austin. When someone does a Google search for “general contractors in Austin, Texas” or “general contractors near me”, you want your business to show up. Google is going to place some sponsored posts first, but then you’ll see the local, organic results with a map. Ideally, you want to be in what marketers (or maybe it’s just me?) like to call the “snack pack”, which is those top three results next to the map.
Getting your business verified on Google is a good first step. To do this, you’ll need to create a Business Profile. Next, you’ll add all your business information, including your name, physical address, hours of operation, etc. Once you’re verified on Google My Business, you’ll have your very own Google Business Profile that shows up when people search for your business on Google.com or on Google Maps.
Don’t just stop at Google though. From Yelp to Bing and the Yellow Pages, there are plenty of other online directories to list your business under. The more you’re listed, the higher you’re likely to rank when people search relevant keywords related to your business.
Heads up: Pay attention to how consistently your business is listed across the internet. Make sure your business name, address, phone number, hours, and other information are exactly the same everywhere you’re listed, or else you may confuse customers. One of my very first tasks in my marketing career was to go and claim a bunch of directory listings for some local businesses. It was one of the most painful things I’ve ever done and it’s almost impossible to consistently keep up with once they’re set up. Thankfully, there are directory listing services like Yext and Brightlocal that offer a central place to manage all those directories. Save yourself the pain I endured and sign up for one of those.
Reviews
Good reviews are worth a lot, especially when they’re published online for everyone else to see. The more good reviews you can accumulate on your Google My Business, Yelp, and other directories, the higher you’ll rank on the search engine results pages.
Perhaps even more important, good reviews insulate you from the inevitable bad review you’re likely to get at some point. Because the truth is, people leave reviews when they’re asked, when they absolutely love your company, or when they are mildly unhappy. In other words, you have to ask if you want good reviews, but the bad reviews will show up on their own. You’ll want a healthy amount of the good ones so when you do receive a negative review, you show up as a 4.9 instead of a 1 star business.
Pretty much all of the directories you list your business under will have a section for customers to leave their reviews. It’s not a typical directory per se, but I’d also consider creating a Facebook Business Page. Just like Google, potential customers can look you up and review your services on Facebook. For some types of businesses, this may be the first place they hear about you. Depending on your marketing strategy, you can look into creating profiles for other social media sites like Instagram or LinkedIn too.
Even if someone loves your work, getting reviews from people can feel like pulling teeth. To make it as easy and convenient as possible for your customers, build the review process into your client communications. For example, once a project is wrapped up, send an email or a text thanking the client for their business and add a link to your Google My Business page (or Facebook, etc). Ask them to leave a short review, directing them to the links you provided. If your customers want to go above and beyond, they can copy and paste their review in multiple places. Most review sites, including Google, offer a direct link for your customers to leave a review so all they have to do is click and write something nice.
Here’s template you can use:
Hi [customer name],
Thank you so much for choosing us to complete your [project]. We’d really appreciate it if you would leave us a review on [platform]. It only takes a couple minutes, and would be a big help to us.
Localizing Your Website
Now let’s talk about on-page SEO, or the target keywords you list on your site to help your business rank. For local businesses, it’s important to have your physical address listed on your site - preferably on the footer so it shows up on every page. Like this:
You’ll also want to sprinkle in target keywords for your business’s service area (e.g. Austin, TX, or Austin, Texas) throughout your website content to make sure Google knows the area your services are applicable to. These target keywords shouldn’t just be featured on your homepage but should be added to each of your web pages. They don’t necessarily have to be the first thing people see when they hop on your site, but those keywords should be consistent enough that your audience (and Google) understands exactly where you do business.
If you serve a single town or city, this is pretty easy. But if you serve multiple locations or a region, put yourself in your customers’ shoes - how would they search for a business close to them? If you live in the D.C. area you may use NOVA (Northern Virginia) or the D.C. Metro Area as your location tags because that’s how the locals refer to the area. Consider what people call the area you live in, other than the individual town names. You’ll still want to include some specific locations where you can so Google can match them to where they know your customers are searching from.
You should also add your locations to your meta descriptions and title tags. These are the snippets that show up when someone makes a Google search.
For example, the title tag for your homepage could look something like “General Contractor in Austin, TX”. Being specific with every page’s title tags will help you rank. And while your meta descriptions (the content below the title tag) don’t directly affect your rankings, they help customers know you’re in their area right away.
Local Product Pages
If it makes sense for your business, you can test adding local product pages on your site. These pages offer another space to add specific keywords related to your trade, construction services, and location. For example, if you’re located somewhere that gets a lot of snow in the winter, you can add a page called “snow removal” that talks about snow removal in your city/town.
The goal here is for both people and Google to see that not only do you offer the service that the user is looking for, you offer it in their local area.
Optimizing for Mobile Devices
Another element of good web design is making sure your website is easy to use on both desktop and mobile. Most people at least do some of their web research on their phones, so making sure that your site works well across different sized devices is essential to creating a good user experience. The better experience you can give someone on your site, the longer they’ll stay, and the more likely they’ll become customers (and the more Google will like you)!
There are plenty of mobile-friendly checklists you can use to check your website design. A few of the most important list items to tick off are:
- Making sure your mobile site speed is comparable to desktop
- Touch navigation works on mobile
- Your most important info is clear, visible, and prominent on mobile
Site Speed
When a user comes to your site, they don’t want to wait forever for a page to load. In fact, most stats report that half your users will leave if your page takes more than a couple seconds to load.
There are a lot of things related to technical seo that will affect your rankings, but one of the biggest and easiest things to address is the size of your images. You want to shoot for your images to be around 100KB. That includes those nice background images you have of your projects. Optimizing all your images will speed up your site, help you retain more users and give you a gold star in Google’s eyes.
You can use online resources to resize your images, just search “resize images” on Google and you’ll get a bunch of options.
Wrapping Up
You don’t have to spend a ton of time and money to make sure people can find your construction business. With a little work and some free time, you can set yourself up for success in Google’s ocean. And hey, make sure to connect your site to Google Analytics so you can monitor your metrics and see the effect your efforts are having.