If you’re looking to improve your business, whether you’re a contractor, sub-contractor, or someone in the remodeling industry, it is essential that people can find you on these search engines. This must be on your priority list even if you’re in the construction industry, or no matter what your business is for that matter.

Today, we’ll focus on discussing the importance of local SEO for general contractors in general.

Search engine optimization shouldn’t be taken for granted, especially for those in the construction industry. While some people think that this is for large businesses, this post will talk about the different factors where SEO has been proven to show great success even for local contractors.

Why Do Contractors Need Local SEO?

Generally speaking, contractors are mostly busy with fieldwork. They have deadlines to finish, clients to meet. For the majority of their work, they have gained traction in getting clients from word of mouth or publicity, usually done by their previous and satisfied clients. While this may be a good thing, if you wanted your business to grow, you can’t just rely on past clients referring your business. You need to add an extra strategy, and this is where SEO comes in.

Here are some of the reasons why every contractor or remodeler needs to do SEO:

Yellow Pages Are Now Found Online

If we say Yellow Pages, some people would have a common notion that these are the thick, yellow directory books where we used to manually find business information. Now, Yellow Pages work differently, and contrary to popular belief, they’re not outdated. In this age, Yelp, Angie’s List, and business.com are some websites that can be considered as today’s modern yellow pages. Did you know that approximately 97% of consumers look for local businesses through the internet? With that being said, if you’re a contractor, you need to improve your online presence, especially on Google. Getting your business on business review websites doesn’t just benefit your local SEO strategies, but it also helps improve your business’ credibility. This way, you no longer have to wait for a few days just to get calls from your potential clients.

Receive Organic Website Visitors

If you’re a contractor, you are already aware that marketing, publicity, and advertising may all be beneficial, but it requires money. Among all the different online marketing strategies, SEO is by far the only method that doesn’t cost anything just to get organic traffic without having to go through hassles and other problems.

Do you want to push your Google search engine results to get more potential clients? Using SEO is one of the best and easiest ways to convert those leads into paying customers.

Fast Results

The last reason why sub-contractors, remodelers, and general contractors may benefit from SEO is the fact that the results from this strategy are quick? Did you know that you even have an edge against huge construction companies who are trying to get page 1 results on Google?

For the majority of these giant corporations, they have to wait for at least 3-4 months before their SEO strategies would bear results, some even have to wait for an entire year before the calls start coming in! However, since you’re targeting a smaller location, you will have a low competition rate.

As a matter of fact, targeting simple keywords such as “best local contractor”, “contractor near me”, and “top contractor services” can get you on the top of Google’s search engines in as fast as 2-3 weeks.

Contractors Guide In Getting Started With Local SEO

Internet marketing for contractors and those who are in a similar industry may seem like a difficult task, especially if you’re not focused on doing local SEO strategies. Generally speaking, a contractor may end up focusing on their clients first, before any other digital marketing efforts. Adding up digital marketing to the task may seem quite complicated, and when doing this, you have to remember that you need to have one goal: to get as many local opportunities as much as you can. With that being said, how do you get started with local SEO?

Step 1: Set-Up A Website

Your website will be your business’ frontline in the virtual world. The first thing that you have to remember if you want to do local SEO is to make sure that you have a responsive website with a user-friendly interface, This means that you have to make sure that you develop a website which easily shows all of your projects, focuses on your business’ work ethics and goals, and highlights your team’s passion in the construction industry.

Step 2: Write Informative Content

Not taking your website content seriously won’t get you anywhere. For those who are in the construction industry, your local SEO strategy starts with having enough relevant and informative content using general contractor key phrases and words such as “top contractor services near me” or “general contractor in Florida”. Additionally, most of your content should be informative enough that your visitors will find useful. For your About Us page, try to make it to the point that it is interesting enough that many people will be excited to work with you after reading your About Us page.

Your website content requires a good content strategy, so take the points listed above in mind to put your plan and execute it into action.

Step 3: Keyword Research

Keyword research is one of the most crucial steps one needs to take when doing local SEO. You can’t just look for a bunch of keywords and throw them in your content. First and foremost, you have to understand how Google works, including its most updated algorithm. Our company has worked with different clients over the years who grew tired with how Google’s algorithms have changed over the years, causing their site to hit the bottom of search engine rankings.

Bear in mind though, that Google doesn’t do this without reason. The reason why their algorithm changes is because of the fact that Google only wants to make sure that they return only the most relevant results to their searchers. When it comes to SEO, there is no shortcut or “special tricks”. When done properly, and with ample time, you’ll see SEO results. Every time Google updates its algorithms, it is only because they wanted to change the way their search engine delivers results. Despite the never-ending algorithm updates, one thing remains the same – always make sure that you deliver informative content using the right keywords. Ask a question and answer that question that most people are looking for.

What Are The Two Different Types Of Keywords

There are two keyword types and these are research-oriented and buying intent keywords.

If you’re a general contractor or someone working in the construction industry, you should be targeting the buying intent keywords. Some examples are “home renovations”, “general contractor services”, “home remodeling”, and so on.

The other type of keyword may fall under the categorization as “research-oriented” keywords – which generally are intended for general browsing. For instance, if a person is looking for “home interiors”, that specific person may not require contractors to perform their remodeling for now, but they may eventually have to in the near future. Your website and blog content should include a mix of both keywords.

Step 4: Website Optimization

We have been discussing about website optimization – but how does it work? In a nutshell, the entire process may not be easily explained but we’ll try to summarize everything and break down the process for easier understanding. First and foremost, you have to work on your home page. This is the first page that your leads and/or potential customers would see when visiting your site. Once you’re done, you may then move on to your service pages. Listed below is some more information about the website pages that you have to feature on your site.

Homepage

On your homepage, one of the most essential things that you have to initially take care of is the title tag. Your title tag should contain your main keyword which is crucial for optimizing your website as a whole. Aside from the title tag, you shouldn’t take for granted your meta description. This is where you’ll describe your title tag briefly. Don’t skimp on this step because your meta tag is what Google uses as a snippet when showing search results.

The next part of the homepage would include your sales page or copy. This is where you tell your leads, potential clients and/or customers what your business is all about. What’s your business history? How did you end up being in the industry? What are your goals, vision, and mission? Do you offer solutions to other people’s problems? What makes you different from other contractors? Make sure that you list everything down and explain everything, including your primary services. For your sales page, it should range from 800 to 1,200 words, with a call to action in the end.

Service Pages

For most contractor services, you’re offering more than just home remodeling. You should have separate service pages talking about the different services you’re offered, mixed with the right set of keywords. Just like the homepage, these services should be optimized making use of the title tag and meta description. Using intent keywords on your service pages is crucial in local SEO.

Step 5: Link Building And Citations

Getting high Google rankings is one of the key indicators if your local SEO strategies are working. Most of the time, successful businesses with high Google search engine rankings are those that have quality bankings. These are from credible websites that have a high domain authority linking back to your website. A contractor has to utilize his/her professional relationships with different service providers like realtors or subcontractors. If you can see if they can give you a backlink on their website, and you’ll do the same for them. You may use Moz and Ahref tools to help you understand what your competitors are doing to generate quality backlinks. These tools are highly suggested by experienced and reliable SEO analysts.

After getting backlinks, you also need to get a citation. Earlier in this post, we talked about business review websites. Simply said, a citation is where you list your business and registered on these directories with your business’ essential information: NAP – Name, Address, Phone. If you look a little bit longer, you’ll find more business directories and you can utilize all of these if you can. You may even find local directories specifically targeted to the type of industry you’re in.

Step 6: Getting Legitimate Reviews

In this day and age where most people search the internet before using a service, consumers check online and search for reviews – making reviews super important for your business. Amongst all sources, Google reviews are considered to be the most reliable. You can ask your customers to leave you a review on Google, and even send them a little bit of token of appreciation for leaving you a review. What other companies do is they send their customers a follow-up e-mail, leaving a link to their Google My Business profile so they can write a review. Doing this simple thing can significantly improve your search engine rankings.

Step 7: Campaign Monitoring

For one to be able to understand their local SEO strategies and to see if it works, you must track your website’s performance. Listed below are some of the most important metrics that you should track when running a local SEO campaign:

Rankings

Are your rankings improving? Does your website show in Google results for your targeted keywords?

Traffic

Have you noticed your website’s increase in visitors?

Conversions

While traffic is important, but they’re useless of these people don’t buy. Are you converting these leads into paying customers?

Google Analytics is one of the best tools you can use to track your SEO campaign. For the majority, Google’s tools are free, and you can look for Google Search Console. Once you’re done, you’ll be able to play around and see your website’s analytics, including phone and website conversions. In general, you can create reports containing different data from Google Analytics.

Conclusion

Remember, when doing local SEO, you have to understand that this is an investment that you’d have to keep up long-term. While slow, this strategy can give you a significant boost to your internet marketing efforts when done correctly. As you go along, you’ll also find it more convenient and easier to keep up with your efforts once you’re used to doing SEO for your website.

Another important thing that you have to remember when doing local SEO for your contractor services is that you need to add blogs to your site. The majority of general contractors have no idea how powerful blogs are when it comes to local SEO.

But, if you have a blog on your website, you can share relevant and informative information related to construction, taking your SEO efforts to a higher level. With all the things that we’ve discussed, you’ll now see why SEO plays a crucial role in helping general contractors with their digital marketing needs.

If you haven’t done SEO for your website is, you should start doing it today.

Are you looking for local SEO services targeted towards general contractors?

We take pride in offering only the best solution for all types of construction businesses with their digital marketing needs. We have experienced SEO analysts who are always up to date when it comes to local SEO strategies, guaranteed to help your website get better search engine rankings.