An Example of How Construction SEO Works
First, let’s establish why SEO is important to construction companies and how you can use it to find new customers and build revenue.
We’re going to look at the search term “new home construction timeline” and look at the top results in Grand Rapids, MI:
Because this query doesn’t seem to have local intent, we get right to the organic search results. The first result is a blog post on theeplancollection.com, a house plan website. The second is on Millionacres, a resource for real estate investors. After these listings is the “People also ask” feature, which lists other questions that people ask Google in relation to this query.
Consider the type of person that would search with this keyword. They are probably in the planning stages of building a new home and doing research on how long the process will take. It is a keyword with intent, which means it’s exactly the kind of keyword that your company will want to rank for.
By creating content that will fill that intent with valuable information, you can climb the search engine results page (SERP) and bring readers to your website who are looking for a great construction company.
Why SEO for Construction Companies?
In short, it works. Construction companies can generate more calls, sales, and revenue by taking advantage of organic search. All construction services solve some kind of problem, and people go to search engines to solve their problems.
The better that Google and other search engines get at helping people solve their problems by suggesting solutions like your services, the more valuable SEO becomes.
People trust search engines more and more as they interact with them and become more comfortable relying on them to identify solutions.
Studies show that 53% of all site traffic on the internet is organic. This is significantly higher than average paid traffic, which is at 15%, or average social traffic, which is at 4.7%
If you aren’t investing in your search engine real estate, you’re missing out on traffic that can convert and grow your construction company.
SEO Strategies for Construction Companies
Executing an effective digital marketing for construction companies means choosing the best strategy for your goals. We’ll walk you through each step in the construction marketing SEO process and share some of our expertise to help you get started.
Using Search Empathy to Understand Your Customers
Imagine being able to solve a problem for your customer before you’ve talked to them. Great blog posts or online tools can do that. Helping them first doesn’t just create an opportunity for a new customer, it creates a brand advocate.
We always tell companies that we work with to focus on their customers first. In order to successfully execute digital marketing, you need to know more and care more for your customer than your competition. A key part of SEO for the construction industry is investing in content that will help your customer before they’ve made a buying decision.
But keep in mind that online content isn’t just a blog post anymore. It’s images, videos, slideshows, web applications, and more. All of this content can help establish your brand as a leading construction firm while making your services more desirable.
The strategy, tactics, marketing channels you choose, as well as the time and capital investments you make all need to hinge on your customer. Find out information about your customer like:
- What does their day-to-day work look like?
- What does success look like in their life or business?
- What words and phrases do they use as it relates to your industry?
- What else do they search for online?
- What are they going to experience before they need your solution?
By listening to your customer and gaining empathy for them, you’ll start to get a clearer picture of how they might use search engines to find your services and what type of content might attract them to your website.
In order to execute effective marketing for your construction company, you need to have good operations and a sound strategy built upon an evidence-based plan. Do your research and plan the work before you work the plan. You can’t campaign yourself out of a bad strategy.
Implementing On-Page, Off-Page, & Technical SEO
SEO can be broken down into three general categories; on-page SEO, off-page SEO, and technical SEO.
On-page SEO is mainly the content on your page. Keywords, titles, headings, and meta descriptions are all SEO signals that are on a page of your website. Search engines want to make sure the content is relevant to the search term or keyword.
Off-page SEO is everything from other web pages that help a particular page on your site rank. There are several factors, but the biggest are backlinks or links from other sites to your site. It’s crucial to have a good volume and good quality of relevant backlinks to validate your trust and authority.
Technical SEO is, for the most part, all under the hood of your website. It’s making sure your website is developed so that it is crawler friendly, has an SSL certificate, loads fast, etc.
Creating Meta Titles and Descriptions
Meta titles or page titles are the names of the individual pages or posts on your site. These are not necessarily visible on the page, but they are visible on the SERP, so it is imperative that you optimize these titles to entice the reader to click.
Meta descriptions or page descriptions are another HTML attribute that provides a summary of a page or post’s content. These can also be optimized for the search engine results page, though Google may change them later for certain search terms.
Optimizing Page Load & Mobile Compatibility
Your page load time is crucial not only to SEO but to your potential customer’s experience. Google will promote sites with a faster page load speed if it enhances the user’s experience. This is especially important when loading over mobile devices, which are often being used on 3G and 4G connections with a slower download speed.
Keep the size of your images and other large media minimal and work with an experienced web developer to optimize your site for speed.
The design of your website also needs to be mobile-friendly. Your target audience is searching for you on mobile devices and with Google’s mobile-first indexing, you can’t ignore the importance of a mobile-friendly website. Mobile-first indexing is essentially Google stating that they are prioritizing mobile-friendly sites when people search on their mobile devices.
Designing a Usable Website
Your site design is important to the user’s experience. If your potential customer can’t easily find what they’re looking for, you may miss out on lead generation. It’s important to consider internally linking between pages to add context and help the user navigate.
When it comes to web design for construction companies, it can be challenging to use thoughtful architecture. Make sure to plan your website content carefully and group topics together.
Conducting Keyword Research
Keyword research is a crucial part of search engine optimization. A keyword research tool is imperative to identifying quality keywords, user intent, and your overall content strategy.
Using a keyword research tool, you can shortlist your keywords. At Avalanche, we use SEMRush to do keyword research.
In the screenshot below you’ll see the SEMRush Keyword Magic Tool. This allows us to enter a keyword (in this case “commercial construction”) to start our keyword research process.
- This is where you enter your keyword. We tend to start with a short-tail keyword (a few words) and a broad match to get ideas.
- You can toggle keywords to just those in the phrase of a question, which is great for content ideas and making sure to fulfill searcher intentions.
- You can see a list of other words that are commonly included when the words invoice and template are used.
- You can also see data on the competitive nature of the term and trends.
These are some of the most common features we use for keyword research, but there are several others to help you drill down on your strategy.
Keyword research can and should help your construction company get an idea of how big your market is and plays a crucial role in determining if it’s an investment worth making for your business.
Writing Content
The best way to start to get ideas for content marketing is by asking your ideal customer the right questions. Start by surveying your current customers to get some more information about who they are, what they do, and how they think.
Your goal is to identify quality content that is attractive to the ideal customer that you could create. In the Venn diagram above you’ll see what we’re referring to.
Take the keyword “office building layout” as an example.
Who is searching for this? Is it a business that wants to see examples of office floor plans, or someone curious about office building architecture? Or is it neither? Perhaps it is a construction company that obviously already has the means to build an office, but is looking for more ideas or trends.
The point is, you need to investigate keywords in order to come up with great content for them. Google and other search engines may not know their intentions either, so they are going to provide a mix of helpful options.
If you were to create a resource page that had something to cover all intentions, you’re more likely to rank because you’ll be providing quality content that solves a problem for the searcher.
Remember, your content should be engaging, informative, and useful to the reader. Avoid keyword stuffing, which is forcing a bunch of uses of a keyword into your content in a way that feels unnatural. Google will spot those kinds of practices and kill your ranking in the SERP.
Building Links
Link building is the process of acquiring backlinks or links from other sites to your website. This is really important to build your expertise, authoritativeness, and trust. Generating links back to your site is important when the market competition demands it. Oftentimes, great content alone can win out and get you the visibility you need in the search results. But a great backlink building campaign that helps you get links, especially the right kind of links, will help your site rank faster.
Utilizing Social Media
You should be promoting the content you publish on your website on social media. Creating useful content on your website for the purpose of attracting people organically via search engines is great, but you should also push it out to your audience via social media channels to get even more return on your investment. It’s also another great way to build backlinks for your site.
Targeting Local SEO
Local SEO should also be a part of SEO for construction companies. A local SEO strategy will help you optimize your site for a local audience. If your target audience is physically close to your location, it’s important to add some additional tactics to your SEO strategy.
There is a lot to cover with local SEO, but for a quick reference make sure you:
- Create a Google Business Profile account.
- Mention the areas you serve on your website, and create a specific page for every city or municipality you serve, including a list of the services you offer in that particular area.
- Make sure you’re listed on other local citations like your local chamber and construction directory websites.
