Where do the most successful contractors in the construction industry find high-quality leads?
With a bit of help from SEO agencies for contractors like NITRO PLUG, they learn to leverage the power of search engines like Google and Yahoo! to provide information about their services to potential customers.
The challenge is finding a digital marketing agency with world-class expertise and a talent for explaining complex technologies in simple, easy-to-understand terms.
Digital marketing encompasses so many different disciplines, industry trends, and new technology platforms that it's challenging for beginners to understand why SEO for contractors matters.
Without a solid online presence – where customers can quickly and easily find services and book an appointment – any contractor will struggle to compete against companies that invest heavily in contractor SEO digital marketing.
But how does digital marketing apply to contractors in the first place?
The actual process of building an online presence through search engines like Google is search engine optimization. Without a doubt, it's a broad topic, so this content breaks down the basics of SEO for contractors – and what to avoid in the end.
SEO isn't a new concept, but SEO for contractors is relatively new to the construction industry at large. With so many people living and working online, it's only natural that businesses will want to promote their services where customers find information.
What SEO will accomplish is this: faster and more profitable interactions between customers and the business, ideally with only a few taps on a smartphone.
The contractor SEO marketing goal is to generate more qualified leads and convert customers at a higher rate to grow the business, providing them with helpful information at just the right moment.
The name for that information is content, and without content, there can be no SEO.
Overall, it's a competitive discipline. NITRO PLUG knows how to demystify SEO for contractors, whether or not the content is for a single contractor or a budding small business with 50 employees.
Search engines “crawl” the web for content automatically, and they categorize those results in a global index of websites, a worldwide repository of information.
When people visit Google, they type in a keyword or phrase that coincides with what they're looking for. Then, Google returns a search engine results page for the most relevant content.
The emphasis is on relevancy, not necessarily on websites that only contain an exact match for the keywords.
SEO for contractors works to capture Google rankings for a popular search term like “affordable contractors near me” will earn the lion's share of online leads and convert those contacts at a better rate than a contractor that doesn't value digital marketing at all.
The idea is to leverage keywords that relate to the business (e.g.,how to hire a contractor) while providing helpful information at the same time. The hard part in SEO for contractors is deciding which keywords matter to a specific audience, a particular target market, and which won't resonate.
It's standard practice to use a keyword research tool that displays all of the most vital metrics to form an SEO strategy for contractors.
For example, if people enter a keyword less than 50 per month, it's a low-volume keyword and might not be the best choice for contractor SEO. Instead, a keyword with over 1,000 unique searches or more per month is a far better option for a contractor trying to attract more leads.
The catch is that gaining web traffic from high-volume keywords is by far more complex than people assume.
A digital marketer's job is to gather all of those keywords, analyze them carefully, and create engaging content to rank for the terms.
Over time, a single piece of content can become a go-to resource for potential customers, generating online leads for years to come if optimized correctly.
What NITRO PLUG contractor SEO service can do is analyze which types of content will work best for a particular contractor's brand and business goals.
The type of content people view significantly affects how well it will convert. In general, video converts at a higher rate than photos and graphics; however, pictures and graphics tend to convert at a higher rate than textual content.
What NITRO PLUG can do is analyze which types of content will work best for a particular contractor's brand and business goals.
If someone is the sole proprietor of a small business, flooding his website with jargon-heavy articles won't automatically generate better leads.Often, a simple, high-quality portrait and a thoughtful bio work far better fora single individual than a sprawling website with a dozen pages.
It all depends on the contractor's brand, the business's goals, and the company's target market.
When creating contractor SEO optimize content, keywords come first, and then media come second, yet there's more to SEO for contractors than such a simple formula.
What about the tone of the content? What about the quality and relevance of it to the consumer, notGoogle's algorithm?
Take this hypothetical situation as an example:
The task sounds easy enough, but what happens when neither one of those clients gain any online leads? What went wrong with the SEO contractors strategy?
The answer is this: the marketer didn't take into account content tone and quality.
All content isn't created equal.
For instance, what if a self-employed roofer wants to build a website for local lead generation? In this case, the roofer might do great by generating traffic with weekly how-to videos and articles on the top 10 roofing tips.
But a sizable small business may not have much success with this tone and “quality.”
Depending on the company's brand identity, SEO for contractors may convert better with content that's more sophisticated, in-depth, and weaves in professional terminology with insider tips.
Both contractors in this example can own websites that target the exact keywords; the difference is in the tone of the content and how customers perceive the quality – the content's relevance.
It's an all-too-common mistake to design a website first before doing any keyword research or settling on a content publication strategy. What amateur marketers do is go straight to website themes, color schemes, and other facets that won't increase conversions very much at the end of the day.
They try to cram and force content into the design rather than adapt its layout to the content strategy. At first, the site will look and respond no different, but the fast pace of content publication – or lack thereof – exposes poor planning.
Today, the general rule in SEO for contractor websites is that quality blog content should be about 1,200 words or more per piece; two posts per week are the minimum publication pace recommended by SEO pros.
SEO for contractors may make a website look phenomenal with animated flip cards and pop-up forms for newsletters, but will that resonate with a target market? Is it worth the money to pay for an expensive designer?
Excellent, entertaining, and engaging content yields more value than fancy design. It's an incredible mistake to make a beautiful responsive website with dummy content and then assume that any content will suffice in its place.
For example, a site may rely on an outdated, free-image carousel plugin that limits each image's dimensions. If the photos taken at a later date are larger than the plugin allows, it's a waste of time, energy, and marketing dollars.
It's no different than the cliché of smashing a square peg into around hole – and wondering why it's not fitting.
NITRO PLUG knows how important it is to balance content strategy with design, so each aspect works for each other, not against each other, to strengthen SEO for contractors in any niche.
It's feasible to do SEO for contractors with no assistance from a digital marketing agency. But those who choose to invest in professionals have a far greater chance of generating qualified leads.
The best SEO service for contractors avoids apparent sales pitches and language that doesn't resonate with an audience. In fact, Google will penalize the rankings of websites that have an overt financial motivation.
Google's entire purpose is to connect people with relevant information, not sell consumers on a product. It's not an inherently promotional platform like most social media; it's a global repository that can educate consumers before they make purchasing decisions.
Great SEO for contractors satisfies both the consumer and software algorithms.Still, many unethical marketers will try to cut corners and fool search engines into ranking irrelevant content, gaming the system.
SEO for Contractor brands and the construction industry at large should be careful not to deploy the following SEO tactics.
Not so long ago, the internet was packed with websites stuffed with keywords. Unfortunately, the more the keyword existed on the site, the higher it would rank.
Today, Google's algorithm does well at identifying keyword-stuffed content, so why do some marketers still stuff keywords?
The general rule of thumb for seo of contractors is that a keyword only needs mentioning a few times in a short article or a landing page. There needs to be a natural flow to the content without jarring repetitions of the exact phrase or variations.
Example of Keyword Stuffing
“NITRO PLUG's SEO services are the best SEO services for contractors who need good SEO services.”
The textual content must flow naturally as a conversation, regardless of how technical the information will be.
Another problem that makes contractor SEO ineffective is duplicate content, which is the most challenging black-hat technique to detect. Blatant, overt plagiarism – simply copying and pasting content from another site – destroys search engine rankings.
But that's not the only way under-handed marketers do it. Another tactic is to make a short amount of copy and phrase the conclusion as a repeat of the introductory paragraph, essentially creating a content loop.
There's also the issue of paying for backlinks to a new website for doing powerful SEO for contractors. Generally, Google elevates content with many links pointing to the page; the presumption is that the content is an authoritative source.
But there are unscrupulous marketers who will pay for links to prime the SEO pump for a term like “SEO for contractors,” only to regret it later when Google blacklists the site altogether.
Indeed, there are more shady tactics unethical marketers use, so that's why hiring a digital marketing team like NITRO PLUG is so critical for legitimate lead generation.
Our industrial SEO experts encompasses everything that companies in the construction niche require. They're an award-winning agency that has been featured in publications like BusinessInsider and Bloomberg, to name a few.
NITRO PLUG offers a range of services, such as:
Since the company's founding, they've helped businesses grow in several industries, such as:
NITRO PLUG's expertise covers everything about SEO for contractors who need to generate more qualified leads, convert those leads into customers, and grow the business like no other.
Click below to schedule a meeting to learn more about SEO for contractors.
We have helped several companies across a variety of industries grow their businesses and increase their customer base with digital marketing
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