Mastering Construction SEO

Today, any serious construction firm is well aware of the necessity of having a presence on the Internet. Your website is a vital element of your business, construction marketing, and construction lead generation strategy, in fact, it should function as the hub of your business.Your website is a place to post updates on projects, company and industry news, products, and share information that visitors might find useful in their buying journey. 

The ultimate goal of your website and online construction marketing efforts is to drive traffic, and guide visitors through their buyer's journey by educating and nurturing them, and then converting them into qualified leads.

It's all wonderful in theory, but if even if you have a beautifully designed website, if it isn't getting found online, then it might as well not exist. 

The way to get your business found online is to master the technique known as search engine optimization or SEO. In this post, we're going to take a look at what construction SEO is, some of the parameters the search engines look at when compiling business rankings, and how you can maximize your efforts to improve your rank on the search engine results pages, or SERPs.

What Exactly is Construction SEO?

Search engines catalog, index, and scan billions of data points when a user enters a keyword or key phrase. It then analyzes this data and organizes websites into a hierarchical listing, which shows up to the user in the form of a list, or Search Engine Ranking Page or SERP. And it does all of this in a fraction of a second! 

Search engine optimization is a strategy for making your online content “visible” to the search engines. Construction SEO consists of adjusting your online content including web pages, landing pages, blog postings, social media, pay-per-click advertising, video content, images, and more so it becomes more visible to the search engines. By using specific strategies in your content, the search engines will look upon your efforts favorably and move your content higher up the SERPs. This allows users to find your website more easily through online searches.

The beauty is that you don't have to become a construction SEO expert in order to incorporate it into your company's online construction marketing and construction lead generation strategy. 

What Do Search Engines Look For?

Search engines review many data points when compiling rankings. The truth is, no one knows exactly what every factor is that the engines examine. What we do know are some factors like bounce rate, or how long a visitor stays on your site, relevance, content quality, keywords and phrases, and many other factors. 

Construction SEO consists of optimizing your content, including web pages, blog posts, landing pages social media, PPC ads, videos, images, and other elements to increase your site's visibility. Here are some factors you can optimize to improve your ranking.

• Consistently Produce Relevant, Quality Content

Search engines are constantly indexing website content. They check it for relevance, look for keywords and phrases, and more in order to rank businesses. Quality content is one of the most important factors that search engines look for. Quality content offers many construction SEO benefits. The characteristics of quality content include:

• Its original and updated consistently

• It's factual and relevant to your business and visitors

• It uses keywords and phrases properly

• It links internally and is linked to trustworthy sources

• Pages are at least 600 words – longer is better as it shows authority

• it's easy to read, scannable, and includes subheads and bulleted lists

• Use Keywords and Phrases That Are Relevant

Keywords are the words a typical visitor would type into the search engine to find a business like yours. It's important to strategically use keywords throughout your content so potential visitors can find your valuable information online. 

By using these words, you will be continuously drawing your target market to your website keeping your company front of mind with prospective buyers as they move through their buying cycle. The goal is to nurture them through the process so that when they are ready to buy, they think of you first. 

To get started with this construction SEO technique, research and develop a list of five to 10 main keywords, for example, “residential construction,” “kitchen remodeling in Boston,” etc.Sprinkle these keywords and phrases throughout your content including image tags, meta descriptions, blog content, and more. Google recognizes these keywords when they're used in the title, first paragraph, and a subheading. 

• Keep Your Website Up and Running Well!

A secure website that loads quickly is not only convenient for users, it provides construction SEO benefits. Security is important and Google will give a slight boost to the sites that are secure. One way to gain this SEO advantage is to add an SSL certification, which moves your URL from HTTP to HTTPS. The speed of your website's load time can also be a huge SEO advantage, or if longer than 6-seconds, disadvantage. There are plenty of tools available to check the performance of your website. These can help you optimize your site as well.

Your company's website can be the hub of your construction SEO efforts. Having a well-functioning website with relevant and valuable information for your customers is key, but your online business and construction marketing strategy doesn't stop there. Understanding construction SEO, how it is measured, and taking steps to optimize your content can help you to rank higher in search results, drive traffic, and grow your business!