You’re using the ideal construction management software, and utilizing the sales and marketing tools to operate a functional sales process. You regularly produce satisfied customers, and your business operates smoothly. You know you can close projects from qualified leads. Whether this is you or you’re still figuring out these systems, you won’t get anywhere unless the right people in your location who are interested in your services can find you online.
Many builders and remodelers end up increasing their traffic by at least 25-50% in under a year.
This is where SEO [Search Engine Optimization] comes into play. Individuals and families that are interested in building new homes or remodeling their existing homes are doing more and more research online before they ever contact a company. Most of this online research is done as your potential prospects seek answers to the most important questions surrounding their new home build or renovation.
My name is Steven Fielding, Marketing Director at Builder Funnel, a digital marketing agency for remodelers and home builders. I’m honored to contribute this SEO article to the BuildBook blog!
Over the past 13 years, our company has optimized over a hundred websites and thousands of web pages and blogs. By doing this, we’ve discovered a simple path for construction companies to use SEO to be found by the right people in the right places. But before we get into that, exactly what is SEO?
Search engine optimization for home builders and remodelers involves the process of optimizing your website to communicate to both searchers and search engines exactly who you are and what you do so that you’ll be found by the right people who are interested in your services where you work. As we dive into this topic, we’ll be defining the most important SEO tactics you can implement right away to start showing up higher in search engine results for keyword phrases your future customers are searching for. Let’s get started!
Before we dive into how to optimize your website, let’s talk about why SEO is important. By simply optimizing your website to incorporate phrases that your prospects use to search for businesses like you, you can enjoy more website traffic and, subsequently, more leads! At Builder Funnel, we’ve seen amazing results for the home builders and remodelers we serve.
By creating an SEO plan, optimizing your core website once, and writing 1-2 blogs a month focusing on key problems or questions prospects have, many builders and remodelers end up increasing their traffic by at least 25-50% in under a year. Sticking with such a program will normally double or triple website traffic and leads within 2-3 years. Not only that, but with a lead conversion rate holding steady, this can double or triple the number of qualified leads you get each month. And all this starts and ends with optimizing existing content, plus creating new content that is SEO-friendly that focuses on the keywords your audience is searching for!
Before you make any improvements, we need to understand what’s going on with your website. The first step is to map your website. To do this, open up an Excel spreadsheet or Google sheet and create the following columns:
Then go through and add the following information to the spreadsheet for each core page on your website (you can skip blog posts for now). If you’re new to SEO, here’s a more detailed explanation of each item:
If you do not have any values filled in for certain pages, just write “None” or “N/A.”
Once you have this step filled out, move on to the next step!
You can use tools such as SEMRush or AHrefs to do SEO research, but this can be a very advanced process for SEO beginners. An easier goal to start with is to rank for terms related to your service and location.
Your website should show up for keyword phrases related to your industry and services you offer. Home builders should rank for keyword phrases that include terms like: builder, home builder, home building, new construction, new homes, etc. Remodelers should rank for keywords phrases that include words like: remodeling, remodeler, design-build, kitchen remodeling, bathroom remodeling, renovations, etc.
In addition to what you do as a business, you’d want to show up for industry-specific searches in your location or when people literally use your location in a search. This means you need to include your neighborhoods, cities, and/or states you work in on your website.
Applying location and industry-specific keyword phrases correctly might look like the following: A home builder in Charlotte, North Carolina would want to show up on the first page of Google as high as possible for terms like Charlotte home builder or new homes Charlotte. For a remodeler working in Philadelphia, they’d want to rank on the first page for Philadelphia remodeling or remodelers in Philadelphia.
This is the first place to start. You’d be surprised, too! Most remodelers and home builders DO NOT include their location in Page Titles, Headers, Meta Descriptions, etc. or in paragraphs and content on their websites.
Let’s apply Location + Industry to our keyword research. Start with your home page. What location do you want to rank for? What service do you want to rank for? My recommendation would be to use the largest definable area you work in (normally a city) + the most generic term for your service (Home Builder or New Homes for a home builder and Home Remodeling for a remodeler.) You would then move on and do the same thing for a service page, about page, contact page, etc. Here are a few real life examples you can emulate:
The above examples include page titles and meta descriptions, but the location + industry terms carry over into the headers and paragraphs on these pages too! Now let’s move into creating an SEO plan!
Open up the spreadsheet with all your existing SEO values for your website. Now create new columns for the following:
Add new SEO values to each cell that incorporate your newfound knowledge of Location + Industry. An important thing to remember is that each Page Title should immediately tell the searcher what the page is and the meta description should describe what someone will find on the page in a concise, compelling manner.
Here’s one example of SEO for an entire page:
Once you’re satisfied with your SEO plan, it’s time to implement the new plan on your website.
Here are the steps to implementing the SEO plan on your website!
Once your site has been updated and submitted, it normally takes Google 1-3 weeks for your changes to appear in the search engine results. In the meantime, rest easy! Your website is now optimized to show up for your services in your location, giving it the best possible chance of appearing when people are looking for exactly what your company offers!
Maybe you’re already working with a marketing agency, SEO company, or internal marketer to implement an SEO plan. If so, there’s still plenty of ways to improve your site’s SEO. Here are just a few tips to further optimize your website:
From 301 redirects and web crawlers to sitemaps and indexing, there are a lot of SEO terms that can be new and overwhelming. Luckily, there is a helpful cheatsheet with a comprehensive list of SEO terms and what they mean! Feel free to reference this whenever you’re not quite sure what a term means or entails.
We hope you enjoyed this article on the essentials of search engine optimization for home builders and remodelers. We know that much of this information may seem new or complex; but with a bit of research and careful planning, you can optimize your site in no time!
Builder Funnel is an award-winning digital marketing agency that works exclusively with home builders, remodelers, and contractors. If you have an SEO question, need your site optimized, or are interested in our full marketing services, feel free to schedule a meeting with us, and we’ll be happy to help in any way we can! Otherwise, feel free to download our handy SEO checklist below for more helpful step-by-step instructions on optimizing your home building or remodeling website!
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