Do you have a local contractor business and after contemplating and hearing various online success stories, you have decided to wade your way through the online world?

Great!

That’s where your success story begins because it means you are close to those 80% of people generating construction-based queries online.

However, after waiting for so many days, no potential client has knocked your door. And now all the online business success stories seem like a lie to you.

 

Are you thinking of quitting then?

Hey, wait! Don’t give up. Have you tried local SEO for contractors? If your answer is no, this post is exactly for you.

 

Most construction businesses don’t invest in SEO, thinking it as not their kind of thing. So no wonder the construction industry’s SEO ROI is less than many other industries.

Source: FirstPagesAge

 

But as now Google is paying more attention to local business rankings, so it is your time to ‘Think Local’.

Let’s decipher what local SEO is and how local SEO for contractors and construction companies can become a catalyst to boost your online and offline business.

 

What is Local SEO and Why is Local SEO Important for Contractors?

 

The science behind why local SEO services for contractors matter is simple:

 

Local businesses require a localized SEO strategy, focusing on giving a boost to your business through local SEO tactics, reaching the right audience.

 

Having an online local hairdressing business will not work for you if all your efforts are directed toward targeting a global audience that has no interest in your local hairdressing services.

I hope you don’t expect a person living in Dubai to fly all the way to Austria just to get his hair job done (until unless Brad Pitt is your customer)!

That’s where local SEO becomes your safe haven.

If you search for a barber in Chicago, Google will give you a compact list of local grooming businesses.

That’s how Google has improved how it displays local searches. It is the right and high time that you start working on your local SEO techniques if you have not already joined the bandwagon.

What is Local SEO for Contractors?

 

“Local SEO for contractors means employing SEO strategy to appear in the search result of your targeted audience based in your locality, using localized keywords to find you.”

 

Around 97% of customers use searches to find local businesses.

 

So if you don’t want to lose your potential customers to your competitors, it’s time to seriously dig out why SEO services for contractors are important for your online glow.

 

Hint*: Local SEO does more than just showing your results in the local searches.

 

Let’s see how you can earn the best bang for the buck through local SEO services for contractors.

Benefits of SEO for Contractors and Builders

Online marketing is a great way to enhance local SEO businesses. But the question is: why is local SEO important for contractors? Its answer lies in decoding the benefits of SEO for contractors and builders. Simple!

1.    Outrank Your Competitors with a Flick

In a world where Google searchers have made only the first page as their blissful hut, and top 3 searches as go-to sites, then getting more visibility is also less. Use local SEO tactics to appear in local packs or on Google Map — and get all the traffic and limelight.

In fact, most business owners consider more traffic as the most important KPI for their SEO effort.

So outranking your competitors paves the path for you to grab your target audience without much effort — courtesy of local SEO tactics too.

2.    Enhance Brand Awareness Like Never Before

There is no better way to gain traction from your target audience than to appear in their search results. Once you appear among top ranking websites, customers at least find out about you.

They know you exist and they might like to try your services in the coming future.

 

3.    Qualified Leads, Ready to Buy

Mostly, people generate a local search query when they are really looking for a thing. Unless a person has a lot of time to kill, nobody will search for the best gift shops near me without any buying intent.

 

Most of people visit your website with a buying intention or go to your physical store for the same after seeing it online.

So this way or that way, you get leads and more revenue by amplifying your Local SEO game.

 

4.    Become a Leader in Your Niche

Researchers search through Google because they trust it, believing it will give them the best results online. Seeing your website topping SERPs will endow people’s trust in your site too and they are more likely to buy from your site than all the sites lingering down the top position.

 

5.    Cutting Paid Advertising’s Budget

PPC is a great way to put your website on the top of the podium. Here is how paid advertisement works.

These all are high-ranking sites but paid. Every time someone clicks on the link, they pay Google. Just imagine how much chunk of the budget goes into it.

And what if the visitor doesn’t buy anything? Your money will go down the drain.

That’s where organic local SEO saves your budget because if your website is already ranking on the top, you wouldn’t need to invest in PPC campaigns.

With a plethora of benefits, if your SEO strategy is still missing focus on local SEO, it is time to build SEO strategies for builders and contractors.

 

Here are a few steps to begin your local SEO journey — leading towards success.

 

How to Invest in Local SEO? Proven Tips to Boost Your Rankings and Traffic

 

You can neither bribe Google to rank higher nor conjure a magic spell. SEO is an art and science, based on your employed techniques to pull your website on the top.

 

Here are some favorite local SEO methods of marketers to create an edge:

 

 

Let’s break down each step one by one:

 

STEP 1: Claim Your Business Listings

Most businesses don’t pay heed to this point which becomes a major setback for them. Content marketing works exceptionally well, but for local SEO, just begin with a local approach.

Business listing is an online brief introduction of your business, just like the digital shape of old Yellow Pages, including name, address, niche, phone number, website, and other important points that help customers find and know about a business.

 

You can find many directories and listing sites online that help local businesses shine.

 

●      Google Business Profile

GBM or Google Business Profile is one of the most popular business directories used for local business listings.

 

It is one of the features of Google that aids you in making a business profile and enhances your possibilities of enhancing visibility.

 

Here is an example of optimized GBP:

 

Around 64% of buyers use GBP to find a business’ contact information because it not only tells the name but also gives insight into all aspects of the business.

 

You can add almost all the basic information, including:

 

1. Business name
2. Location
3. Opening hours
4. Contact information
5. Photo Gallery
6. Reviews
7. Website link
8. Primary and secondary categories
9. Add all contractor services
10. Messaging to communicate
11. Cover potential FAQs

So enlist your business in GBP and enjoy the pleasure of meeting your customers.

●      Yelp

Yelp is also a business listing platform that helps you meet your prospects in an easy and happy way. Obviously, what can be better than finding all the information on one page than to wander online and hit different search links.

 

Here is how the DiFara Pizza online’s profile looks like in Yelp:

 

You find out everything about the pizza shop in one pack.

 

Takeaway: Enlist your business in local directories and listings to amp up your chances of getting caught in the top local searches and getting people’s attention.

 

STEP 2: Optimize Your Contractor Site

It is good to have a website, but without SEO efforts it’s not more than a mesh of grids, images, and content that will be lost in the dungeon of search engines.

So what should you do? Unleash local SEO for your contractor site.

Now on-page optimization is a whole new world that doesn’t begin and end with keyword stuffing. It includes a wide range of things that you should know now then never.

●      Keywords

The era of keyword stuffing is gone. Now Google examines the overall content and matches with the users’ intent before giving a search result.

So finding out the user intent is important to know which keywords users are using to find your website.

For example, if a person is looking for HVAC services, he can use multiple keywords to find that business. Some might just write HVAC, while others might go for a narrow search term, such as HVAC contractors Chicago. Both keywords will give a different result.

 

Search Results for HVAC:

 

Search Results for HVAC Contractors Chicago

So it is better to see keywords from 360 degrees. Here are some local SEO tips for HVAC contractors to find the right keywords:

 

1. Think about the different ways people might search for your service.
2. Take help from Google and see the ‘People also ask’ and ‘Related searches’ section.
3. Brainstorm different variations of your services that people might search for.
4. Break down your services into sub-parts to cover a broad spectrum of keywords
5. Conduct a competitor analysis
6. Use keyword research tools and check keyword volume and difficulty
7. Find out local keywords, such as your service + near me, or your service + specific area

 

Once you fetch the right keywords, use the primary keyword in:

 

1. Title tags
2. Page URL
3. Heading tags
4. Meta description
5. Sparingly throughout the content

That’s how and where you should place your keywords to get the optimal benefits.

●      Write High-Quality Content

Keywords can’t do anything if your content is duplicated, plagiarized, or simply doesn’t justify the topic.

 

Google gives importance to content and that’s what you should do too. Here is what Google’s guidelines say about content quality:

 

So create content that:

 

1. Provides value
2. Is 100% unique and fresh
3. Follows E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Accuracy, and Trustworthiness) criteria
4. Caters to the search intent
5. Doesn’t contain any harmful information

 

For example, this blog gives a short brief of what the readers will find out in the blog.

 

It gives Google signal that the content comprehensively covers the idea around the topic.

 

So create something that you would have loved to know if you would have been a searcher.

 

Avoid using deceptive ways as mentioned in Google’s guidelines:

 

 

Takeaway: Create your website according to the users’ search intent and meeting the quality guidelines. Optimize your images as well along with internal linking to help Google bots crawl your site easily and rank it after accessing it. That’s the deal sealer!

 

STEP 3: Get Backlinks from Local Relevant Sites

Link building is one of the oldest SEO tactics and it is still strong, relevant, and essential to ranking a site.

 

Marketers and SEO gurus also agree with this fact.

 

There are many ways of link building without tapping fishy methods that can land you in hot water, for example:

 

1. Guest post for contractors websites
2. Infographic promotion
3. Creating linkable assets
4. Resource pages
5. Broken link building
6. Claiming unlinked mentions
7. Offering free tools

 

So what’s the actual mantra behind link building?

 

Link building is the process of getting a high-quality, relevant link to your site — not for the sake of making the online world a mesh of links, but to increase your site’s authority and credibility.

Google takes it as a signal of your site’s authority in that niche and gives a boost to your site.

 

Here is what it means in the words of Google:

 

Getting links is good but only if they are quality links. Here are a few tips for contractor link building site:

 

1. Fetch links from high DA sites that relate to construction, structure designing, interior designing, etc.
2. Use a natural anchor text that is relevant to content but not highly optimized.
3. Place anchor text within the content organically — no stuffing.
4. Write high-quality content, not something run-of-the-mill kind of content that neither provides information nor is engaging enough.
5. Give a link to the page you want to optimize.

 

Once you follow these steps, get ready to welcome a burst of relevant traffic, looking for you.

 

Takeaway: Link building is an essential SEO technique to rank your contractor site. But you should get rank from high-quality relevant sites and write super duper content to get the benefits you are seeking to achieve.

 

STEP 4: Technical SEO is the Hidden Ace Card

Your SEO is incomplete without technical SEO because it is a combination of on-page, off-page, and technical SEO.

 

 

Source: WordStream

 

Unfortunately, technical SEO is the least celebrated SEO tactic, but it is equally important because it plays a table turner role during the crawling and indexing phase.

 

Here are a few things you should consider while fine tuning technical SEO:

 

●      Page Speed

In an age where consumers have so many other options, having a low-speed website is just like giving your potential customers to your competitors yourself.

 

You just get 3 seconds to capture the attention of visitors. With a decreasing attention span, engaging customers has become tricky!

 

In fact, the chances of bouncing back increase to 32% when a page’s loading speed increases.

Source: Portent

 

Google takes a higher bounce rate as a signal of insignificant websites. So it deranks the low speed website for that particular website.

 

1. Here are a few tips to increase website speed:
2. Choose a good web hosting provider, not just cheap.
3. Compressed and optimized images increase page speed.
4. Don’t prolong HTTP requests due to too many redirects.
5. Cache web pages to help servers use less resources to load the page.
6. Optimize file loading method.

 

Employing these tips to decrease bounce rate will play a magical role in transforming your page speed. Do it now, and enjoy the perks.

 

●      Site Security

Site security has attained the status of ranking factor since Google has started giving importance to the page experience.

Further, with the increasing rate of cybercrime and ransomware attacks, it has become more crucial to install an SSL certificate for HTTPS security measures.

 

That’s how a secure website looks like…

…HTTPS locked!

●      Responsiveness

80% of internet users are coming from mobile devices. It indicates that if your website is not mobile-friendly, you are giving your users a bad experience. Result? They would like to switch then to stick to a microscopic web page – good for nothing.

So if you want to give a boost to your website and online business, a mobile-friendly website seals the deal.

 

Takeaway: Don’t neglect technical SEO, including structured data, sitemap, and other factors to let your website grow and boom in the world of contractors’ websites.

 

STEP 5: Get Reviews to Shine

Just think, when was the last time you bought something for yourself online. Just dot down the pattern and you will find that somewhere you also checked online reviews of the product before buying it. Right?

 

You are not alone!

 

63.6% of consumers check out reviews before sealing their purchasing deal.

 

So if you want to give an extra edge to your online contractor business, it is time for you to focus on getting online reviews to build credibility and authority.

 

For example, you can check out the image below…

Top ranking listing has more views than others. It means Google also pays attention to online reviews before tagging a business as more anticipated and worth ranking.

 

Takeaway: Build your authority, credibility, and trustworthiness with online reviews to capture audience attention and win Google’s love so that capturing the first place doesn’t become a hard nut for you.

 

Conclusion

 

Now you know that doing local SEO for contractors is not an out-of-the-equation matter. You can see your contractor business shining on the top of SERPs, but only if you move the right needle.

 

Come out of the global mindset and think locally to handle the SEO of the construction site with the right approach.

 

It would be difficult, you might also feel like giving up because SEO doesn’t take a day to work, it takes months. But once you stick to the right SEO contractor site strategy, you will soon see your site performing well on SERPs.

 

Did you like this blog or do you have something to share, comments are open for you. Let’s grow together.