General Contractor SEO

SEO is short for Search Engine Optimization and is one of the best forms of digital marketing in 2020. It is the process of improving a website to rank higher in search engines like Google. This means that if a person is searching for “kitchen remodel houston tx”, with good SEO, you would show up before your competitors do.

It’s also important to know that the search terms “organic search” and “paid search” mean different things.

Organic search is SEO (what we just explained paragraph ago), wheras paid search is when you pay for ads on Google (also referred to as Search Engine Marketing). 

While this is definitely not exclusively an SEO question, we felt it was worth mentioning here as well. 

If you want to seriously start scaling your business and get potential customers onto your website, you need to stop thinking like a general contractor, and think more like a business owner. 

Just because you are a pro at kitchen remodels and bathroom remodels, doesn’t mean that the work is going to flow to you non-stop. You need to consider  focusing exclusively on the marketing role instead of your day-to-day operations OR hire an SEO company with proven results to bring you the potential customers you deserve! 

General contractor SEO differs from traditional SEO slightly. General contractor SEO follows most of the same principles as traditional SEO, but it focuses more on helping “sell” your business. Not necessarily a “hard sale” where it says “call us now” 100 times on the page.

The “selling” aspect of general contractor SEO ties in SEO and conversion rate optimization. At Get GC Clients, we show people visiting your site the level of your craftsmanship (by utilizing before and after photos) and also show them that you’re a reputable company (by displaying your reviews/testimonials).

According to Google:

” Google My Business is a free and easy-to-use tool for businesses and organizations to manage their online presence across Google, including Search and Maps. To help customers find your business, and to tell them your story, you can verify your business and edit your business information. “

Here is an example of a Google My Business listing:

While it’s not absolutely necessary, it is definitely recommended. We offer a free guide on how to develop a Construction Marketing Plan you can visit here.

Having an effective marketing plan allows you to focus your internet marketing where it matters and to get more potential clients. 

No! This is one of the biggest SEO misconceptions. Your SEO rankings do not instantly disappear when you stop paying/doing SEO. If you do have old content that isn’t continuously updated, don’t expect to stay at the top of the rankings though.

Keyword stuffing is an old low quality on page SEO strategy that involved overusing a phrase or word. For example, this is keyword stuffing:

I went to the computer store to buy a new computer hard drive for my computer to help my computer run faster like other 2020 computers do.

The advantages of SEO are endless. 

1. When you stop paying for SEO, you don’t lose everything you’ve done! Your rankings stay until Google decides to change them. 
2. It’s a great long-term growth channel. 
3. SEO compounds on itself. When you create good content, it helps your site as a whole rank well.
4. You can leverage good SEO on social media (all those good blog posts that you’re creating are great things to post online).
5. Your website will get a massive overhaul and become more user-friendly.
6. The list goes on.

It’s not completely necessary to do a full social media marketing campaign when also doing an SEO campaign, but if you did want to share the content that is being created as part of your SEO campaign, on social, it would help tremendously!

On page SEO refers to optimizations made to a website that take place directly on the web page. These can include modifying the content, load time, meta description, title, h1 tags, etc. Essentially on page SEO is exactly what it sounds like – it occurs on the page. 

Off page SEO is all of the optimization that takes place off of the website. Some examples of this include backlink building, local SEO (with building local citations and optimizing the Google My Business page), and also sharing the content to other websites. 

Local SEO is essentially ranking for local variations of keywords like “bathroom remodeler boston” or “general contractors near me”. It’s typically done by optimizing your Google My Business listing, creating local pages for your different service areas, and building local citations.

Citation building consists of sending your NAP (which is an acronym for business Name, Address, and Phone Number) to different business directories that help boost your local SEO rankings.

Google is the new yellow pages. With the right optimizations, you can get a steady stream of leads calling you instead of your competition.

SEO is one of the most popular way of generating high quality leads for general contractors. Showing up on search engines when your ideal client is looking up “contractors near me”, is a great way to grow your construction business.

If you have experience working with low quality SEO companies, you may have figured out that not all SEO is the same. As a business owner, you know that the construction industry is full of competitors. If you’re wasting time with low quality SEO, they’re going to outrank you in the long run and steal your leads. 

If you want to dominate your local market, high quality general contractor SEO is what will set you apart. 

Mobile first means that search engines are looking at the mobile version of your site first. Typically, industry dependent of course, website visitors are mostly mobile. When it comes to SEO for contractors, your visitors are mostly going to be on mobile devices as well.

Blog posts are a great way to help increase your search engine rankings. For example, you can target search terms like “how to renovate a bathroom under $3,000” and give tips on designs and cost-savings that homeowners/landlords can consider.

Obviously not all of the people finding your website there are going to be qualified leads; but linking internally to your bathroom remodel service page is going to help boost that and in turn help get more visitors there. Think about it as one hand washing the other.