Construction SEO for Marketing Success and Client Growth

Understanding Construction SEO Strategy

By the nature of their business, small and medium construction companies heavily depend on a steady influx of new customers. Unfortunately, the current state of the market makes it hard to achieve this goal.

One of the best ways to secure new clients is an SEO strategy. It will help you increase the discoverability of the construction company online and boost your lead generation.

This guide to Construction SEO will help you learn how to plan and implement a search engine optimization strategy for your construction company and attain your business growth goals quickly and efficiently.

The guide is written by the marketing and SEO specialist of dNOVO Group agency and is based on our decades-long experience in lead generation.

Goals of an SEO Strategy

SEO for construction companies pursues several goals and achieves them provided it is done correctly.

1. Increase the website’s positions in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERP)
2. Target high-volume relevant keywords.
3. Gow website traffic.
4. Attract and convert potential customers.

Key Elements of the Construction Companies SEO

The key elements of construction SEO discussed in this guide are:

1. Keyword research
2. Technical SEO
3. On-Page SEO
4. Off-Page SEO

Benefits of Search Engine Optimization for Your Business

In our guide to construction marketing, we discuss the current situation in the construction industry in Canada. The past 3 years have been hard due to the high interest rates.

The future growth is linked to the governmental plans to build more affordable houses. However, it’s not yet clear whether the country will be hiring local construction companies or offering tenders to large industry players.

The future is ambiguous. However, Marketing and SEO efforts can bring your construction business measurable and reliable results.

Digital Marketing for Construction Companies

dNOVO Group marketing experts have prepared a series of guides for Canadian contractors. These materials will help you reach out to grow your organic traffic, target more potential customers, and win more leads.

Learn the best marketing and SEO strategies to grow your business and increase revenues:

• Roofing Marketing
• Roofing SEO
• Contractor Marketing
• Contractor SEO
• Construction Marketing
• Landscaping Marketing
• Home Remodeling Marketing
• HVAC Marketing

Keyword research

The basis for your construction SEO is keyword research. It is a necessary first step that will help you build content strategy and focus your SEO efforts.

What Are Keywords?

Keywords are words, phrases and whole sentences that people search on the Internet. One of the SEO goals is to rank as high as possible for the chosen keywords.

Keyword Characteristics

To choose keywords for your construction SEO, you need to first understand the major characteristics of keywords.

• Volume

Keywords differ in their popularity. Some keywords have millions of inquiries annually. Others remain relatively unpopular. Volume reflects this unequal distribution showing the number of searches per month for a particular word.

If your website was the only one in search engine results and all people clicked on the link to your website, you would get the number of website sessions equalling the volume of the keyword. Obviously, that rarely happens in the real-life scenario.

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The percentage of people who get to the bottom of the first search results page is less than 10% (let alone the second SERP). Furthermore, at the top of the first page, you’ll be competing with other high-quality websites and sponsored content. Speaking of competition:

• Difficulty

You aren’t the only company to target keywords related to the construction industry. In some cases, it will be enough to write a good content piece and you’ll be immediately rewarded and get ahead of other construction companies in no time.

However, most likely, you’ll have to put in extra effort to get to the top of search results, i.e., get high-authority websites referring to your page. Measured in percent, keyword difficulty will show you what exactly you need to do to get to the top of search results.

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• Search Intent

Billions of people are searching for information online every day. They all have different purposes: learning, buying, analyzing the available options, etc. Depending on the purpose people expect to find different types of web pages.

Search intent unravels these expectations. People with informational intent are looking to learn more about the keyword-related topic. Commercial intent reflects the wish to look for different sellers online. Finally, users with transactional intent are ready to buy a commodity or order a service.

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Keywords and Website Content

To get to the top of search results, you’ll need to build a content piece around a certain keyword, called focus or target keyword. Just adding it to random pages of your website will not be enough to attain this goal.

The content built around the target keyword needs to meet certain requirements. Unfortunately, these vary depending on the words you target. The general recommendation is to study the top of search engine ranking pages and see what your competition is doing.

Look for the following:

• the number of words in the content piece
• the number of headers
• the general topics covered
• the number of images
• the LSI keywords

The LSI search terms are keywords relevant to the focus keyphrase. These are words that Google crawlers will be looking for when they will be analyzing your page. You can find them using a keyword research tool or AI solutions like Surfer SEO that collect LSIs automatically.

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We talk more about using target and relevant keywords in content in our section dedicated to on-page SEO for construction companies.

How to Conduct Keyword Research

This is one of the biggest issues that most SMBs have when they decide to conduct SEO on their own. Understanding keywords and their characteristics is easy. Creating website content is difficult but doable for a business owner who knows all the ins and outs of the construction business. Finding and choosing keywords – not so much.

Here are the valuable SEO tips that will help your construction company find the right search phrases for your website:

1. Start with your business

Create a list of the construction services you provide. Each of these services is a good keyword. You might come across a hard choice as some construction services can be described with several synonymical keyphrases. Look at the search results of each term and check what types of websites target them.

2. Check the competition

Look at the websites of the construction companies you compete with. Check the service pages and the blog posts that they have. Think about building content around similar or the same keywords.

Check out the websites of companies you consider your main competitors. Next, google construction companies online to see your competition in the SERP top:

3. Listen to your clients

Your clients are a valuable source of keyphrases for blog posts and FAQ sections of web pages. We suggest writing down their questions regarding construction services.

Some of these questions will be good long-tail keywords. Look for these questions in search engines and see what other websites write about in this regard. They might need a slight rephrasing to have a search volume. Online forums are another good source for such questions.

4. Use keyword research tools

A keyword research tool has multiple capabilities that are essential to find necessary keyphrases for your website. First, such software solutions show you the key characteristics we discussed earlier in this section.

Second, they can help you find related terms, phrases and questions. Third, some of them can analyze your competition for you. They not only show the keywords your competitors use but also compare them to your own keyphrases to highlight the gaps and opportunities:

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On-Page SEO for Construction Business

On-page SEO helps search engines understand what your content is about. As mentioned above, crawlers analyze each web page and try to determine what it’s about. They don’t read the texts the way humans do. Instead, they search for focus and LSI keywords in specific spots on the page.

These spots are:

• content
• headers
• metadata
• URL
• Alt texts

If the content of these elements contains a focus keyword, the crawlers understand that you’re targeting it. However, if you have different unrelated keywords, crawlers cannot make up their mind about your content. They also might find your web page misleading and punish your website.

Webpage Content

To get targeted traffic, you need to place focus keywords across your copy. The suggested density should be 1 keyword per 100 words. Don’t forget about synonyms and LSIs either.

Headers

To improve readability for your target audience you need to break the texts into sections and subsections. Each of them requires a separate title. In digital content, these titles are called headers and they have 6 levels, but usually, we don’t go lower than 4th level.

Headers are marked with a specific HTML code. People and companies providing SEO services use H abbreviation followed by the number of the level.

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There can only be one first-level header (H1). It’s the title of your content piece. The number of H2s, H3s, and so on is determined by the length of your copy. Generally, it’s suggested to make a new section every 300 words.

Meta Data

Apart from headers, Google usually expects you to add title tags and meta description tags to your website pages. Meta titles and meta descriptions appear in snippets on the SERP when you look for a specific keyword.

Usually, meta titles are similar to H1. However, sometimes they can be tweaked to be more catchy, longer, or shorter, depending on the necessities.

Meta descriptions are short summaries of your content piece. Similar to meta titles, they should contain the focus keyword and LSIs.

Tags are the specific HTML code that marks the metadata. If you do page coding manually, you need to give your webmasters the title tags along with the content. Alternatively, many CMSs have special functionality that enables you to fill out the metadata.

URL

The URL of the content piece should also contain the keyword. It’s a general rule to make URLs readable. In other words, a human should be able to understand what your content piece is about from your URL. That’s why URLs like example.com/ghsy1 are a bad SEO for construction businesses.

Alt Text

Alt texts are texts assigned to the images on your website. It’s generally a good practice to add alt text for 2 reasons. First, many people use text-to-speech tools to read due to visual impairments. It’s empathetic and humanistic to let them know what your images are about.

Second, your target audience migt be looking for certain keywords in the image section of search. It’s good if they find your content there:

Technical SEO for Construction Companies

With the growth of competition, the number of pages with high-quality content on a particular topic is increasing. How can search engines determine which website should rank higher if the content is equally good and the domain authority is the same?

They usually look at the overall user experience on your website. That’s why regular SEO audits and technical SEO optimizations are essential for construction SEO.

Technical SEO is a continuous improvement work that consists of multiple processes. In this section, we placed these processes into several categories for easier understanding.

Website Navigation & UX

Search engines expect your construction company website to provide easy navigation to visitors. Here are several mistakes that will lower your positions on SERP:

1. “Orphan pages” that have no interlinking with the rest of the website
2. Overcomplicated architecture with too many levels of hierarchy
3. Illogical architecture where there’s no clear hierarchy

Here’s what you can do to fix these problems and improve your Search Engine Optimization.

1. Work on the construction website architecture

Start with visualizing the current architecture of your website. You can use a special tool like a website planner, a drawing program, or a whiteboard in your office.

Now, think about the ways how you can group your pages into categories: service pages, blog posts, information about your construction company, etc. Name each category and create a page for it where necessary.

2. Navigation Menu & URL

Create a navigation menu that reflects your website architecture. Change the URLs of pages to match the architecture. For example, if you have a blog post page with a URL like https://example.com/how-to-add-second-floor you should change it to a new URL https://example.com/blog/how-to-add-second-floor.

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3. Interlinking

It’s one of the efficient ways to improve user experience on the website of your construction company and please search engines.

By connecting your pages you will help website visitors to navigate and signal to crawlers which pages are the most important on your website. Those should be pages dedicated to your construction services and the main page.

4. Breadcrumbs

This type of navigation is necessary if you have more than two levels of hierarchy. The general suggestion is to add the links to all the pages of higher level on the page. For example:

Home > Construction Services > Custom Home Build > Custom Home Design

5. Pagination

Pagination is necessary to avoid too long lists of similar items. In the case of websites of construction companies, it is used for blog pages.

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Assisting Crawlers

Crawlers are programs of a search engine that find and analyze website pages to add and rank them. You can make their work easier and faster by doing several things:

1. Manual indexing

Indexing is the process of adding a web page to the list of web pages of a search engine. Usually, it takes up to several weeks for crawlers to index.

However, you can request Google to index your new page (or several pages at once) to speed up the process. You’ll need an account in Google Search Console for this.

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2. XML Sitemap

One of the ways to make the work of crawlers easier is to create an XML sitemap file that contains all the links to your website pages. Submit it to Google via Google Search Console.

You can also use a sitemap file to quickly get the list of all your indexed pages.

3. Redirects

As the website of your construction company grows, you’ll want to delete some pages that have been indexed in the past.

You can’t simply delete such a page as users can still get to it from Google as they search for certain keywords. They’ll see a 404 page and will be disappointed. Search engines don’t like such pages and will punish your website with a lower ranking.

You can fix this problem by assigning a redirect from such a page to another one that has a similar topic.

Website Performance

A glitchy website that downloads too slowly will not only impact the image of your construction business but also spoil the search experience for a user. That’s why Google will not give high rankings to such websites or their pages.

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Many SEO tools have performance analyzers that will help you identify slow and glitchy pages and fix the issue.

Some of the ways how you can take speed under control:

1. Using WEBP format for images to decrease their size in bytes while keeping the quality
2. Cleaning excessive code on the page
3. Using the faster domain
4. Decrease the number of videos that play on the page when it downloads (or their size).

Duplicate Content

Having content duplicates on your construction website won’t earn you penalties but it will impact negatively on your search engine optimization on the whole.

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The thing is that website pages that contain the same or similar content will begin competing with each other (the process called cannibalization) in SERP.

To fix it, delete duplicate pages. Sometimes, deletion can’t be a solution for various reasons. In this case, we suggest using canonical tags.

These tags will tell crawlers that a certain page on your construction website is a copy of another page that should be considered the main one (canon).

Optimization for Mobile Devices

The share of searches on mobile devices continues to grow. That’s why search engines punish websites that aren’t mobile-friendly. A good webmaster will be able to create website versions for smartphones and tablets and ensure high speed and good performance.

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Other Technical SEO Strategies

Other technical SEO elements include:

• getting HTTPS
• creating Robots TXT file

Off-Page SEO Strategy

All the above-listed SEO practices work with your website, its contents and technical characteristics. However, there are other factors that influence your ranking, such as brand popularity, domain authority, etc. Marketing and SEO experts work with these factors too. Such efforts are called the off-page SEO.

There are many ways you can impact your brand recognition and domain authority. In this guide, we’ll discuss only two practices: local SEO and Link Building.

Local SEO

Most construction companies in Canada are micro and small. This means they are local businesses that operate only within a limited geographical area.

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Needless to say, if your company is set in Vancouver you have no interest in clients from Montreal. You will want to target and win local customers. Furthermore, when people are looking for contractors they use their precise location (a practice called local search) since they are too interested in local businesses.

To get website traffic from your geographical area, you’ll need local SEO. This SEO strategy consists of 2 main practices:

1. Targeting keywords containing the names of locations

Create special service pages for towns and cities within your service area. This is the best way to appear in local searches and attract your target audience.

2. Creating a Google Business Profile

As a local construction company, you can create a business profile on Google for free. This will give you several advantages:

• Your business will be featured on Google Maps
• Your position in local search results will improve
• Your construction company will have a special featured snippet when people google your business name.

Overall, we recommend spending some time and resources on local SEO. The investment is minimal

Link building

Link building is one of the best ways to improve the domain authority of your website. In a nutshell, the process is getting relevant backlinks to your website and removing irrelevant ones.

A backlink is a link to your website placed on another website. Google determines the quality of your website by analyzing the “industry opinion.”

Are there websites writing about construction that refer to your website as a source of relevant and valuable info? If Google finds such websites, it concludes that your content and domain have high authority.

The links from websites dedicated to construction projects, news outlets, industry magazines, and platforms like Wikipedia are considered high-quality backlinks.

However, there are links that can harm your reputation. These are links from websites belonging to illegal or semilegal businesses. You need to disavow them in the Google Search Console.

Tips to Magnify Construction SEO Success

In this section, we briefly discuss the major SEO tips for construction companies.

1. Get Business Listings

Local directories will provide you with valuable traffic and backlinks that will increase your domain authority.

2. Conduct PPC Campaign

Use social media or Google ads. It will give you traffic, especially if you’re only beginning your SEO efforts.

3. Acquire Online Reviews

Ask your clients to share their experience with your construction company on your Google Business Profile. It will increase your trustworthiness in the eyes of Google and potential customers.

3. Automate Your Work with SEO Tools

We suggest acquiring a keyword research tool, SEO Audit solutions, Content Management System, Google Analytics, and Google Search Console.

4. Hire a Digital Marketing Agency

An experienced Marketing and SEO Agency can help you save money and time but bring their expertise to the table.

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