The popular opinion is that small local business, such as construction companies, have a little space and prospect of marketing online. Their marketing strategies were primarily focused on and limited to newspaper ads, yellow pages or maybe even TV commercials. But times are changing and younger generations who need construction services today probably don’t even know what yellow pages are or how to use them.
Everything is done through the internet, which means that your company has to get online as soon as possible in order to stay competitive. However, getting yourself online is just the first step. Once you establish a website and start reaching out via social networks, the fun part stops and things start to get technical.
From this point forward it all starts revolving around SEO, i.e. search engine optimization. It sounds complicated and hard to swallow, but that’s only because it actually is. Nothing to worry about though, because we got you covered and we’ll show you that there is nothing to be afraid of. Just dive in.
SEO for Beginners
If this is your first encounter with
The logic behind it is simple – the higher your site ranks in search results, the more visitors it will have and more visitors means more customers.
There are many factors that influence your search engines rankings such as content quantity and quality, links, keywords, and others, but the thing that is most important for you as a contractor is that there are probably not so many construction companies in your area spreading through the internet. This is specifically important because high-quality local
Getting Started
Of course, you are going to start by creating a website, that is a given, but you can’t just build a website on any old platform and hope for the best. You have to be very careful and search for the SEO-friendly platforms in order to give your website the best starting chance.
There are many factors to take into consideration and it basically comes down to your preferences and resources. Some platforms are free, like WordPress, but it can be difficult to use, even though it has technical support to help you solve possible issues.
Other platforms like Magento are free in their basic form but aren’t SEO-friendly by nature, and while with some adjustments you can get better results, you have to ask yourself if you are really up to the task.
Paid platforms like Squarespace might make a dent in your budget, but it ultimately might be worth your penny, as this platform, in particular, is easy to use with a simple editor and great templates to choose from.
All in all, it’s up to you to do your research and find the platform that fits your needs best.
Business Info and Contact
If you really want Google to recognize your company as a local business, you are going to have to make that clear. To make this happen, you’ll have to put your basic company information (such as address) on every page of your website, so if you are a contractor from New Jersey you have to put it in your website. This way, if someone searches for ‘New Jersey contractors’ or ‘contractors in New Jersey’, Google will know that people are looking for you.
Also, make sure to show people the quickest way they can contact you, and the best way to do this is to put your phone number in the header section of the website. Some people are not really interested in your company or the story behind it. All they are looking for is a phone number of a contractor, and you should make sure to cover these people as well.
Relevant and Quality Content
Content is basically what makes a website and it is important not only to your potential clients but also for search engines. When it comes to
Quantity is also very important, but this doesn’t mean that you should spam your clients with 10 000 words of new content a day. Ideally, a few thousand words should find their spot on the website in general, and you should add at least a couple of new posts a month.
Since you are a contractor, chances are that you are offering more than one service, and you should let people know that. Make either a page per service or better yet a blog where you can get your visitors informed about what it is that you do, what kind of services you offer and so on.
You can really get creative here and do tutorials about construction, or simply write about stuff that you think will interest your visitors. The possibilities are endless here.
Website Speed and Mobile-Friendliness
Website loading speed plays a huge role in
There are a few notable reasons why loading time can increase, from using too many or too large images to code not being optimized, or simply having too much content on the website. If you are experiencing similar issues and don’t know how to fix them, you should sift through web design depositories and find one that can help you.
Since Google has made a decision to include a mobile version of the website when ranking, it is more important than ever to make your website as mobile-friendly as possible. On top of that, just like with loading speed, people will have a problem sticking around if your website doesn’t perform well on their mobile phones. And since more and more people are using smartphones for browsing, this is really something that you should have in mind.
You can check both your loading speed and mobile-friendliness using various online tools.
Meta Titles and Descriptions
These are really important but hard to get right, as they are just another thing that shows both to your customers and to Google who and what you are. Basically, meta title is the title of your page shown in the search engine, and meta description shows what that page is all about.
Each page on your website needs to have a unique title and description, which is why this is such a hard task. Some website platforms make this process a bit easier, while there are also tools that specialize in auditing and monitoring of your website’s performance which will help you do this right.
Mobile App
This is a bit of a risky move and one that shouldn’t be made without proper preparation and extensive research. That being said, people really are using smartphones more and more and they rely on them for everything – they look at the forecast, they order food and they even pay bills. So why not hire a contractor?
Again, this is in the distant future and only do this one once your website has already taken a high spot in the search engine rankings. Also, don’t even think about doing this on your own, as making a mobile app is not a child’s play and there are experts that specialize in custom app development whom you can consult with and learn from.
The best part of having an app for your business is that you are only a tap away from your clients. You can add a whole bunch of helpful features that will help both you and your customers, and you will ultimately create a huge following and a firm bond with your customers.
Linking and Keywords
Before you start working on your app, you must optimize your website. When it comes to links, this means that you need plenty of backlinks, links to other websites and internal links. Of course, too much is never enough and it should always be relevant links, not only linking for the sake of linking.
Backlinks are links that you get from other websites, which is great as you get direct traffic if you are relevant to whatever your website is being linked to. While linking to other websites might seem counter-intuitive, it also increases your
Keywords depend on the type of content you plan to offer to your readers and doing proper research on keywords is the main condition of getting this just right. There are online tools that can help you with this and you should always use them before actually opting for a specific keyword.
Overall Optimization
Overall, you should keep an eye on your sitemap which is not something that you can actually see. It is kind of a background map of your website and only people with some knowledge in this field can access it. Now, since Google is constantly crawling through the web, it is also crawling through your website, indexing your pages and their content. What this means for you is that you need to make your website easy-to-crawl so to speak or in other words easy for Google crawlers to index. As with many other
