SEO for Construction Companies: How to Get High-Quality Traffic From Google

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the set of digital marketing strategies that help relevant and quality internet content rank in related search queries. For example: if you type “restaurant near me” in a search engine’s search bar, the highest ranking results have high SEO value.

There are two main types of SEO: local search and organic search.

Local SEO is all about getting your business’s physical storefront to show up on the map when online users are searching for what your business offers. On Google, the top three to five search results are packaged together in the Local Pack.

The Local Pack is prime local search real estate. Businesses that rank among the Local Pack automatically earn a high level of trust with online users, since Local Pack results are heavily vetted by Google and utilize local SEO best practices.

Local search best practices are:

• Completing and regularly updating your Google Business Profile (GBP)

• Showcasing and responding to reviews

• Writing descriptions with high-volume keywords

• Posting locally relevant content

Leveraging these local SEO best practices gives your construction company the best chance at ranking in local search results and being found and chosen by potential customers.

Organic SEO is the set of search engine algorithm-driven, unpaid digital marketing strategies used to help your business and business’s content rank highly for relevant search queries.

Organic SEO is similar to local SEO except it’s focused on more than showing up on the map and in the Local Pack. Organic SEO methods apply to businesses with and without a physical storefront and employs a few more strategies to rank highly in search results.

Best practices for organic SEO include:

• Having a search engine optimized and mobile-friendly website with a fast loading speed

• Consistently posting helpful and quality content rich with high-volume keywords

• Accumulating high-quality backlinks to your business’s site from other reputable businesses

• Showcasing and responding to customer reviews

• Completing and updating your business’s GBP

Organic SEO strategies play the long game and are the bedrock for every other digital marketing strategy. Organic search results are typically trusted more than paid search ads by online users since they know the content needs to be relevant and helpful to rank highly in search results.

Organic SEO strategies are free to implement and they establish trust with customers right off the bat.

You want your construction company to have a high SEO value. High SEO value means that your business has employed all necessary tactics for SEO and ranks highly in relevant search queries. High search rankings means a better chance at being found and chosen by your ideal customers and realizing growth for your business.

A great example of SEO success is Harborage Building Company. Harborage Building Company is a Texas based construction company that builds custom barndominiums. Because of their SEO efforts, their business ranks for several keywords like barndominium fort worth, barndominium builders in north texas, barndominium for sale dallas, barndominium builders dallas and barndominium.com.

These rankings increase their website’s traffic and overall conversion rates because the business is ranking for keywords across the entire marketing funnel.

Ranking highly in search results yields serious benefits for your construction company.

SEO strategies are foundational for all other lead generation strategies. Without SEO, your ideal customers won’t be able to find your construction company online and you’ll lose business to your competitors.

When your construction company gets SEO right, the quality and volume of your leads increases. Since SEO strategies are foundational and long-term focused, the work you put in up front will keep giving back to your business with exponential growth over time.

A search engine optimized website and Google Busines Profile translates into an increase in brand awareness. Ideally, your construction company ranks highly in search results for several keywords and queries. As in-market customers continue to research construction companies and educate themselves, if they see your business rank consistently, your business will become top-of-mind in their decision making process.

This increased brand awareness and earned top-of-mind status will turn cold leads into loyal customers in no time.

Crafting an effective SEO strategy requires extensive market research and keyword research. Hunches and gut feelings about what your ideal customers are searching for isn’t enough to create impactful SEO strategies.

Using tools like Google Ads’ Keyword Planner can let you know what your target audience is searching for right now and what keywords and topics will be trending in the future. Not only will this information shape both current and future campaigns, but it can also inform future products and service offerings.

Only by investing in SEO strategies will you become more in touch with your construction company’s ideal customer and how to market to them well.

SEO is closely connected to paid advertising campaigns, direct sales and social media campaigns. SEO strategies ensure that once a consumer is introduced to your construction company, they have more content to engage with and more ways to get to know your brand.

Retargeting paid ad campaigns can be triggered by online users clicking on your construction company’s website (which they found through targeted keywords in their initial query).

Your construction company’s social media accounts can see an uptick in their follower-growth-rate after an online user looks up your company on social media after reading a ranked blog article.

Sales can be positively impacted when search engine optimized web pages and landing pages with strong CTAs rank highly in search results.

SEO supports every other digital marketing strategy that your construction company currently employs and offers your customers a more streamlined and connected experience with your brand.

Your construction company’s marketing team can share market insights that they gathered from their SEO efforts with other business departments. These departments can then use those data points and findings to improve products, create new service offerings and make adjustments to bottlenecks within the sales funnel.

SEO strategies offer both your construction company and your business’s customers maximum value by helping your brand be more easily found and chosen online and by offering unique market insights.

A comprehensive SEO strategy includes the following best practices:

1. Keyword Research

2. Content Marketing

3. Local SEO

4. Technical SEO

5. Link-Building

6. Link-Baiting Content

The difference between a good contruction SEO strategy vs a bad one often comes down to what keywords you're targeting.

Keywords are words that trigger relevant content to be served in search results. Search engines rank search results predominately based on keyword relevance. If you get every other SEO best practice right but don’t get keywords right, your SEO efforts will fail.

Here’s an example of a search query and its keyword(s):

“Affordable pole barn construction companies near me”

The entire phrase is the search query that consists out of individual keywords, but SEO professional often refer the entire query as a "keyword".

This keyword, if your construction company ranks for it, has a high potential for converting Google users into paying customers . These are often called "bottom of the conversion funnel" keywords and are typically more competitive to rank for.

Here’s another example:

“How to build a tiny house DIY”

This keyword offers no immediate converision as it primarily serves information search intent. Yet, your construction company can rank for keywords that don’t have anything to do with someone choosing your business right then and there for their next construction project. Ranking for content, like how tos, that offer immediate value to the consumer and doesn’t require anything in return builds trust and brand authority with online users. Often we call these keyword "bottom of the conversion funnel" keywords.

A well balanced construction SEO strategy will include both top of the funnel and bottom of the funnel keywords that your company can rank for quickly and in the longer term.

There are several tools available to help you conduct keyword research. Some of the most popular are:

• Google Keyword Planner

• Answer the Public

• Google Autocomplete

• Neil Patel - Uber Suggest

Explore each of these keyword tools and compare their results against one another so that you can be sure that you’re choosing the best keywords for your construction company’s content.

Keep in mind that not all keywords are created equal. When choosing keywords to create content around, make sure they have the following characteristics:

• High search volume

• Low search competition

• Low bidding cost

• Relevant to your construction business’s expertise

• Product and/or service specific to what your company offers

Sometimes, a keyword with high search volume that’s related to your construction company’s expertise and offerings will also have high search competition and be expensive to bid on. In these cases, it’s important to be clear on your SEO strategy’s budget.

Additionally, if the keywords you want your content to rank for are expensive and have high search competition, consider if the content is likely to earn your construction company more business. Content with strong and sales related CTAs may be worth the expensive and high competition keywords if the content will end up paying for itself.

Content and keywords that are attached to the bottom of your construction company’s sales funnel will have more competition and be more expensive to bid on than keywords at the top of your sales funnel.

It’s important to work towards ranking for top-of-funnel and bottom-of-funnel keywords as both are important for your construction company’s growth and success. Keeping the top of the funnel full will help keep the bottom of the funnel full.

Content marketing is how you get your construction company to rank for relevant keywords. Content marketing can be:

• blog articles

• videos

• podcasts

• news and press releases

• infographics

• online courses

• webinars

• web pages and more

Anything that your construction company posts online can be used for content marketing purposes and can potentially rank for relevant keywords.

When developing content for your construction company, it’s important to understand search intent. Search intent is about deciphering the intent of the user when they type a query into a search bar.

There are two main buckets for search intent:

• information intent

• commercial intent

A few other search intent subcategories are:

• I want to know

• I want to buy

• I want to go

• I want to watch/read/listen

Create content for your construction company that offers value for these different search intentions. Keeping search intent in mind will help inform content CTAs, tone of voice and audience commitment and interest.

Top-of-funnel content is normally informational and in the “I want to know” and “I want to watch/read/listen” categories. Bottom-of-funnel content is “I want to buy” or “I want to go.” Often content can serve several search intents. For example, an article about your construction services can attract both potential customers or just readers who want to learn more about the details of a construction business. to get higher rankings, you can write an article that serves both audiences at the same time.

As mentioned previously, local SEO strategies get your construction company to show up on the map and in Google’s Local Pack.

While every organic SEO strategy will help your construction company’s local SEO, focusing on your business’s GBP will be most helpful to its local SEO.

A complete and competitive GBP will include:

• business name

• business address (if a physical location)

• business hours

• customer reviews and responses to reviews

• google posts

• photos with descriptions

• FAQ section

• business website

• business contact information

• any other information the GBP asks for

Technical SEO is all about your construction company’s website’s crawlability. Crawlability refers to how easily search engines can read and index your business’s website pages.

Technical SEO is crucial to ranking highly in search results. Even if your website has impeccable and valuable content, if search engines can’t crawl and understand it, it won’t get served in search results.

Here are the key components to effective technical SEO:

• meta descriptions for images and headers

• website specific SEO

• fast page load times

• mobile-friendly design and optimization

• backend keyword input

Only certain technical SEO elements will be apparent to your website’s visitors (like page loading speed and mobile optimization). However, like every digital marketing strategy, it’s important to please human browsers as well as search engine algorithms to rank highly in search results.

Link-building is a method designed to get other websites in your industry to link to back to your website in their content.

Link-building in the construction industry is a long-term SEO strategy. As your construction company grows in influence and industry authority, more companies and websites will link back to your content to boost their own reputation.

Because link-building takes time and consistent effort in all sectors of digital marketing, some marketers cut corners and engage in unethical SEO and link-building practices.

Strategies like content farming, paid links and keyword stuffing are not only penalized by search engine algorithms, but they also cheapen your brand’s reputation to online users.

Building links with reputable businesses takes consistent effort over time and there’s no way around it. When linking to other websites’ content, make sure they they use ethical SEO practices before you link.

Link-baiting content is content that’s specifically designed to get as many backlinks and shares as possible.

For the construction industry, a link-bait piece of content could be an infographic that explains different types of construction materials, like lumber and what kinds of wood and various sizes are best used for.

This kind of infographic is universally helpful and valuable across the industry and other construction companies can link to it for their audience instead of creating their own.

Link-bait content helps to generate backlinks to your construction company’s website and content and boosts your construction company’s SEO value.

To give your construction company an edge with SEO, look for the paths less traveled within your indstry.

Today's SEO field is pretty competitve. So you need to get creative with keywords. Every construction company targets keywords like “builders near me.” By capitalizing on keywords that are searched earlier in a buyer’s decision making process, you not only avoid fierce bottom-of-the-funnel competition, but you can offer value more quickly and stay top-of-mind when it does come to time for a decision to be made.

Capitalizing on keywords about land prices, financing options or any other topics associated with early research can get your construction company ahead of the game when users are still gathering information.

Your construction company’s website need to be easy to navigate, load quickly on both desktop and mobile and have an eye-catching design. Website visitors are more likely to spend more time on optimized websites, engage with the business’s content and, ultimately, convert into paying customers.

The time that online users spend on your construction company’s website also benefits your search engine rankings which leads to increased traffic and sales.

Cultivating online partnerships can increase brand awareness and help build backlinks to your website.

Guest blogging and content creation is a great way to connect with other businesses online. Your construction company’s marketing team can identify compatible construction companies to guest blog for. When guest blogging, make sure that the piece will benefit the business you are blogging for and that your construction company isn’t in direct competition.

Ask permission to linkback to your construction company’s website in the author tag, to create a backlink. These guest blogs will quickly generate backlinks to your site, foster positive relationships within the industry and build your construction company’s SEO value.

You can also ask compatible construction businesses to guest blog on your website. The guest blogging company will offer new value to your audience and create another backlink for your website when they share their blog with their audience.

Beyond blogging, inviting industry leaders to do video interviews, podcasts and create original content for you to share with your audience is an excellent SEO strategy. When you pair your business’s name with the name of a more well-known industry expert or thought leader, your construction company can piggy back on their established SEO value.

From qualified leads to increased sales and revenue, local search and organic SEO strategies are the key to your construction company’s online success and growth.

Construction companies that invest in SEO marketing strategies have a leg up over other construction companies that rely solely on traditional marketing methods. Strong SEO methods help your business be found and chosen over your competition.

Venveo proudly stands in the gap between construction companies and digital marketing success. Our proven digital growth processes guide your business in finding and connecting with your audience online while compelling them to take action. Contact us to learn more about how Venveo can help your construction company’s SEO.