Introduction
If you’re a contractor, you have most likely considered using SEO to help get more business. SEO is an important tool for any business today, but especially those in the construction industry. In fact, there are many benefits of using SEO for contractors including: increased traffic and leads from search engines, higher rankings on Google for relevant keywords and phrases that your target audience searches for often (which means more potential customers), and lower bounce rates on your website (which means visitors actually stay on your site longer). So why not start optimizing your site with these 10 steps?
First and foremost, what is SEO?
SEO stands for search engine optimization, and it’s a process that can help you make your website more visible to search engines. This is important because it means that when people are searching for contractors in your area, your business will be one of the top results they see on Google.
While some people think SEO is just about getting more leads or prospective customers to visit their sites, it actually has much broader implications than that: by optimizing your site with relevant keywords and content that speaks directly to potential clients’ needs (and wants), you’ll be positioning yourself as an industry leader who knows how things work–and who can offer solutions based on what works best in real life rather than just theory or guesswork.
The importance of SEO for contractors
Search engine optimization (SEO) is an important part of any contractor’s marketing plan. It helps contractors get more leads, rank higher in the search engines and get more traffic to their website.
In this article we’ll look at how SEO can benefit your business:
The power of on-page optimization
SEO is a complex process, but it’s important for contractors to know that on-page optimization is the first step in search engine performance. On-page optimization can be done by anyone with a little bit of effort and time. The foundation of SEO is building your site so that it meets Google’s criteria for high rankings in SERPs (search engine result pages).
As an example, let’s say you have a website about home remodeling services and want to rank for “home remodeling” queries. You want people who are looking for this service to find your page when they search online rather than competitors’ sites or webpages that aren’t directly related to what they need. To achieve this goal, there are certain things we need:
- A domain name related directly back into our niche industry(s) – In this case: [Home Remodeling]
- A landing page optimized around keywords related specifically towards our main services offered within those niches(s) – In this case: [Home Remodeling Services]
How to find the perfect keyword
Now that you know what keywords to target, it’s time to find the perfect one. To do this, use a keyword research tool (like Google Keyword Planner) and type in some of your best guesses for potential search terms. You’ll be able to see how many people are searching for these terms and whether or not they have high intent–that is, if they’re looking for information or ready to buy immediately. If there are too many competitors using similar keywords or if they don’t seem all that promising anyway, move on!
The difference between good and bad keywords
- Good keywords have high search volume. The more people are searching for your product or service, the better. This can mean a few things:
- Your keyword is relevant to your business and what you provide to customers
- The competition is low on this keyword (i.e., it’s not being used enough)
- Good keywords have low competition: Because there are fewer people using them than bad ones, you have a higher chance of ranking high in Google searches for those terms if they’re used frequently enough by other businesses in their industry (or even just as part of their product name).
Begin with a keyword research tool.
Keyword research tools are free, easy to use and help you find the right keywords. They’ll also show you which keywords are most popular, so that you can use them in your content without worrying about whether or not they will get searched for.
A good keyword tool will have a wide range of search terms available for each topic area (such as “home improvement” or “homes for sale”), so it’s easy to choose an appropriate one based on what type of business you’re in.
Find keywords with high-intent
If you want to find the most profitable keywords, it’s important that you know what “high intent” means. High-intent keywords are those that have a higher likelihood of converting. That means that when someone searches for these kinds of keywords and finds your website, they’re more likely to click through and make a purchase from you than if they had searched for something else.
For example: If someone searches for “contractors near me,” there’s going to be some competition because there are so many contractors in most cities around America–but if someone were looking specifically for “best plumbers in San Francisco” (which is also considered a high-intent keyword), then there would probably be less competition because fewer people are actually looking specifically at this term right now compared with how many people might just type into Google “contractors near me.”
Create your list of keywords.
Here, you’ll want to use a keyword research tool like Keyword Tool or Google’s own Keyword Planner. These can help you find keywords that have high-intent and are related to your business. You can also use the tool on its own or in conjunction with other sources like social media listening tools or competitor analysis reports from Moz Pro (which we’ll get into later).
Once you have a list of potential keywords for your site, it’s time for the next step: creating a set of goals for each one!
Start optimizing your website’s content.
- Start optimizing your website’s content.
- Good content is at the heart of any SEO strategy, so it’s important to get started with this step as soon as possible. There are a lot of factors that go into creating great content–from keyword research to writing style and formatting–but there are also some tried-and-true best practices that will help you write more effective copy in less time. For example:
- Use specific keywords in your headlines and subheads when possible (but don’t overdo it).
- Include “you” statements in every piece of writing on your site (e.g., instead of saying “we provide services for contractors,” write something like “You’re a contractor? Then we can help”).
- Keep paragraphs short and focused on one idea per paragraph; break up longer passages into separate sections if necessary.
Optimize your existing pages, blog posts & articles.
As a contractor, you have a lot of great content on your website. It could be blog posts, articles or maybe even videos. Whatever it is, they are all important to the success of your business and will help drive traffic to your site.
But before we get into how to optimize these pages for search engines (known as on-page SEO), let’s look at what exactly on-page optimization is:
- On-page optimization refers to factors that affect a website’s ranking in organic search results without requiring off-site factors like links from other websites or social shares
Write the perfect meta description for each page.
Meta descriptions are the text that appears under the title of your page in search results. They’re a great way to get your website noticed by users, especially if you have limited time or budget for advertising.
- Write unique meta descriptions for each page on your site.
- Keep them short and sweet–no more than 160 characters (about 20 words) is ideal.
Insert those new keywords into your website body content, H1 tags, URLs and alt text fields.
When you’re ready to start incorporating your new keywords into the body content of your website, make sure to use them in:
- Title tags (the text that appears at the top of each page)
- Meta descriptions (the short summary of what a page is about)
- Body content (such as blog posts or articles)
On-page optimization is crucial to search engine performance
On-page optimization is crucial to search engine performance, as it helps search engines understand what your website is about and how to rank it.
On-page optimization is important because it helps search engines understand the content on your website. For example, if you have an article about landscaping services, then the keywords “landscaping” and “services” should be included in the title of this article (i.e., “Landscaping Services: The Benefits Of Using An Expert Contractor”). This will help Google know that this page contains information related to landscaping services so they can rank it accordingly when someone searches for those terms.
Conclusion
We hope that this article has given you a good understanding of why SEO is important for contractors, as well as some tips on how to get started with on-page optimization. We know that it can seem daunting at first glance, but if you take things one step at a time and use tools like Moz’s keyword tool or SEMRush’s Keyword Explorer tool then it won’t take long before your website starts climbing up in rankings!