To outrank competitors and succeed, there’s no doubt that businesses must perform well online, especially those offering contracting services. Whether you’re an electrician, HVAC contractor, plumber, general contractor, or other type of tradesperson, you understand the unique challenges of beating local competitors and meeting your target market online. Is your home service company easily discoverable in the digital world, or are you getting lost in the shuffle of local contractors and failing to turn online users into qualified leads? Leveraging search engine optimization tactics can help you stand out from the competition and attract high-quality leads to grow your business.
Search engine optimization (SEO) strategies can greatly enhance your digital marketing efforts by improving online visibility and attracting potential customers to your contracting business. From optimizing your local listings to crafting engaging, keyword-rich content, SEO ensures that your contracting business is the first choice for people searching for the services you offer. SEO is about more than just gaining more traffic to your website; it’s about building connections with potential clients actively searching for your services. In this blog, we’ll explore the importance of SEO for contractors and share 6 actionable tips to optimize your site for search engines. Elevate your contracting business with the power of SEO!
What is SEO For Contractors?
Contractor SEO is a set of organic (i.e, you’re not paying the search engine provider) practices utilized to optimize your website and local business listings, improving their ranking on search engines, most commonly Google, Yahoo, and Bing. You may have the best general contractor business in the state, but it won’t be found online unless you take advantage of SEO strategies.
How does SEO work? Google, Bing, and Yahoo are constantly perusing the internet for authoritative, legitimate, and reputable websites to list on the front page of search results. Utilizing a set of tested practices, SEO is a set of practices that optimize your contractor site, demonstrating to search engines that your business is qualified, trustworthy, and relevant to online users, leading to better positioning in search results.
So, why is SEO important for contractors? Here are a few benefits this digital marketing tool provides for general contractors:
- Boosted Traffic & Targeted Leads: The primary goal of SEO is to increase your website’s traffic and garner targeted leads for your business. According to Ahrefs, SEO drives 1,000%+ more traffic than organic social media, and 60% of marketers say SEO is their highest source of online leads. When your website is optimized for search engines, your chance of meeting potential customers skyrockets. Moreover, because SEO helps your site rank for keywords relevant to your contracting company, the online viewers you attract are interested in your services and ready to partner with you.
- Competitive Online Advantage: With an excess of regional competitors, general contractors have their work cut out for them if they want to stand out. Fortunately, you can gain the upper hand over the competition with SEO. Search engines look for websites that provide the best answer for online users. If you offer top-notch, SEO-friendly content and helpful information, you’ll quickly outperform your competitors and drive more leads your way.
- 24/7 Promotion: While paid advertising is an effective and quick way to meet searchers online and generate qualified leads, your contracting business only reaches people for as long as the campaign lasts. On the other hand, SEO offers constant 24/7 online promotion for your company. If you’re in Google’s top search results, your target market can find you anytime, resulting in round-the-clock online marketing for your contracting business.
How to Do SEO for Contractors: 6 Proven Techniques
SEO has a proven track record of success for contractors, but it takes the right strategies to build a high-converting optimization plan. Whether you’re entirely new to digital marketing or have been practicing for years, here are Rock Salt’s top 6 SEO techniques for contractors:
1. Perform keyword research and select relevant contractor keywords
The foundation of a solid SEO strategy for contractors is keyword research and targeting. When your intended market searches online for contractor-related services, they use specific terms or queries such as “plumbing services,” “general contractors,” “residential roofing,” or more to find you online. If your business isn’t appearing in users’ search results or Google’s front page, there’s a slim chance your online audience will find you. You must rank for the keywords they’re searching for to outperform competitors and meet your potential customers online.
Start by brainstorming a list of relevant terms you think online searchers would use when looking for your contracting services. For example, if you’re an electrician, here’s a list of keywords you might use to start:
- Electrician in [service area]
- Commercial electrician [service area]
- Home electrician [service area]
- Electrical contractors [service area]
- Lighting installation [service area]
- [Service area] electrician
- Electrical repair [service area]
When brainstorming for keyword research, consider both long-tail and geo-specific terms. Long-tail keywords are highly specific phrases that users search for when they’re past the early “shopping around” phases and have a good idea of what they’re looking for. For example, someone searching for “board and batten siding contractor San Francisco” is probably closer to hiring a contractor than someone browsing for “siding contractors in the Bay Area.” Ranking for long-tail keywords increases your chances of targeting the right online audience. They’re also generally easier to rank for than broader terms with higher amounts of (less-qualified) search volume. Along the same lines, localized keywords include the name of the city, county, or state where your contracting services are offered and are, therefore, more targeted to specific local audiences. Since contractors’ services are location-based, these queries are essential for contractors such as plumbers, electricians, HVAC professionals, and more. Utilizing long-tail and localized keywords ensures you target the correct audience and beat regional competition online. The more long-tail and localized keywords you rank for, the more authority your site will have when you start going for broader, more competitive terms.
Once you’re done brainstorming some initial search terms to start with, use keyword research tools such as Semrush, Ahrefs, Moz, Google Search Console, AnswerThePublic, or Google’s Keyword Planner to analyze the value and competitiveness of the terms you came up with and expand your list. Once you’ve crafted a list of keywords, the next step is to implement them on your website, including them in blog posts, service and location pages, how-to guides, and more. Here are a few tips for contractors to keep in mind when implementing keywords on your websites:
Do’s and Don’ts of Keyword Targeting
Do: Pay attention to the searcher’s intent. Keyword research involves more than assessing keywords’ relevancy, search volume, and keyword difficulty; you also need to consider searcher intent. It’s essential to ensure that the phrases you’re targeting are aligned with your contracting business and digital marketing goals. Still, it’s equally important to make sure the content you’re providing on your site is what online users are looking for. For example, if a person types “toilet won’t flush” on a search engine, they’re most likely looking for a blog detailing why their toilet isn’t flushing and how to fix it—not the home page of your plumbing company’s website. If your site’s content matches a searcher’s intent, answers their questions, and provides legitimate value, they’ll stay on your site, engage with your company, and their engagement will increase your authority on that query in the eyes of Google. We recommend dividing keywords into categories (e.g., blogs vs core pages) based on searchers’ intent. The screenshot below shows five “roofing contractor” keywords with data from Semrush. These terms have “commercial” intent, meaning searchers are looking to hire a service. To rank for these terms, it would be best to optimize a home page or service page (rather than a blog post, for example). You can also determine intent by searching for these terms yourself and identifying what types of pages Google is ranking.
Don’t: Practice keyword stuffing. It used to be that the relevance of a website’s page in search engine rankings for a specific keyword was largely determined by keyword density. In other words, the page with the most mentions of a keyword usually won, earning a spot on Google’s front page. However, search engines have become more complex over time, and stuffing your content with keywords is now considered a spammy “black-hat” SEO tactic that is much more likely to hurt your online performance than it is to help it. When targeting a search phrase on your site, ensure you’re not adding it into every other sentence or placing it in parts of the content where it wouldn’t make sense to your readership. Instead of focusing on fitting your keywords on your site as much as possible, make it your goal to provide valuable and engaging content that mentions the phrases when relevant. A good rule of thumb is to include a page’s primary keyword(s) no more than 2–3 times per 500 words, and to only do so where it reads naturally. Another tip: if your target keyword is “HVAC contractor Minneapolis,” don’t write, “George’s Heating & Air offers the best HVAC contractor Minneapolis services.” Rather, publish something more like, “… offers the best HVAC contracting services Minneapolis has to offer” (then tell your readers why, of course).
Do: Focus on high-quality content. After determining a list of keywords, it can be tempting to quickly create short and simple pieces of copy to start ranking for those queries. However, this approach doesn’t yield the best results for your contracting business. Instead, focus on crafting helpful and compelling content that leaves online users wanting more. High-quality content boosts your reliability and trustworthiness on search engines, resulting in better positioning and increased online traffic. When targeting keywords in content, think about what searchers are seeking when they submit that particular search and how you can bring the answer to them online. A good way to figure out what Google thinks those searchers are looking for is to conduct that search yourself and see which pages the search engine is ranking. I recommend searching in an incognito window or in your keyword research tool of choice to avoid personalized results as much as possible (Google knows you like your contracting business a lot more than you like the guy’s business down the street, and they might serve you search results accordingly).
Don’t: Target extremely broad, short-tail keywords or narrow, overly precise phrases. Let’s say you’re an electrician in Seattle, Washington. You may be tempted to target “electrician” within your content. However, this short-tail keyword is too broad and has extremely high search volume, resulting in heavy competition [keyword difficulty (KD %) in the screenshot below] and a wide audience that won’t completely align with your intended goals. On the other hand, ultra-narrow long-tail keywords such as “kitchen remodeling contractor specializing in Victorian-style homes in downtown Seattle” are too detailed, yielding little to no search volume and targeting a minimal audience. You have a good chance of ranking for the term the one time someone searches for it every five years, but the benefits don’t warrant the work in this case. Instead, target a mixture of geo-specific keywords or relevant long-tail phrases that have enough search volume to garner the attention your site needs.
2. Utilize local SEO tactics
Local SEO is an essential practice for contractors. It helps your business appear in local search results when someone in close proximity to your service area(s) is looking for a contractor. A typical tactic is to create city (and maybe county or state) pages for each service area your contracting company operates in.
On each of these location pages, we recommend including the following:
- A brief description of the service area
- A section detailing the types of services you offer (sewer & drain cleaning, light installation, home remodeling services, HVAC) with links to your service page for each offering
- Unique selling points that differentiate you from your competition (e.g., experience, 24/7 availability, fast response time, affordability)
- A strong call to Action (CTA), such as “Contact us,” “Call now,” or “Get A Free Quote”
- Your business name, address, and phone number for the office along with copy that illustrates your location to the reader and helps them orient themselves to your proximity to their property
- A link to your office’s Google Business Profile(s) (GBP)
- An embedded Google Map connected to your GBP
- Internal links to the sub-areas nested under the page (e.g., Utah > Utah County > Orem)
Utilize local SEO tactics to outperform nearby competitors and show up as the first search result in your area. These best practices will impact the visibility of both your website and GBP(s).
3. Optimize your Google Business Profile
Another local SEO practice for general contractors and specialized contractors alike is optimizing your Google Business Profile (GBP) and local business listings. Companies with a GBP are 94% more likely to be viewed as reputable, increasing online traffic and search visibility. A well-optimized GBP is the key to beating competition and ranking on the front page of local search results, which is especially necessary for multi-location contracting companies. For instance, here are the search results for the query “roofing contractor salt lake city utah.”
If you’re a roofing contractor offering services in this area, it’s paramount for your online success to show up at the top of this list. That’s where GBP and local business listing optimization come in. It’s essential to leverage search-friendly local business citations (e.g., Bing Places, Apple Maps, Waze, Yelp, and hundreds of others). This makes your contracting company easily discoverable online and proves your legitimacy and authority to search engines and online users.
Here are some of our best SEO recommendations for contractors to follow when optimizing your GBP(s) and local business listings:
Claim and complete your GBP. A completed GBP increases the odds of a searcher purchasing your services by up to 50%. A comprehensive GBP listing with your business name, contracting hours, posts, images, and a description helps potential customers know exactly what you offer and lead them to engage with your company. When creating your GBP, select all relevant business categories and attributes for your contracting business and write an engaging description including keywords and service areas. Consistently add high-quality photos and posts to your GBP, showcasing to online users and search engines that your contracting business is active and reliable.
Respond to positive and negative reviews. Did you know the average consumer reads 10 reviews before trusting a business online? Online users notice when your contracting company responds to positive or negative reviews, and it impacts their decision to trust you. When searchers find that you acknowledge both positive and negative feedback, they’re much more likely to invest in your contracting company, knowing that you care about their experience and satisfaction. Make it a priority to respond positively to your contracting company’s online reviews, mentioning the reviewer’s name and specific circumstance within the reply.
Ensure your business information is accurate and consistent across all local listing citations and related location pages. Every local business listing should include up-to-date hours and the correct phone number, company name, and address (NAP), ensuring your contracting business gains a competitive advantage and builds your online reputation. The information on your business profiles should also match the information you’ve listed on your related city page.
Keep track of your business citations and GBP, consistently monitoring how your online listings can be improved for better accuracy and heightened performance.
4. Write search-friendly, relevant content to drive online traffic
Writing blog posts on relevant topics is a common SEO practice for general contractors, significantly increasing national traffic. Although this tactic doesn’t always boast a high conversion rate compared to other SEO techniques, online articles boost brand awareness, increase your authority in the contracting industry, and help conversion-driving pages (i.e., service pages, location pages, landing pages) achieve a better position on Google. Search engines constantly look for sites that post new, enticing, and helpful content for their users. Suppose you’d like to become known as an expert in your contracting field to both search engines and internet visitors. In that case, it’s time to start writing blog posts that answer common questions and provide valuable information for your target audience.
Here’s my top tip for SEO-optimized content creation for contractors: perform exhaustive keyword research before brainstorming and creating numerous articles. Avoid crafting content that doesn’t actually answer internet searchers’ questions; instead, create a content calendar based on your keyword research findings.
When conducting keyword research, search for queries with an “informational” intent, indicating that searchers want to learn more about a specific topic. Look for highly searched terms that could be explored in-depth within a blog post. If you own a plumbing business, for instance, you may want to research keywords centered on information about common plumbing problems, DIY solutions, insider tips, and general plumbing-related advice.
How can you structure blog posts that engage viewers and rank higher than the competition on the search engine results page? Here are a few insider tips for SEO-focused blogs:
- Include internal links to other blog posts and website pages that have the potential to drive qualified leads.
- Ensure the word count is around 750–1,500 to ensure that you adequately answer the searcher’s question.
- Make your blog post easily readable for online viewers, with a single H1 (main header) and H2, H3, or H4s (subheadings) to follow.
- Naturally target your selected keywords throughout the blog post when relevant.
- Add an FAQ section at the bottom of your article, if applicable, to answer further questions and increase engagement.
- Conclude with a call to action (CTA), encouraging readers to contact your business for services.
Blog posts are an SEO method for contractors who need to increase online engagement, build authority, and improve your site’s overall search engine rankings (i.e., pretty much all of you). Craft content surrounding industry-related topics for heightened performance online!
5. Build backlinks to niche-related websites
Acquiring backlinks (links from other websites to your site) is a signature SEO strategy that showcases to search engines that your contracting business’ online presence is trustworthy, increasing your positioning over time. The primary goal of link building is to curate a high-quality backlink profile of various sites across the web, proving your industry authority and relevancy to Google. Earn backlinks on niche-related websites (e.g., home improvement, construction, residential remodeling) to gain domain authority.
Backlinking and blog posts work together seamlessly. If your website has high-quality, knowledgeable, contractor-related content, it should naturally attract backlinks. You can also earn backlinks by building connections within your contractor industry and creating mutual partnerships that turn into backlinks. Another method is to search for broken links across the web and, once you’ve found one, notify the site of the broken link and offer one of your pages as a replacement. Tools like Ahrefs, Semrush, and Moz are invaluable for backlink research. They allow you to analyze your current backlinks, identify new opportunities, and even track your competitors’ link-building strategies. As you implement link-building, ensure the content that links to your site is genuinely helpful in answering online search queries, avoiding spammy articles that aren’t seen as reliable in the eyes of Google.
6. Measure the technical performance of your site
Search engines pay attention to online user behavior, so high bounce rates (the percentage of visitors who leave a webpage without engaging) and slow loading times can lead to a lower ranking position. Although it’s been a topic of controversy whether bounce rates and loading times affect your ranking, a recent Google API leak proved a long-held belief my many SEOs that user engagement metrics, including bounce rates and loading times, do play a role in search rankings. This means creating a fast, engaging, and user-friendly website is more important than ever to improve your SEO performance. Use tools like Google’s Lighthouse or GTmetrix to analyze your site’s performance and identify areas for improvement.
So, how can you create a better online user experience?
- Optimize your page speed: Consistently track your site’s performance, measuring loading times for displays and pages. Users abandon webpages that take too long to load, hurting your search ranking in the long run. Use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights to identify where you can improve and give online users a positive experience.
- Compress images: Many contractors have numerous high-resolution photos on their sites. While these pictures look good, they can lead to slow loading times and frustrated online visitors. To reduce an image’s file size, use an editing application like Photoshop, TinyPNG, or JPEG Optimizer. Convert the picture into a format that supports compression, such as JPEG or PNG.
- Minimize cumulative layout shift (CLS): CLS is a measure of the visual stability of a site page, tracking how many elements on the page shift around while it’s loading. For example, have you ever clicked on a button but by time you clicked it the button is on a different part of the page (and you didn’t actually click it like you thought you had)? Higher CLS scores lead to poor user experience, so it’s best to avoid them. Minimizing CLS ensures that content remains stable as the page loads, providing a positive user experience. This practice also aligns with Google’s core web vitals, which are indicators that impact search rankings.
Focusing on user experience is an essential technical SEO practice for general contractors. It boosts online performance in search results, resulting in more qualified leads and clicks. Rock Salt’s favorite tools for improving site performance are WP Rocket, Imagify, and Cloudflare’s content delivery network (CDN) and website performance features.
Is it Worth it to Hire SEO Pros for Contractors?
SEO is a highly time-consuming process that often requires experience, expert strategy, tracking, and consistent pivoting to ensure results. Therefore, it’s generally best to outsource and hire an SEO agency for your contracting business. SEO professionals have the time, experience, and knowledge to ensure your contracting business’ website reaches peak performance online.
If you’re looking for experienced SEO specialists, Rock Salt Marketing Cooperative is here to partner with you. Our Utah-based team is recognized for our top-notch marketing services, including SEO optimization, PPC advertising, and modern web design. Our comprehensive search engine optimization strategies have paved the way for numerous companies to succeed online and generate high-quality leads, whether they own a small business, a multi-location franchise, or a behemoth Fortune 500 enterprise. Rock Salt’s personalized SEO services for contractors include in-depth keyword research, search-friendly content creation, expert business profile creation and management, performance tracking, and more. Save time, money, and energy by partnering with Rock Salt’s team and experience how our SEO tactics can help your contracting business grow in search visibility and attract high-quality leads. Contact us to learn more about what we can do for you!
