SEO For Building Contractors
SEO for builders or building contractors is when a builder applies search engine optimization to their businesses website, with the goal of improving their online position for relevant keywords to the services that they provide.
What is SEO for builders?
One of the main things building contractors can do to improve their SEO is upgrading the content on their website to give their customers a better understanding of what their business does, the services they provide and so on. Upgrading the content also helps search engines understand in more detail what the builder does in more detail, and help improve their position in the SERP accordingly.
Also important for the SEO is having good backlinks done so the building contractor increases their level of online authority. When doing backlinks, it’s imperative that only high quality, relevant and legitimate backlinks to their website are done.
As a builder, some of the first links that you could have done would include local business directories, under the building and home renovation sections. These do not provide that much ‘’link juice’’, but it does help Google and other search engines show that the business is linked into the local business community well.
Other great backlink opportunities for a builder would be ones from training schools and other places that provide education for the industry. A building contractor that provides work experience opportunities or apprenticeships to students of a TAFE or other education body can ask them if they are able to provide a link back to the building contractors website from theirs. University and .edu websites can provide very high quality backlinks, which can set a local builder apart from their competitors, as it shows that even the schools give this particular building contractor authority on the subject of building and renovations.
Why is SEO important for builders?
It is a well known fact that The best source of new customers for building contractors is by far referrals from happy customers. The existing happy customer that is referring their friends and family (or business associates) to your building business is literally doing all of the work when in comes to selling your services. Now, what is the next best source of customers? That’s an easy one, SEO.
SEO places your building services in front of potential clients who are actively seeking your services. With advertising on the other hand, people are being bombarded with adverts for your business, when they are busy searching online for other things. This is one of the reasons that SEO for builders is extremely important if they want to maintain a healthy customer base.
Building is also quite a competitive industry in local towns and cities across Australia. With a builder having both individuals and businesses as customers, the industry can be quite profitable. For example, if a residential customer requires some building or renovation work done on their home and they are very happy with the customer service and quality of work, and it so happens that they own a property development business that requires an ongoing and reliable builder, then they will more than likely use them for their business as well. Also, its well known that customers will refer a building contractor to their friends and family if they are happy with their work, as people generally take quality of work and customer service very seriously in this field. It’s for these reasons that it is extremely important that builders have their website ranking well in the SERP by using SEO.
The Stages of SEO Done For Building Contractors
Doing SEO for a builder can be quite complex and difficult, however we have broken it down into 4 main steps. They are as follows:
Website Audit
Before any SEO work can be done, an audit of the building contractors website needs to be done. This audit consists of:
Technical audit: The technical audit will consist of having the website put through a tool such as Ahrefs or Semrush, and having technical factors analysed such as H tags, redirects, indexability, link profile and so on to see if there are any technical issues that need to be fixed that will hinder SEO efforts.
On Page Audit: The on page audit consists of analysing the actual content of the website to see if there is enough content to satisfy readers and search engines, analysing the meta descriptions to see if they are attracting potential building customers, title tags, images and more. Basically, the on page audit relates to the parts of the website that potential customers can see.
Determining whether as a building contractor you are targeting a local or national demographic
Before keywords can be selected for the SEO plan for the builder, it first needs to be determined who it is that will be targeted by businesses SEO. For example, if the builder is in a small town like Ballarat VIC, and only services customers in that area, then we know for the next step of planning that the keywords need to include ‘’Ballarat’’ in them. However, if the builder services the entire country, then the following step is a lot more complex, as there could be many hundreds of keywords used to reach the target demographic.
Choosing appropriate keywords for your building contractors website’s SEO plan
Knowing the target demographic, it’s extremely important that the correct keywords are selected for the builders SEO plan. As mentioned before, if the business is servicing a local town such as Ballarat, then the keyword selection can be quite simple.
However if there are multiple service areas, such as cities like Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and so on, then multiple landing pages would need to be created, and relevant keywords would be grouped together to be on the same page. This is done so that each landing page can target a certain area, along with smaller suburbs within that area.
For a builder that services multiple capital cities, this is very important as they would want to capture as much organic search traffic as possible, to bring in as many new customers as they can. Below is an example of keywords that would be grouped together on a landing page. For this example, the builder has an office in Sydney, and therefore a landing page has been made for the Sydney office:
Main Keywords: These are the short tail keywords that are the most broad and relate to the term builder and the main city, Sydney.
“Builder Sydney”
“Sydney Builder”
Secondary Keywords: These keywords relate to the main city Sydney, builder, and also sub services that the business provides.
“New Home Building Sydney”
“Build New Outdoor Decking Sydney”
“Add New Bedroom To Home Sydney”
Auxiliary Keywords: These keywords relate to smaller suburbs within the main city Sydney that people also search for, that the builder services.
“Builder North Sydney”
“Builder Barangaroo”
“Builder Surry Hills”
“Builder Darlinghurst”
By incorporating all of the relevant keywords into the content of the landing page, the building contractor is essentially telling Google that when people search for a builder in all of the areas listed, that it is a good idea to serve the building contractors businesses website in the search results.
Listing your building contractor website on Google My Business
It is very important that all businesses, especially builders, list their business on Google My Business. This essentially means that when a person searched for a builder in any given city, the business will be displayed on the map section of the search results. This section of the search results is the first thing people see when searching on Google for a builder, so if a business can be listen here, they can get a very large amount of traffic. Being listed correctly in GMB, a builder can also be found on Google Maps when searching an area for a building contractor. Also, the builders reviews are displayed underneath the business name, so potential customers can see instantly if they have good reviews or not.
What other industries does Extension Group help businesses in Australia with?
Extension Group provide SEO for Australian businesses in virtually all industries. If you have a website and your competitors are ranking higher than you in the SERP, then we can help. Some of the industries that we commonly work with though include (but are not limited to):
Accountants
Builders
Child Care Centres
Restaurants
Ready to take the next step?
Contact Extension Group to have an obligation free analysis of your website, and start the journey to more customers and more sales!
How To Get Started on SEO with Extension Group
We have a simple 4 step process which we go through with our customers to get set up to help with their SEO. First, we will have a quick 5 to 10 minute chat about your business and what you are looking to achieve with SEO. Then, we will work out a strategy to be able to achieve these results for your business. From there, depending on the product that you have chosen with us, we will assist with the following steps whether it be build you a new website or update your existing one, and then finally once you are making money from your SEO, you can decide whether or not you want to stay with us.
For more information, click here to view how our process works.
Our SEO Locations
Canberra
Wollongong