How to Improve SEO for Construction Contractors
Edited 5/5/2025 updated my section on backlinks, go straight there!
Search engine optimization (SEO) is all about doing multiple things correctly and continuously striving to improve the user experience. Long gone are the days of simply existing long enough to rank higher, and keyword stuffing. Nowadays, a successful SEO strategy incorporates onsite and offsite activities that all work towards providing a great experience for the search engine and website user. I like to think of SEO as a road map. First, you need to structure your destination points clearly and concisely so Google knows where they are and has a better chance of finding you. Then, you need to clearly and concisely describe those destinations so Google knows what to do with the information you are presenting. This article details how construction contractors can improve their SEO by creating a better road map. We’ll break this down into two categories: onsite and offsite SEO.
Onsite SEO
Onsite SEO is going to refer to every activity that takes place on your website. To begin, I like to look at user experience. That term gets thrown around quite a bit, but in general let’s define user experience as: how easy it is for your site visitor to take a desired action. For construction contractors and home service professionals our desired action is going to be phone calls, and form submissions. When I say “ease” I am not talking about simply placing one giant “Get a Quote” button at the top of the page. Otherwise my job would be obsolete. Ease in this case refers to providing relevant information in styles and places that a site visitor is influenced to take a desired action on your website. Potential customers are shopping around so your content needs to be a mixture of visually appealing, informative and easy to navigate. The first step in creating this ‘ease’ in navigation is by creating well thought out page structures.
How you structure your page matters. Every word, every image, every section should have a purpose. It also should be concise and communicate the essential details without filler. For example, when structuring a homepage. I like to stick to this format:
Heading 1: Business Name + services provided + location + Crediblity
Example: Bob’s Plumbing: Providing Residential and Commercial Plumbing to Grand Junction.
Let’s break it down: Use this first heading on your homepage to clearly and concisely list your name and what you do. Then add where you provide those services. This helps Google know right away what you do and where you do it.
Next, you want to add a brief description of your business. This can include when you got started or outline a little bit more about your services.
Finally, why should they choose you? Answer this by providing credible information: ie years of experience, or boasting about 5 star reviews works great here.
This should be followed by a call to action (CTA) to get a quote/contact or view services which should link to a contact form or services page.
Our goal here is to explain what you do, and where you do it, and then show your credibility.
With this structure in place, you then want to provide more detailed information as you move down the page. Next, breakdown your services. The key here is to take a mixed content approach. Don’t just write paragraphs, but use images, maybe an infographic to breakdown complex services or a short video will do the trick. Then, you want to continue to add your credibility. This doesn’t have to be solely in the form of reviews, but showing high quality images of your work, if you have a customer testimonial video that’s huge, professional trade associations, any awards or recognitions. In this section, we’ll add another element: your unique value proposition: What makes you special and why should your site visitor book you for a job?
Your value proposition can be a number of things: You're licensed and insured, you do free estimates, you have a warranty, you offer discounts, you have tons of experience, you’ve worked on high value or massive projects, etc. This is where you further sell your services in a way that compels your site visitors to take a desired action.
To summarize, Your onsite SEO is going to be a combination of components that explain your business, your services, your location and your credibility. To do that, information needs to be organized in a clear and concise matter that looks appealing to people across various device types. This is just skimming the top of the surface of onsite SEO. What I did not cover was the technical SEO aspects like page speeds, title tags, alt tags, etc. I plan on giving technical SEO it’s own article as this one is already shaping out to be a long one.
Offsite SEO
Local Listings
Offsite SEO operates as another means to achieve the objectives that we laid out earlier: Introduce your business, your services, location and build your credibility. One of the most effective places to do that for contractors and home service professionals is through local listings. I have written a separate article about local listings so this section will provide a brief overview of them. Local listings serve as your search engine directory. Meaning, they show up in the search engine results and list important business information, photos, and reviews on various websites.
One of the most effective listings you can have is a Google My Business profile. This will typically be your first appearance in search and acts as your ‘virtual store front’. This is what people will see when they search for long tail keywords like “painters near me” “painters in Denver” “Front Range Painters” etc. Like a storefront, you want it to look flawless, you want it to attract people. Hell, you want it to look so good that a searcher picks up the phone and calls you without going to your website.
The way to make your Google My Business look flawless is by posting business updates (at least twice per week) having a good mix of owner photos and customer photos, managing and responding to reviews (the good and the bad), having a steady stream of reviews that trickle down rather than flood your profile (i.e. Google thinks it looks like spam when your company goes from 1 review to 50 overnight), and finally answering questions and having a concise business description.
For listings to be effective, that means you have to spend equal amounts of time on each listing site that you have. For example, Houzz, Thumbtack and Nextdoor are common for contractors so those profiles need to be spruced up as well just like Google.
How to build a local backlink strategy
A backlink is a hyperlink on another website that connects back to yours. I look at websites as a road network that connects everything together in a clear and concise way. Backlinks are important for every website, but chasing random links or paying for low quality links will make your roadmap less credible to search engines like Google, and your SEO performance will suffer because of it.
Things to avoid when building backlinks.
Have you ever recieved a weird email from someone selling backlinks? Here’s what that looks like:
What ever you do, don’t give your information to these!
It’s probably just spam, so of course don’t respond. To play devil’s advocate, let’s give the sender the benefit of the doubt (It could be real). The main reason, you don’t want to buy backlinks at random is because random links to your website don’t matter!
One good backlink is equal to 1,000 crappy backlinks.
Search engines don’t treat backlinks as equals. If you are linking to spammy websites, then Google won’t like that. Google doesn’t necessarily punish websites for having bad backlinks, unless they are really spammy, but you won’t get any credit for having them so paying for bad links equals lighting your money on fire.
Can you pay for a good backlink? Yes
When it comes to link building, you can pay for valid backlinks. I’ll give you some examples of what those are. A good backlink for your business is going to be one with high local authority. Yes, striking gold as a contractor or home service pro would be getting a website like HGTV to link back to your content (i.e. a blog post). Let’s face it, that’s not happening soon as a new business or as a business that is new to digital marketing. Even with good marketing, it’s going to take you time and a large budget to get that kind of exposure. When you make content, it’s important to focus on what’s valuable for your audience and not trend chasing.
These are good backlinks to buy, and they do more for you than just serve as backlinks!
Join your local chamber of commerce. When you are new, you need to link with highly credible local organizations that carry weight in your community. For example, I am a member of the Grand Junction Chamber of Commerce which means my website is listed in their local business directory. By doing this, I am boosting my local SEO by associating with a high authority local business organization that is supported by other local business leaders. This also has the effect of building audience trust. I paid around $400 for my annual membership, and I also get to go to their networking events, so I’m not just getting the link, but getting the opportunity to meet with other small business owners.
Better Business Bureau: This serves as a value listing for any business and as a nationally recognized organization there is immense SEO value in joining. Typically you have to be in business for about 6 months to join.
If there are local trade organizations, those are good to join as well.
The key here is that you want to establish strong, credible networks that mean something to your local customers.
Let’s put it this way, who do you think is going to provide a better boost to your local search position: your local Young Professionals Network or linkfinder.net?
Organic Link Building Strategies
I want to avoid using the word ‘free’ as you can do this on your own, but your time is valuable and I definitely put a price on that. In general, providing rich blog content, or video content is a way to attract backlinks to your website. One of the best ways to attract local backlinks, in a cost effective way is to do guest blog posts on businesses that you partner with. For example, I started working with DLC Video Production and Strategy out of Montrose. Drew, the owner works on video projects for me and as a trade I’m doing blog posts and SEO on his site. That way, we are creating strong local links back and forth. I also work with DeRush Media who does real estate and commercial photography. As part of my partnership, I also published an article on the benefits of professional photography for construction contractors. As a marketing person, I’m making useful industry connections with creative professionals, thus expanding my roadmap by connecting my services with other local pros.
Here’s what that might look like for a construciton or home service pro:
If you’re a handyman, do you ever work with local realtors? For example, are you their ‘call person’ to fix things found in a home inspection? If so, work with getting featured on that realtors website, or even better their agency’s site! By nature, realtors are networkers, so if you are connected with them, their local brand recognition can exponentially power your local search credibility.
Are you an electrician who works with a major home builder? Imagine, you subcontract to FCI or Shaw Construction and they feature you as a vendor on their website! That’s a massive connection as they have strong credibility built over years and thousands of dollars!
How to tell if a backlink sucks
There are of course the telltale signs of a bad backlink, but if you want to explore deeper, there are digital tools that will help you identify those. This article explains some of those being Semrush and Ahrefs. For my website and my clients, I use the SEOSpace Backlink Analysis tool on their agency plan, which gives a spam score. The closer to 100%, the more spammy. Sometimes you don’t always have control over who links to your site, but if you are going to consider buying backlinks or going with an SEO professional who is helping you obtain backlinks, make sure they are measuring spam indicators and domain authorities. Remember 1 good backlink is gold, and 10,000 bad backlinks is playdough!
Backlink Strategy Summary:
Don’t worry about quantity of backlinks and trying to chase buzzwords so a major player links to your site. Instead, use your network. If you are going to pay for any backlinks, look at your local chamber of commerce or the Better Business Bureau. If you subcontract, especially with major players in your area like builders or realtors, create a collaboration so you can accrue SEO value through a strong partnership. Finally, tools can help you analyze if a backlink is of low quality, but you’ll also know that from your gut feeling. Ask yourself, does this give me local credibility? If the answer is no, then you know that’s a poor quality backlink.
Article Summary
Improving SEO does not have to be a daunting task for contractors. The main focus should be on the ease and value of the information being provided on and off your website. Without getting into the technical aspects of SEO, let’s remember to keep it simple by structuring your website to provide information on who you are, what you do, where you do it, and why you are credible. With answering those questions in mind, you can create different visuals to answer those questions. Offsite, you need to answer those questions on a variety of listings like Google My Business, Thumbtack, Houzz and Nextdoor. Furthermore, working on building valuable backlinks by getting your content featured on other credible websites works to solidify your credibility. Stay tuned for a future article on technical SEO, but for now, work on keeping it simple, because simple is what people find useful and after all that is who we are trying to attract at the end of the day.
This article was written by Shane Doudy | Owner Odyssey Marketing Group | Providing the best SEO services this side of the Mississippi
