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Attracting local customers is the lifeblood of many general contractor businesses. However, high competition levels and evolving market conditions mean that reaching potential clients requires more than just professional skills and training.
These days, most consumers find contractors and services through online search engines. Whether comparing deals, researching customer reviews, or discovering a new contractor, people turn to Google and other search engines to connect them with professionals. Now more than ever, it’s crucial that your company and business information is easily discoverable online.
That’s where local search engine optimization (SEO) comes into play.
In this article, LinkNow’s SEO experts discuss the importance of local SEO for contractors. In simple terms, we explain how you can improve your findability on search engines and highlight strategies for maximizing your online presence and connecting with customers in need of a general contractor.
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When someone searches for “general contractor near me” or “remodeling services in [your city name]”, you want to be the first website that pops up on their search. But this doesn’t just happen randomly.
Being on the top pages for Google searches is the result of local SEO, a process of strategizing and establishing authority on the Internet through backlinks, citations, and high-quality written content.
Optimizing for local SEO involves targeting customers in a clearly defined geographical area. It’s about connecting with people in your immediate area and relies on Google Business Profile, local citations, and positive reviews.
Unlike other forms of SEO such as on-page, technical, and off-page, local SEO focuses on targeting customers within a defined region. Other types of SEO help your general contracting business rank well for searches nationwide, but local brings attention to your website from clients in your city, county, and general area.
Local SEO involves strategies like filling out a Google Business Profile, building local citations, generating reviews, and using location-specific keywords to make your business more prominent in local search results. Local SEO also involves shaping content differently because local searchers are looking to your website for transactions rather than to gather information.
Local SEO is distinct from broader SEO strategies that target a national or international audience, primarily due to its focus on local search factors, geographic-specific content, and local customer engagement.
Now that we’ve established what local SEO is, we can explore why it matters for general contractors and builders.
Whether you’re a well-established contractor or a new professional looking to break into the industry, SEO can help increase your online visibility and connect you with new clients. When you optimize your website and tailor your online presence to be found through keywords and location-based search terms, you’ll appear prominently when members of your community search for “contractors near me”.
The aim of local SEO is to show up in Google’s local results when someone searches for your service near them.
Effective local SEO offers the following benefits for general contractors:
Having your website and digital content optimized locally helps you appear at the top of search results when clients in need look for your services in their area. If you’re in the top few results when someone searches for “general contractor near me” or “local general contractors”, they’ll likely click on your website.
When someone searches for a contractor online, they do so because they need help or have a project in mind. Appearing in those local searches means you’re reaching potential customers who are more likely to convert into actual clients. Targeting specific local keywords increases the likelihood of receiving serious inquiries rather than people browsing for general info.
Your credibility is massively improved when you’re visible or easily discoverable in local search results. Think about it in plain terms: if a stranger wants to hire a professional, reputable contractor and your website is nowhere to be found when they search for those criteria, why would they think you’re professional or reputable?
Clients will trust you and think of your business more highly when you’re easily located in a relevant Google search.
Optimizing your local SEO means you’re accurately displaying your business information, most importantly, name, address, and phone number (NAP). Clients will have an easier time contacting you, accessing your business hours, and understanding your areas of expertise.
Some paid online advertising methods require you to pay for each and every click on your website’s URL. By contrast, local SEO is relatively low-cost but can yield significant returns, offering minimal downside for general contractors looking to reduce company overheads while building revenue.
As a busy general contractor, you may like the sound of local SEO but are worried you don’t have enough time to do it properly. Luckily, there are a few simple steps that any business owner with a computer and some spare time can follow to start improving local SEO.
Before we cover some of the ways to implement a local SEO strategy, if you’re really pressed for time and want to start generating more passive local leads, we’d encourage you to hire a professional SEO expert. Here at LinkNow, we help hundreds of general contractors optimize their local listings and generate qualified leads.
If you’re already thinking that this local SEO business is too much, you can take the shortcut and simply schedule a call with one of our reps, who’ll explain everything we can do to boost your local profile.
First things first: the simplest thing you can do to get your local SEO off the ground is create a personalized Google Business Profile.
Claiming your free Google Business Profile (GBP) is the first step to establishing an optimized online presence. This profile helps clients find you on Google Search and Maps, showcases your business expertise, and ensures your business information is accurately displayed.
The most essential step to local SEO is setting up your free Google Business Profile.
Follow these steps to set up your GBP:
Once you’ve filled out your profile and have committed to regularly updating it with news, photos, and special offers, you should also encourage satisfied customers to leave positive reviews. Good reviews influence prospective clients and demonstrate your trustworthiness while heightening your visibility on Google.
Your GBP is the bread and butter of your local SEO strategy. When you accurately display your business information, highlight your specialties, and showcase your positive reputation, you’re more likely to be found by new customers and viewed as a contractor worth hiring.
Having an optimized, verified, and regularly updated GBP:
An optimized GBP can significantly enhance your online presence and overall business performance. Lacking a GBP can harm your business’s credibility and growth.
As a general contractor, you’re not expected to be a marketing wizard—you’re already an expert in your craft. At LinkNow, our craft is SEO, and we’re proud to support small businesses in their digital marketing ventures.
Here’s a breakdown of some of the best strategies for optimizing local SEO and marketing in addition to creating your Google Business Profile that we’ve honed over the years to help our clients rank on Google’s first page.
There’s no one-size-fits-all approach that works, but generally speaking, local SEO is bolstered through the following:
When your web page has high-quality, accurate content on your areas of expertise, you signal your trustworthiness to potential clients and search engines. This should include a blog to discuss construction or home improvement topics and individual pages for each of your services.
When your content addresses common customer queries and uses keywords that locate you in a specific city or region, your local SEO and findability skyrocket.
Local SEO means targeting keywords that specify your marketing areas, such as:
Local customer queries you might be able to answer in your content might include:
Optimized keywords should also be naturally incorporated into your page descriptions and titles and fit with your content organically.
Another essential step toward improving local SEO is making your website mobile-friendly. Many local searches are performed on phones and mobile devices, so if your site isn’t mobile-optimized, you can unintentionally deter potential clients.
Creating a mobile-friendly website may seem daunting, but you can take a few simple steps to promote a streamlined user experience. Mobile website optimization is all about making it as easy as possible for visitors and prospective clients to find the information they need.
At a minimum, we recommend the following:
Building backlinks and local citations is another effective strategy for improving your website’s searchability and local SEO. This is very technical work, but it’s highly effective at establishing authority and trustworthiness, which significantly impact how search engines analyze and rank your website.
Like online citations, backlinks are another way to demonstrate your authority and trustworthiness to search engines and customers. Sometimes referred to as “inbound links”, backlinks are links from another website back to yours.
Backlinks are extremely valuable in the context of local SEO because they’re precisely targeted and usually result in increased traffic. For example, if you’re a contractor in Detroit and a high-ranking article about the “5 Best General Contractors in Detroit” links to your web page, this will carry significant weight in establishing your authority in the eyes of search engines and customers.
Local backlinks signal your business’s relevance and authority to search engines within its local community. Establishing these backlinks can significantly improve your company’s visibility and ranking in local search results.
Securing backlinks takes time and effort, which is why we often do this part of local SEO for our clients through our backlink packages and strategies.
A local citation is any complete or partial mention of your business details and NAP online. Citations occur on local business directories, websites, apps, and social media platforms.
Essentially, when your information shows up on any platform where someone might be looking for information about local general contractors, that counts as a citation.
Common examples include:
Citations help search engines verify the existence, legitimacy, and authority of local businesses. They provide essential business information that helps customers find and connect with professionals and act as proof that your business is real and high-quality.
You can think of citations as a kind of virtual word-of-mouth. Before the proliferation of digital marketing strategies, it was common for businesses to find new clients through recommendations of previous clients and professional collaborators.
With numerous business directories and services designed to match businesses with clients in need, sites like Yelp and Angi have, by and large, replaced word-of-mouth references.
Many of these websites allow you to list your business for free, but keeping track of them all and ensuring your NAP is consistent can be challenging. Nevertheless, it’s an integral part of local online visibility.
Here at LinkNow, we’ve partnered with Yext, an industry-leading citation management tool, to streamline our client’s citations, audit them for inaccuracies, and seek out opportunities for new listings.
Our partnership means we’re able to offer a fully hands-off citation management service, enabling our clients to have us do all the work for a lower cost than signing up for the tool themselves.
As a general contractor, embracing SEO may seem overwhelming, but it’s ultimately an opportunity to connect with local clients and grow your business in your community.
When you optimize for local searches, you won’t receive random requests from clients halfway across the country—you’ll be paired with customers who need your special skills within your targeted marketing area.
By posting high-quality photos on social media and actively engaging with clients online, you can improve your reputation and community connections. Optimizing your website and marketing is important, but there are other ways to bolster your digital presence and strategize.
Some additional steps you can take to connect with your local community online include the following:
If you’re still unsure about the advantages of local SEO or need marketing pros to manage your website and digital presence, feel free to connect with our team for more information.
We’re passionate about our work and have a long history of helping small businesses like yours reach their full potential. We help our clients measure their progress and avoid common SEO pitfalls while maximizing their marketing.
Take advantage of a free call with a LinkNow rep to find out more about how you can maximize your local reach.