You’ve probably heard of SEO, but do you know what it is?
SEO for remodelers can help direct more traffic to your website and turn potential clients into qualified leads. It’s a fantastic tool, but one that might be hard to implement if you’re unfamiliar with it.
As a remodeling business owner, you’re busy trying to source affordable materials, manage your job schedule, contact subcontractors for electric and plumbing jobs, and manage your company finances and reports. Even if you did learn everything you needed to know about SEO, when would you be able to implement any of your content strategies?
You should hire a home remodeler SEO company to manage your content. They have the tools and experience to help you start ranking higher in Google searches so you get more potential customers to visit your site.
But what does it really take to manage your SEO?
Understanding SEO
SEO stands for “search engine optimization” and describes the content on your site that helps your company rank higher in Google’s search results for certain keywords. By bolstering your online presence and ranking for keywords related to your industry, potential customers can find you more easily.
So how does SEO work to increase your site’s visibility? Search engines use bits of code called “web crawlers” to roam through the data on web pages and index the content with a score based on keyword relevance for each page. The crawlers use keyword syntax between the page’s metadata and the words and widgets on the page to determine if the page is really about the keyword you chose for that page.
This means that not only does the text on the page need to be relevant to the keyword you’ve chosen, but also alt text on any images, internal and external links (and the content in those links), and your XML sitemap. Although an XML sitemap isn’t necessary for your site to function, it’s a critical tool for SEO to help a crawler bot navigate your website more easily and index it faster.
Search engines will assign a score to a website that describes its domain authority (DA). DA describes how much authority a website has in a certain industry or subject area. A higher DA score means that your site will rank higher for keywords where a search engine has determined your site is an authority on the topic.
Several factors come together to help your site rank higher naturally with a strong SEO strategy. A good SEO strategy includes appropriate keyword research, keyword implementation, on-page optimization, link building, local SEO, and tracking and analysis. You not only want to rank highly for certain keywords, but you also want to rank highly in your service area and keep up with SEO trends.
Benefits of SEO for Remodeling Companies
While you can improve your search engine optimization yourself, you’re probably better off hiring an agency that specializes in SEO for remodelers. Some of the advantages of using an SEO company for your remodeling business website include:
- Reaching more potential customers with relevant search terms
- Reaching local customers within your service area
- Targeting certain neighborhoods and developments for remodeling services
- Helping you outperform competitors in your market
- Directing more site visitors to schedule an appointment for a quote
With the right SEO strategy, you can boost brand awareness and establish credibility.
Keyword Research
SEO begins with keyword research. SEO for remodelers needs to focus on specific keywords related to remodeling and the services you offer. It also needs to focus on location-based keywords, like the cities you serve, as well as larger home developments in the area with higher-income residents.
Your home remodeler SEO company can use keyword analytics software to test different keywords and determine how popular they are among local customers. Your agency can also determine if there’s a lot of competition for certain keywords in your area.
For example, every remodeling company in your area probably wants to target “home remodeler in (city),” but that doesn’t mean you should avoid using this term. Instead, you need to utilize a functional mix of keywords on your pages to include both common and uncommon search words and phrases.
One thing you can do to start researching keywords on your own is to look at Google’s Keyword Planner in your Google Ads account. You can also find relevant search terms in the “People Also Ask” drop-down section on Google, as well as in public question forums like Reddit, Quora, and Houzz.
Most agencies offering SEO for remodelers and contractors use SEMRush or similar subscription software to perform keyword analytics for their clients. Once your agency identifies the top keywords for your business, their SEO professionals can design a plan to incorporate those terms on the appropriate pages of your site to draw more business to your company.
Implementing keyword research into your site includes:
- Creating relevant blog posts to answer questions about specific topics, like “how to choose a custom home remodeler” or “cost of a kitchen remodel in (city)”
- Updating service pages to focus on keywords tied to each service, including roofing, interior design, kitchen remodeling, or converting a patio into a sunroom
- Updating metadata, image names, and alt tags with descriptions that include the appropriate keywords for the page
- Ensuring page links don’t cannibalize keywords
On-Page Optimization
On-page SEO has to do with the content on your page, as well as ensuring that site visitors and web crawlers alike can easily understand the content on the page. Good on-page optimization includes:
- Writing high-quality content that is original, written by a human, and doesn’t steal or duplicate content from other pages or your own site
- Publishing new, original content consistently and often
- Using readable URL structures in your site navigation
- Creating relevant meta descriptions for Google and other browsers to describe the content a user will find on the page
- Optimizing H1, H2, and H3 headings with your keywords
- Updating image names and alt tags with the keywords you’re targeting on each page
- Using internal and external linking to increase the page’s domain authority on the topic
- Choosing the appropriate keywords for the page topic and knowing when and where to use them on the page
- Developing a welcoming user experience (UX) that answers user questions quickly and directs them toward a call to action without being pushy
Link Building
Link building is an important aspect of off-page SEO. It refers to building a network of backlinks to your site from pages not registered under your site’s domain. This strategy can be difficult to implement on your own if you’re trying to manage your own SEO strategy. However, your SEO marketing agency likely has a network of third-party sites where they can get backlinks to your pages.
Some of the most popular methods to build backlinks include:
- Asking for links from third-party sites
- Adding links on forums or social media profiles
- “Earning” links by producing high-quality content that demonstrates expertise on a topic
Google and other search engines will use backlinks to determine if your page should rank as an authority on the topic described by your keywords. So if you’re a kitchen remodeler in Texas and one of the top news outlets in the area publishes an article about a free kitchen renovation you did for a family that suffered flood damage to their home, any pages linked in the article would have a high authority score.
That would be an earned link. Another strategy is to ask for links on third-party sites and provide a link to a blog post, ebook, infographic, or case study. This can be a difficult strategy to pursue, as you don’t know how highly Google ranks content from third-party sites.
Finally, you can add links to your content on your own. This is the simplest method; however, Google doesn’t rate this method of backlinking very highly. Still, you can get more visibility for your site by adding links to your content on social media, business pages, forums, blog comment sections, and other online platforms.
There are many other off-page SEO strategies to consider, such as:
- Your social media platforms
- Allowing guest-posting on your blog from a relevant source
- Submitting press releases to other sites and digital news platforms
- Creating a popular infographic or image
Local SEO
Local SEO includes the strategies you use to attract local traffic from your service area to visit your site from their search results page. There are some strategies you need to consider for your local search results ranking, including:
- Local keyword targeting: Developing content for a wide variety of pages can be a major undertaking if you’re targeting the right location keywords. You don’t want to just target “residential painter,” but also “residential painter in (city),” “residential painter in (development 1),” and “residential painter in (development 2).”
- NAP citations: NAP stands for “Name, Address, and Phone Number.” Google crawls all of your business profiles, including your Google My Business page, your website, your Facebook, Twitter, and even your Chamber of Commerce profile. If there are any discrepancies, such as North Main St. vs. N Main Street, Google will rank your site lower in the search results.
- Google My Business: Now called “Google Business Profile,” this business listing tool from Google allows you to manage your Google Ads campaigns, update your NAPs, add photos, update current offers, add posts, and more. You can also respond to customer reviews on the Google platform, whether they’re five stars or one star.
The main thing to remember when using location keywords is that you can use the same keywords and switch the city or development for service pages, but you need to incorporate variations for blog posts. You don’t want to write a blog titled “How much does a kitchen renovation cost in (city 1)?” and then post “How much does a kitchen renovation cost in (city 2)?” only a week later.
Instead, you need to have content with similar keywords that won’t cannibalize each other. So your second article title could be “Ways to save on a (city 2) kitchen renovation.” Google doesn’t search for keywords in the exact same order, so a person could type “cost of a kitchen renovation near me” into Google, and either article could appear in their search results.
Tracking and Analysis
If you’re going to spend money on SEO services for your remodeling company, how do you know if it’s effective? Can you see the return on investment (ROI) in quantifiable numbers? To calculate your ROI, you’ll need to implement tracking strategies to see where your new leads found you, such as:
- Call tracking
- Brand mentions on social media, review sites, videos, and other media platforms
- Keyword research to see your keyword rankings
- Tracking user behavior on your site (length of time on a page, bounce rate, clicks, etc.)
- Determining conversion rate from your site
When you’ve gathered your raw data, you can analyze certain trends to determine if your SEO strategy is effective. For example, if your bounce rate (how often a visitor clicks away from a site after viewing a single page) is higher than average on a blog post titled “Affordable tile backsplash tips to stay under budget on a kitchen renovation,” you can review the content to determine the issue.
What you could find is that the content is irrelevant to the question posed in the title. Maybe the article describes other backsplash options besides tile or describes expensive designer tile brands instead. You could revise the title, images, and metadata to match the article, or rewrite the article to answer the question.
Tracking customer feedback on your site can help you determine the successful aspects of your strategy, as well as help you target less successful factors for improvement.
Conclusion
Your website and other platforms tied to your business operations can help you gain new potential clients by targeting the appropriate keywords, producing high-quality content that is relevant to your prospective customers, and building your brand’s online presence by ranking higher on search engine results pages. However, SEO for remodelers requires a complex knowledge base. Call ApexKRM today to request assistance.
