How SEO Can Impact Your Construction Business

In this episode, we break down the essentials of SEO for the construction industry, answering three crucial questions: What is SEO? Should builders invest in SEO? And how can you identify and avoid common SEO scams that could harm your business?

SEO can be a game-changer for your construction business, helping you attract more leads, build credibility, and stand out in a crowded market. However, it’s essential to approach SEO with the right knowledge and strategy to avoid scams and make the most of this powerful tool.

If you’re ready to take your business to the next level, consider implementing SEO strategies today. And remember, success in SEO doesn’t happen overnight—it’s a journey that, when done right, leads to long-term growth and success.

Watch/Listen/Read and learn with 3 Questions with BLC how to leverage SEO to improve your online visibility, attract quality leads, and avoid costly mistakes.

Builder Lead Converter ATTRACTS, CAPTURES & CONVERTS high-quality leads for home builders & remodelers so they can pick & choose their clients & jobs. Find out how at https://www.builderleadconverter.com

Transcripts:

Rick: Today on Conversations that Convert, we’ll be talking about three questions with BLC, and our topic is SEO. What is it? Should builders use it? And how to avoid the scams?

Narrator: Welcome to Conversations that Convert. Every week, we’ll spend about 10 to 15 minutes tackling relevant lead generations. Marketing and sales topics for remodelers home improvement companies and home builders Conversations that Convert is brought to you by Builder Lead Converter your perfect sales assistant.

And now here’s Rick and Daiana

Rick: Hey everyone. Welcome to Conversations that Convert Daiana is off today, but never fear We have a very special guest and our topic is search engine optimization or SEO. What is it? Should builders use it and what to watch out for? So without further ado, I’m going to bring in Jens Rhodes from Floodlight SEO.

Jens, welcome and thanks for joining us on Conversations that Convert.

Jens: Thanks for having me, Rick. Appreciate it.

Rick: Jens has been a long term partner. We’ve done lots of stuff together over the years. You’ve been doing search engines and optimization for our website, a couple of websites for me. And so we’ve seen the ups and downs and we’ve seen all the changes over the years.

So this has kind of become an annual Event where we bring you on and say, Hey, what’s new in search engine optimization? So this is part of our three questions series, and so we’re gonna jump right into it and get into your ex SEO expertise and try to give builders who are listening a little bit of background again on an SEO.

So why don’t we start with that? Gens? What is SEO? And is it a good idea for home builders and remodelers?

Jens: Absolutely. SEO is. The things that you do in order to convince Google that when people are looking for a home builder or remodeler in their area, in the area that you serve, that your business, your website is one of the The few that it shows at the top of its results page.

So whatever we do, it’s a wide variety of activities that all go into convincing Google that you’re a safe choice for them to show their people because Google is very interested in making it so that when you do a search, it matches. And you think, okay, this was good. I liked the experience I had here on Google so that you come back and hopefully click on an ad.

And so with SEO, whenever we do to convince Google that you’re a safe choice to show its people is what, what that consists of and, and, and, and. For builders and remodelers, we find that it is typically the highest profit lead generation that you can do. It is, and the reason for that is simple with the exception of warm leads from people that you trust, like the people that send you business because they’ve worked with you in the past is always going to be the best kind of lead.

But right below that is what you get from organic search engine optimization because those leads. They don’t know that you exist until they do that research. And so when they do, it feels like it’s a referral from Google. And so that’s the whole point of SEO is getting to in front of people when they know they need a business like yours, but they don’t know enough to call you specifically yet.

And so you get to get in front of them with Google, and then you get to kind of make your case with your website and your reviews and earn that, that

Rick: So Jens, tell me if this is a good definition of organic search engine optimization. You use that phrase. I had defined this as that people who are living in or considering moving to your service area that are looking for a company that provides your services.

Is that a good definition of that?

Jens: Yeah, those are the that those are the searchers. If they’re looking for a homebuilder remodeler, they might and it might be variations on that. So they might be looking for a contractor. They might use those kind of languages. They might use a homebuilder. They might put in modifiers like luxury homebuilder or eco friendly homebuilder.

And so you want to make you want to get in front of all of those different searchers.

Rick: All right. So we’ve got a good baseline now for what it is, and it is a good idea for homegoers and remodels. And I can concur with your assessment over the years, we’ve tracked again you know, lead sources and what are the highest converting lead sources, and it’s always been client referral, number one, business to business referral, number two, and then it was inbound organic search traffic as being number three.

And you think about it, it’s sort of. It’s kind of obvious when you think about it, because these are people that are actively pursuing a company that offers your, your, your services. So it was standard reason that they’re gonna be a higher converting lead source than say an ad you’re running someplace, you know, inbound.

Where they’re looking for you versus outbound where you’re looking for them. It’s a heck of a lot easier to corral that person that’s already looking for your services than try to find them by throwing mud at the wall and hoping it sticks.

Jens: Exactly.

Rick: All right, let’s go on to question number two here. So what are some red flags builders should look out for when it comes to search engine optimization?

Jens: Okay. So there are a lot of them. Unfortunately, SEO is rife with charlatans and scammers. And so we have to kind of be careful with it. One of the first ones is the people that spam you, Oh, Hey, I, you know, they email you and they send they send out an email saying, I had a look at your website and I noticed some things that you’re, you’re not showing up as well as you could, or things are wrong with your site and we could just fix them for you real quick.

Those kinds of things. The only way that that works as a business model is if they sent it out to literally hundreds and thousands of businesses. I get. Those emails every day, and they’re not doing any research before it. They’re just sending it out to everybody. And then they only talk to the people that respond to them.

Right. And no matter how good your website is or how bad they’re always going to try and sell you. They’re not a real SEO company. They’re just a sales company. And the scammy one at that. So that’s one the next one would be something that, okay. So you know how sometimes a lot of SEO companies and builders think they need blogging, right?

They, you know, they, they think that the blog is really important for SEO. And the reason that they think it is because companies. always kind of lean on it. And it’s one of those things that I call SEO theater because it looks like SEO, but it’s just for show. It’s not, it’s not real. Blogging does not carry The weight necessary in order to rank right?

Because blogs are inherently most important right away. They’re very topical and timely, so they’re more important now, and then they drop off in importance over time. And so that’s not a foundation that you want to be building. You want to be building content pages that are about a very specific, you know service that you offer combined with a location, right?

And if you have that combination on a page, then Google can rank it for that. And it just grows more and more important over time. So blogging is mostly for show. And the reason that they do it is, is obvious, right? The problem with SEO is a lot of it’s invisible. A lot of it’s behind the scenes. A lot of the things that matter.

The client never really even sees. And so agencies are desperate to show them something that they can understand and blogging fills that role. See, we’ve made these blog posts for you. And then the owners are happy because they see that things are being done. Those things don’t matter. And it’s kind of dishonest to say that they do, but that’s that.

So we don’t worry about blogging so much.

Rick: Is it, is it fair to say at one point in time, cause we used to offer blogging services years ago at one point in time, I think Google did look at blogging as, Oh, this is beneficial for your searches because you’re at, I mean, it was all about adding content and having, you know, having your site be updated regularly.

Is that, is that the case?

Jens: It, it was more important. Then it is now, but the benefit of blogging has always been, and still honestly is the benefits to Google is it provides a signal that the light is on in somebody’s home. And so you know, like Google sees it and go, Oh, there’s a new blog post.

That’s great. Okay. It’s probably not going to rank for anything but that’s okay. Right. It’s it’s the lights on somebody’s home. So it does provide signs of life but the real benefit for. Content is on the pages, the location pages, the service pages, things like that.

Rick: One of the things that I I’ve noticed too, is that you know, Google has almost made the blog obsolete in that I used to use the analogy of like, if, if you were a builder and you had a storefront, which would be your model home, a physical storefront, and their weeds were three feet tall and there was burned out light bulbs and cobwebs over the front door a potential client would drive up and go, is this guy even in business?

Right. I mean, so like your blog kind of would show that, Oh, and someone lands on your digital storefront as they would see, Oh, look, you, you blogged three days ago or a week ago. Oh look, yeah, there, the, the content on the site should be, should be relevant. Well, one of the things that, that I saw Google has updated probably within the last I’d say the last 12 months is now for your Google business profile is that you can post updates.

Profile. So I look at the analytics and I see oftentimes a lot of our clients, you might have 40 to 50 percent of their organic traffic is coming from their Google business profile. And so what I encourage them to do is like, if you’re going to post anything to show the quote unquote lights are on posted to your Google business profile.

So when people are there, it’s like, Oh, look at these guys just posted three days ago. That means if I go to the website, the content is going to be updated and relevant to so kind of what what you’re talking about there. And it’s a heck of a lot easier to do a, you know with one, a one image post with maybe a sentence or two, you know, to show the right there on them to write up, you know, a 500 or a thousand word blog posts.

Jens: And that was low effort posts on Google profile are far more beneficial. Like you just get more juice from that, you know? So, yeah, that’s good.

Rick: All right. And what else is, is, as far as some red flags, builders should look out for,

Jens: Long term contracts. One of the things that SEO companies do a lot when they’re not very good is they lock you into a long term contract because then they know that you’re going to be with them for like 12 months.

Right. And they know that after that, you’re probably going to leave because It’s not worth paying for but all they have to do then is they have to replace you by the time they have to just sell to another guy or two by the time you leave. And in that way, they can grow and keep on top of that churn.

You know, what you want is you want an ongoing month to month contract where anybody can leave at any time for any reason because you should be confident and happy that things are going in the right direction. And if you ever lose that faith, you should be free to leave. Businesses shouldn’t take hostages.

That’s my official stats.

Rick: Yeah. I would say you know, if we, if we want to make the marriage easy and the divorce easy, we do the same thing. We don’t do contracts because either you’re getting a return on your investment or you’re not, and things change and you know, we’re not going to hold hostages, so good good thought there what else is something that a builder should watch out for as a red flag?

Jens: I would say arbitrary limits on keywords and, and So frequently you’ll find that they, that SEO companies will say things like, okay, so, you know, for this much money, we will optimize 10 keywords. And for this much money, we’ll optimize 15. And for this much, we’ll optimize 20. But the problem is whenever they do that, you don’t get to choose the keywords.

They get to choose the keywords. And so they might pick a difficult keyword in there that’ll actually Results in some traffic and some sales, but far more often than not, they, they pat it with these really low quality, low, these low keywords, right. That aren’t going to generate nearly enough nearly enough attention in order to justify the expense.

Right. And so like, what we do is we come up with all of the different keywords that we can think of. That people will be searching for. Some of them are going to be really high volume. Some of them are going to be low volume and we’re going to optimize pages for all of those, right? Because you don’t know what they’re going to come in at, but you know that there’s going to be prize keywords that are worth fighting for, and they’re going to be very slow to get to the top because other people are fighting for them and you’re going to get easy victories right away.

And so, but when there’s a lot of those keywords, like I’m talking hundreds of keywords. When you put them all together. They can generate a significant amount of attention online and attention and a significant amount of revenue. But when you’re limited to 15, 20 keywords those dud keywords just kill you.

Right. And so it’s, it’s a silly way to limit it. The same thing with pages. I just came across a, a national company that was pitching some people I know, and they were saying for like 3, 000, we will optimize two of your pages on your website. And. That’s crazy. It’s just It’s arbitrary. It doesn’t make any sense.

Like, yeah, it’s it’s it baffles the mind. I have no idea what they’re doing. So yeah, don’t don’t fall for that. So yeah,

Rick: for and as you’re sure, and I know some of the challenges, of course, with your local home builders and remodelers is that, you know, there’s Google provides something called the keyword search tool, right?

So you can go look up and see how many people use this keyword to search. But There’s a limit to that. Like if it’s below a certain monthly threshold or volume, it’s like, there’s not enough data available. They don’t give you anything. So oftentimes you, it’s sort of like a trial by fire, right? You have to try certain things, see what, what is, what is ranking do a lot of them.

And I know you, and I think you have recommended this in the past. It’s like, Hey, if you want to do a real test on keywords, if there’s not enough data in the keyword search tool, you can go ahead and run some pay per click ads. You know, using those keywords and seeing, Hey, am I getting some traction there?

Okay. Well, that might tell you, then this is the keyword phrase or phrases that you want to optimize.

Jens: And Google has actually made that less possible now than they did. Because you’re learning, right? Cause you don’t even get

Rick: to choose anymore. They just keep changing the ad until they get some traction.

Yeah. I know. Paperclip is, it’s really become a money pit. I’ve found that now you’ve got to spend probably a minimum of three grand a month being able to get enough impression so that their machine learning actually works and develops ads that gets you there. And yeah, that’s a pretty hefty price to pay for oftentimes a very low quality lead.

Jens: Right. And it can be good as a, you know, like after you’ve gotten your SEO locked in, after you’ve gotten, you know, your a lot of your other marketing down and you’re like, okay, what else can we do? How else can we expand, you know, and you’ve got enough budget to throw at that problem, then yeah, it’s a great next step, but it’s, it’s never a great step until you’ve got all of your other stuff dialed in.

Rick: Not a great first step, right? All right, let’s move on to question number three. So what does real SEO consist of?

Jens: Real SEO is actually fairly simple to comprehend at a high level. So People come to Google and they do a search and they might be looking for like luxury home builder in this fancy town, right?

Or it might be just a custom home builder in this suburb or whatever it is. And so what you do is you look for your, you know, what are the services you provide? Who are the people that you provide them to? Is there any wrinkles or variations that? That make up your services that people that would be a good match for you would use in order to find you right and then that forms the basis of your keyword list.

So then we make a whole bunch of keywords and then what we do is we look at your site and chances are your site is can only be optimized for a small fraction of people. of those, of those hundreds of keyword variations. And so what we want to do is we want to write new content that matches That matches that those keyword intent.

We want to close that gap between what the keywords are and what the content on your site is. So we end up making a lot of different pages around. The services that you offer and the variations on the type of building that you do, or the type of remodeling that you do or the rooms or whatever.

And then content around the locations because most builders want to pull from. A few, at least, areas that are around them, like they want to pick, I want to, I want people from this, you know, suburb. I want people from this city. I want people from this, you know, around this Lake, you know, whatever the location is, anybody, any location that has an identity that people would identify with enough to add into a search is what you want to be making content around.

And so one

Rick: thing I’ve noticed too, is that. It really varies. I mean, I, we work with builders all over North America, so Canada, us, but sometimes it’s, they’re searching by say a city, sometimes they’re searching by a school district, sometimes it’s by a County, sometimes it’s by like a township you know, even, or it’s a neighborhood, a popular neighborhood or area within that.

So it really varies dramatically from region to region.

Jens: Yep. From region to region and from. Areas of affluence you know, the difference of that. So like the more affluent an area is the more, like if there’s an area of affluence within a larger city that is less affluent, typically the people in the affluent area will identify with the affluent area they won’t identify with.

Sure. Course . So, you know. Right. And, and so it’s, and so you really need to talk to the builder and know the market. And figure out where your actual targets are for keywords. And then you just make the content to match that keyword because Google’s looking for things that match. So like if it’s, if you’re, you know, luxury custom home builder in this area, and you’ve got a homepage that talks about, You know, building homes and some and you might mention luxury on there and then it lists all of the communities that you serve, right?

Well, that’s weak sauce because google says, okay Well, yeah, they’re talking about luxury But they’re also talking about normal and they’re also talking about this city and this city and this city and this city and this city And so it’s not really about any of them You’re never going to get to the point where google trusts that page enough to put it up unless everybody else is doing worse

Rick: Interesting.

Okay. All right. So what else does real SEO consist of?

Jens: Real SEO consists, really the second thing after you’ve got the content matching dialed in it’s, it’s almost all about votes of confidence from other sites, right? So Google has a bunch of sites that it trusts to a certain extent, and they link and it, Looks at who they’re linking to.

And if you get links from places that Google trusts, then it starts to trust you more. Think of it as a, like you go to a party and everybody’s talking about, Oh, have you met Gary? Have you met, have you met Gary? Everybody’s talking about Gary. By the time you meet Gary, you know, you’re primed to think he’s a big deal.

And that’s exactly how Google is. All of these sites are linking to them. They can’t all be lying is what Google thinks. Of course, when you hire an SEO company, a lot of them are just what we made up. You know? So yeah, we put you in front of, of we put you on sites that are, we put content on sites that link back to you and we make it so that what Google looks to determine who’s important.

You know, reflects well on you.

Rick: So it’s almost like a network per se, they’re looking for like a high quality network of, of high quality sites that I know you use the term authority a lot. It’s like, Hey, they want to find that authoritative site that is trusted. And if you’re linking to that, that can help.

With with, with your own authority, or at least your own image as it relates to how Google can look at you, or at least how the algorithm looks at you.

Jens: Yeah, and there’s two sides to that. If you link out to an authoritative website then Google knows that you’re probably trustworthy just because, you know, like you’re sending people out and you have no problem with that, and that seems like a cool move to them.

But if that authoritative site links back to you, then that’s huge. Like, really, what you want is you want a lot of these sites that Google trusts to link to you. So, like, getting, getting links from, like, your local chamber of commerce or from, you know, any associations that you’re in. Those are all goals, right?

And then we go ahead and make other sites or other links from, you know, blogs and websites and authority content sites and make it all work even better. So

Rick: Very, very good tips. I think we want to end with, you know, what should a builder expect from their SEO team or partner?

Jens: Okay, so the first thing is you know, make sure that you should expect that they should manage your expectations, right?

They should set expectations correctly. SEO is a long term thing, right? You should not be be starting an SEO campaign thinking that it’s going to affect, you know, your next month, your next quarter. It’s, it’s something that you do that affects next, your next season, right? And so it’s a slow thing.

It’s a, it’s a marathon, not a sprint. And so that’s the first thing. The next thing is they should, They should talk to you about what you do and so that they know who to get you in front of. Because all the people that are looking, if you’re a home builder, not everybody who’s looking for a home is your ideal client.

And they, so they should know you well enough in your business well enough so that they can pick the keywords that are going to be used by the people that are a good match for you. And so that’s, that’s another thing. The next thing is over time, you’re going to see as they start adding content, you’re going to see rankings increase and they should give you reporting that shows that ranking increase.

And really, that’s the prime deliverable of any good SEO company, because that’s what they affect. They just put you in front of the people that are doing the searches, right? And so, like, and then when they call you and all of that, that’s kind of beyond the search window, right? Like they can’t do the sales for you, right?

But so they should show you the reporting that shows you increasing over time. And then you should see as a result of that ranking increase, you should see more traffic coming in through search on your analytics, and you should see more calls coming in.

Rick: So really, it’s just having agreed upon set of metrics up front as to what, what constitutes success or, or improvements.

And I, the other thing I noticed that, you know, from me, it’s been doing SEO for so long, is you kind of, you get this where you’re going up and then you might have to dip. And then you recover from that and you go up. It seems like the way Google works is that they’re always trying to improve the algorithm to deliver better results for people using the search engine.

And because of that, they change things or like with the latest thing. Now, I think you told me is ai, like a lot of people are using AI to create content and to try to gain the system, but now Google is, has an AI bot to, to spot AI right? In websites so that, so that now they’re trying to, you know, trying to find AI created content and that that is not necessarily a good readable content.

What does that look like now?

Jens: It’s it’s really, it’s interesting. I love where AI is going and Google isn’t against AI. Google is against badly written content.

Rick: And

Jens: it just so happens that people are lazy and they use AI poorly to write bad content. You can use AI to write amazing content. My team uses AI all the time.

But we also have human editors and people that are, You know, taking care of it, it’s allowed us to write things a much, much faster, right. And at a higher level actually. So yeah, but you will find a lot of companies that are using AI poorly and Google is going to punish them because it is against poorly written content that provides a bad experience for their users.

Like above everything, they just want to guard. The user experience for people using Google. So I am pro ai as long as it’s being used responsibly.

Rick: Sure, yeah. And we use AI as well to write emails and blog posts and all that. and sometimes it video descriptions, sometimes it’s like, I don’t need to change the thing.

Other times I’m like, I’m rewriting three quarters. That’s exactly, yeah. Right. It’s just, it. So it’s really hit, it seems like it’s hit or hit or miss. And I think the biggest challenge AI has is it doesn’t really understand the target audience. And so it just kind of, and sometimes it overwrites things and you look at this and go like, this makes zero sense whatsoever.

So I think what you’re saying is if you’re just like saying, producing some content from AI and then copy and pasting, oftentimes you’re going to get crap content and you might get flagged for that from, from right. Yeah. Well, this has been great, gents. You know, as far as so just to recap here. You know, yes, a builder should and remodeler should be using SEO.

You know, he gave us some great things to watch out for a red flags. And then also what is real SEO consist of and it’s really, it is a marathon not a sprint. And one thing that I have found by, you know, by using it, we’ve been doing it for years and years and years. And it, it seems like, you know, right now we’re really starting to hit our, hit our stride with things, but I’ve noticed that you really have to understand your target audience and really niche down.

Right. So what exactly do you do? Who do you do it for? Where do you do it? And really to understand that. And I, it seems like one, if you can get that down from a marketing and sales perspective, it’s going to make a big impact on your SEO as well. Cause if you try to come on as a generalist. I say general contractors, you know, they’re gonna attract people generally interested in a low price And also it’s like what do you stand for?

You know, if you try to be everything to everyone you’re nothing to to to ever to everyone. So That’s something too. I recommend for anybody. It’s just a really niche down Get your service areas defined understand who your audience is and then be able to produce content and seo content That’s going to appeal to your audience Well, thank you so much, and thank you for joining us on Conversations that Convert.

And from our brothers and sisters in Christ, may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all always. We’ll see you next time on Conversations that Convert.