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How to Do SEO For A Construction Company

We have recently started a new YouTube series called Website SEO Walkthroughs. In this series of videos, we visit a website that is performing subpar in search results and examine some techniques that could be taken to elevate the site's search performance. In other words, Search Engine Optimization!

This article covers ALL of the 5 Components of SEO.

In last week's video, we explored the website hemmingerconstruction.com. Let's break some of the techniques we talked about down.

First, I'd like to say that this is a beautiful website overall. I love the full screen hero image on desktop (nearly full screen on mobile). What a great way to capture visitors' attention. The layout and navigation is mostly straight-forward and the site is mostly mobile-optimized.

So, what could we optimize?

Keyword Research

First, remember to stick with long-tail keywords with local search terms. But there's a caveat. Most of the keyword search tools out there are inaccurate when it comes to local keywords.

What we like to do is search for head keywords that have a high search volume and relatively low keyword difficulty. Once we identify a good candidate, we'll add my geo-specific (i.e.- local) phrases.

In this example, we were basically backward designing our keywords to find a good candidate for the video. We settled on "Construction Company" as our primary keyword. To make this local, we simply made it"Akron Ohio Construction Company."

Design

We're mainly discussing the home page here.

Hemminger Construction Website Screenshot
The Hero Section of Hemminger Construction

The Hero Section

This is your first impression. It has to get - and keep - people's attention. First, the logo and the H1 are getting a bit lost in the complexity of the image. We have a couple of option to fix this:

  1. We could experiment with the placement. Try to find some area of the image that isn't complex, like the sky. The problem with this is it's complicated to control for all screen sizes.
  2. We could darken the overlay over the image. This is what I would do in this situation. I MAY look for an alternate image, too. But this one isn't bad.

We also would add a CTA into the hero section. We aren't real far into the sales funnel just yet. But we still want to provide an opportunity to lead our potential clients through the funnel if they're ready.

This could lead to the contact page. But it could also send users to the projects page or the service pages. This will depend on your company's objectives.

The Welcome Section

I am only a fan of 2-column layouts in newspapers. Ok, well that's not totally true. If you look at our home page, you can see that we use 2-column layouts.

However, we only recommend using this when the content is similar, but not the same. In other words, don't continue your same thought in the next column, like it's being done here.

Now, you might be thinking: how is this SEO related? Well, the truth is, this likely won't hurt your search rankings. But, it is related to the user experience (UX). And UX is a part of SEO so we thought it was worth mentioning.

Other

Next, we would do something with the featured project section on the home page. I'm not a massive fan of the alternating photo/text column thing. But it can work, if done correctly. Oh and we would also add an H2 here to let users know what this section is all about. Then we'd slightly beef up the project descriptions.

And the footer. We would style it differently to add some separation between the footer and the rest of the content.

On Page SEO & Content

Keyword Placement

It's incredibly important to use your keyword in the following locations:

  • The Page Title (which shows up in search results)
  • The Meta-Description
  • The page URL
  • The H1
  • The first H2 (this is recommended, but not a necessity - and use a semantically related variation)
  • The alt text of the first image on the page (recommended)
  • The first sentence on the page (and the last if you can make it work)

Remember you can over-use a keyword, so we recommend sticking to the list above.

Now, there's a problem on the home page of this website. The H1 does not contain the keyword at all. In fact, the H1 doesn't even appear on the page when it loads (what we call "above the fold"). The H1 on this page is actually the word "Welcome" that appears in the welcome section.

I would highly recommend adding the keyword to the H1 and then moving it into the hero. Then "Welcome" can become an H2. Or be rewritten to include a variation of the keyword.

Content Length

None of the pages on this website contain enough content. Remember, in order to rank in search results, you'll want to be the authority for your topic. In order to do this, you need more quality content. Don't just plug the existing content into chatGPT and ask it to expand the content. This usually leads to restating the same thing over and over. Instead, find more high quality content that you can write about from the perspective of your experience.

While we're on the topic of AI - we're huge fans of it. We use it often. But, it cannot replace your voice or your experience when writing. So we highly recommend making edits to any AI-generated content to make it your own.

Site Navigation

Like we mentioned above, the site navigation is pretty straightforward. But, several of the URL slugs (the ending part of the url) don't match the page that they're on. For example, the slug for the Services page is /photos. This will confuse users and search engines. Because of this, these pages aren't likely to rank well in search engines.

Other Page Issues

Aside from the home page, we found a few issues and recommendations for the site.

We noticed by using the Detailed Chrome Extension that several of the pages on the site use the exact same page Title. This is bad for SEO. Each page should have a unique title and meta description. Oh, and several of the pages are missing the meta description altogether.

The service page would likely get a lot of views. This is the company's chance to show visitors exactly what they do and how the do it. This is the place to win over clients.

But this site doesn't take advantage of this idea.

The page only has 104 words - and that's for all 4 services the company offers. We would recommend breaking each of the 4 services out to its own page. Then, we'd build out the content to something like 500 words per page (our SEO tools will make content length suggestions for us after we identify strong keyword phrases). We would also add photos depicting each of the services.

Blog

We usually recommend adding a blog, though not always. A blog is a great way to generate high-quality content on a regular basis and help search engines see your site as an authority. Plus it creates the potential of more landing pages for users to enter your sales funnel.

Technical SEO

From a technical standpoint, this site is not in too bad of shape. Image resolution is good, although we might consider changing the file format to webp for all imgaes. We might also rename the images to something more human-friendly.

The only other thing we might mention is to add more internal links between the pages.

Off-Page SEO

No one likes getting backlinks, right? Well, it doesn't have to be that difficult. At the time of writing this article, the Hemminger site has 9 referring domains. We have 2 favorite methods of acquiring backlinks.

First, is organically. This takes the longest, but is also the easiest. Providing high-quality content that's unique should lead people to want to link to your site. Consider writing an article like an "ultimate guide" or something to that effect. Make others want to link to you from their own sites.

Second, we highly recommend getting on industry and local listings. Chambers of commerce are a great start. But do a simple search for local listings in your area and you'll come up with great opportunities. Some of the will cost you, while others will be free. But we believe that a small cost to be on a listing that appear high in search results is worth including in the budget.

Oh and bonus, don't forget about opportunities like guest-posting on other website. Often, sites will let you write an article in exchange for a backlink.

Local SEO

To finish this analysis up, we'd like to take a look at their local opportunities. We searched for the company's name in Google. They have a Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business). That's great!

However, when searching for our target keyword, their business doesn't show up in the local pack at all.

Here are our suggestions for improving local pack rankings:

  • Get reviews. This is top priority to move up the local pack rankings. And it's simple - just ask your current and past clients to hop on and leave you a review.
  • Post weekly! It doesn't have to be a long post. But posting regularly can help to elevate your status in Google's eyes.
  • Answer questions. If there aren't any questions, feel free to ask a past client if they had any questions about the process when the were getting started working with you. And then ask them to put enter the question.
  • Add photos. We recommend adding new photos on a regular basis as well. Anything to show Google that you're active.

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We hope you've enjoyed this real-world analysis of a website's SEO performance. We'll be posting more soon!

How to Do SEO For A Construction Company
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