A Complete Guide to SEO for Contractors Part 2:

On-Page SEO for Contractors

 

 

SEO for Contractors essentially has 2 parts, On-page and Off-page. On-page SEO involves optimizing the parts on your website. This is essentially what you or the person handling your website can control to rank better such as, choosing the right keywords, the quality of the content, and the use of images or videos.  Don't know what SEO is and why it is affective for getting clients, read here: https://forzadigital.net/blogs/what-is-seo/

 

Using the Right General Contractor Keywords Throughout Your Site

 

 

As previously noted the correct general contractor keywords are the foundation for your SEO campaign. Although Google is becoming more intelligent with its ever changing algorithms and you could rank for a keyword phrase that is not even included within your website. It's always a good practice to guide the Google bots in the right direction by layout it some "hints" for them to know what your website is all about. Three important places that are the most powerful to place your keywords are in the Header Tags (h1, h2, etc.), the Title, and Meta Description. It's important to include your keywords in header tags because this have are given a heavier "weight" by the bots crawling your page as this guides them and lets them know what the content or section is about.  If you need assistance in choosing your keywords or don't know how to write and effective Meta description or title,  speak to a Portland SEO Consultant that can guide you through the process.

 

 

Include Keywords in Page Titles and Meta Descriptions for better Contractor Search Engine Optimization

 

 

 

Each page on your website needs to have a title tag and a meta description. Its not enough just to have these two as they also need to be optimized. They should include your focus keyword that you want that page to rank for. You need to make sure that it is included in both and it could help to try to add some variations of the keyword in the meta description.

 

 

Add Location Pages to Your Website

 

 

If you are able to offer your contracting services in different cities around your area then it is recommended to create a page for each location that you can service. You can use this location page as a tool to show customers what services you are able to offer in these different cities. This in turn leaves you with the chance to rank this page for searches of the services in this specific city.

 

 

Make Pages for the Different Contracting Services Your Company Offers

 

 

Making separate pages for each service you offer can have a huge advantage for your website ranking. Creating individual pages brings more opportunity to rank different specific keywords for individual services that your potential clients can be looking for. You can also combine this with a location and rank for a specific service you provide within a city you can service, for example "Roof Replacement in Portland". This allows you to rank for your webpage for the service "Roof Replacement" and you could also be found by a client looking for this service who is located in Portland.

 

 

Optimize the Site Navigation using URL Format

 

 

Making it difficult to get through your website will not only make it difficult for your human website visitor but will also make it difficult for the bots crawling your webpages. It would be a good idea to have a clean format of how your URLs are structured. For example the URL of the different services pages that were mentioned earlier should be something like this:
https://yourwebsite.com/services/name-of-service.

 

 

Having a clean URL structure makes it easier for on the visitors so that they are aware of what pages they are visiting. This makes it simpler for the bots crawling to know what the page is about, in our previous example they can see that the page is about a service.  Don't know if your URL is structured correctly?  Talk to your Portland SEO Company,we are ready to assist you today!

 

 

Other things that can be done to clean up the navigation of your site is to have a detailed easy to find and easy to follow menu. Ideally the menu should be placed at the top in the header section. You should also work to make sure there aren't any broken links, there is a lot of tools out there that can scan your site for any broken links which makes it easier for you to fix them. The same can be said about any 404 errors, a simple fix can be a 301 or 302 redirect. These can be simple solutions to fix any 404 errors.

 

 

Use a Schema Mark for effective Contractor SEO

 

 

Search engines like Google and Bing have developed a lot through the years and can now show more things than just the title and meta description in the search results. Now they can show more detailed info like a Schema Markup. the Schema is a combination of some code which instruct the Google crawlers of what other information to display in the search results.

 

 

This can include your phone number, service area, hours that you are open, the number of stars you have on Yelp etc. These small details can drastically improve the amount of clicks your listing receives because it helps you standout from your competition.

 

 

You can find more information about exactly what Schema is and what it adds to your website here at Schema.org. It also can help to generate a Schema Markup for your specific contracting service like for example Roofing Schema.

 

 

 

 

 

Optimize your Alt Text Within Pictures

 

 

As previously stated Images can play an important part in standing out from your competition. Each individual picture within your website needs to be optimized too. Within a picture there is Alt Text that is shown when pictures can't be loaded on your website due to slow internet speeds or various other reasons. They are also read by bots, since they don't have eyes they need to see what this piece of content is about. Its important to include your keywords for the alternative text of the pictures on your site to boost the possibility of ranking higher. You can also Geo Tag your pictures so that they have the data of where the picture was taken. This gives a boost to your local SEO because it lets Google know that you are actually physically located in the city where you claim to be at.

 

 

 

 

Another benefit to optimizing the alt text for your images is that if another person chooses to use your images on their website, then your alt text will be embedded in the image. So if you can also include your URL in the alt text then this can be used as a link to your webpage and this becomes a passive backlink for you.

 

 

Summary of On-Page SEO

 

 

To summarize SEO for General Contractors Depends a lot on what you can control.  70% of ranking success in small markets is attributed to On-Page factors.  What is important is knowing how to utilize the keywords we talked about previously and implementing them in the right format throughout your web page.  Always make sure to have unique and relevant content and integrate schema markups to make it easier for search engine bots to understand your content.  Stay tuned for part three of SEO for contractors where we go in depth to cover Off-Page SEO,  If you haven't read part 1 then visit here.  And as always, if you have more questions about how to rank your website or how to get your internet marketing campaign started, contact Forza Digital Marketing, your local Portland SEO experts.