SEO for Contractors: How to Get Found & Grow Your Business

A good SEO strategy for contractors is uniquely tailored to your business. So even if you’ve got competitors X, Y, and Z down the street from you, your strategy shouldn’t look like theirs. 

And we get it—the online landscape can be a harsh world. Whether it’s a lousy return on investment or a lack of bandwidth to confidently drive online marketing efforts, building a sustainable AND unique digital marketing plan is easier said than done. Which is why the same ol’ pain points tend to crop up, like: 

• Your contracting business not showing up on Google to those searching for services in your geographic location
• Prospects hiring another contractor instead of you 
• A lack of transparency or communication from a previous or current digital marketing agency that results in subpar outcomes
• And more…

The good news? The team at Big Leap has some practical solutions to share with you on SEO for contractors. Being a contractor comes with its fair share of complexities. We’ll discuss these areas and illuminate businesses like Roof Maxx and Best Vinyl Fence & Deck—companies we’ve had the pleasure of working with—to offer insights on what you can do better this year.

The Challenges of SEO for Contractors

At Big Leap, we’ve seen five common challenges contractors face when navigating their online presence. 

1. Competition: Business is tough out there. Chances are, you’re not the only contractor offering X, Y, and Z to customers. This makes it challenging to cut through the noise and stand out. You know your business offers quality services, so why don’t other people know that? It’s because they’re distracted by your competitors. Eesh. Winning authority and trust is hard in a digital world.
2. Local discovery: It’s one thing to be found online. It’s a whole other ballgame trying to be found on a local level. Yes, there are local SEO strategies contractors must leverage to gain visibility. This added layer requires expertise and time to flex local SEO tactics and tools. 
3. Target audience: When prospective customers dwell in specific geographic areas, this often requires researching niche or non-branded keywords to ensure your contracting business connects with the right people. You aren’t just trying to target people who need X service; you’ve got to find people who need X service in Y county/city.
4. Quality content: The key to good contractor SEO is good content. After all, those keywords—terms prospective customers are typing into the search bar—need to lead somewhere. Good content in the contractor world usually translates to guides or site pages that offer value to readers. But we know, writing is hard—quality content takes time to ideate and produce. That’s why I deserve a raise.
5. The right agency: Due to bandwidth or other reasons, a lot of contractors partner with a digital marketing agency to drive their online strategy where it needs to be. While this is a good and productive idea, the challenge is finding the right agency. 

What Does SEO Mean for Contractors?

In the same way that there are numerous types of contractors, SEO is a big world that branches out into different strategies. The strategies you inject into your campaign depend on your needs and goals. 

In the contractor world, we’ve typically seen and executed the following six tactics. The Big Leap team uses all of these to maximize your campaign results. 

1. Local SEO

If your business serves specific geographic locations, you’ve got to include local SEO in your strategy. 

Local SEO for contractors allows your brand to show up to prospective customers—people who live in the areas where you provide services. The strategy also enables you to produce unique content for every location. 

Examples

Let’s say you offer roofing services in your area. Driving a strong local roofing SEO strategy allows your business to: 

• Show up with a solid Google Business Profile on the search engine page with key details about your business and relevant images.
• Gather helpful reviews that provide value to prospective customers. This matters—46% of consumers believe “online reviews are as trustworthy as personal recommendations from friends or family.”
• Create high-quality and relevant content that engages with and nurtures your local audience. 
• Build local citations and major aggregators to earn valuable referral traffic and improve local rankings.

2. Content Marketing

Content is what makes the online world go round. Without it, we couldn’t create site pages and blog articles—lucrative opportunities that help your business nab prime real estate on search engines. 

Content can get pretty broad. So the key is to think about what your target audience wants to learn more about. What are the top three queries they’re looking up? These are all data points that can help refine your strategy.

Examples

You’re a contractor in the HVAC space. You notice a lot of your target audience members are interested in DIY solutions for quick fixes. With this data, you may decide to produce video or blog tutorials on specific DIY topics to: 

• Offer readers educational value.
• Establish your brand/business as an industry expert.
• Gain trust from your audience. 

3. Link Building

Link building is the process of building up the number of inbound links to your website. Google sees relevant and credible backlinks as votes of confidence because other sites trust you as the prime resource of a given topic. 

Link building boosts your SEO potential. Links from authoritative pages essentially pass on more authority to your site thanks to a Google algorithm known as PageRank (PR).

Examples

A business in the home services industry want more traffic and improve their site’s domain authority (DA). The team conducts: 

• A competitor backlink analysis to identify the types of backlinks competitors are pursuing and what kind of sites are linking to them
• Outreach to sites from the backlink analysis. These sites not only pertain to the business’ industry, but they also rank well and have quality content. The business asks for features on guest blog posts to build their backlink portfolio.

4. Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

Got great site traffic rates? Awesome. But how’s your conversion rate looking? In what areas on your site are users dropping off?

Conversion rate optimization (CRO) improves your onsite experience to convert site visitors into qualified leads. Maintaining a clear and consistent online experience is vital to getting people to commit to your products/services. Not to mention, it’s vital to your bottom line. After all, what good is site traffic going to do when they’re not converting? 

Examples

You’ve got a “get a free estimate” form on your site that isn’t reeling in many leads. A CRO might look at various elements on this form page, such as: 

• Call to Action (CTA)
• CTA Button color 
• Contents/complexity of the form
• Where the form is located on the page 
• Copy/content of the page the form is located on 
• The user journey from beginning to end 

CRO would tweak these areas through A/B testing to refine the user experience and optimize your pages for conversions. 

5. Online Reviews and Reputation Management

What are people saying about your services or products? How is this impacting business? 

Reputation management finesses your online image. Whether it’s good or bad or just okay, there are digital strategies to get your reputation where it needs to be. 

Examples

If we’re looking at online reviews, reputation management may involve: 

• Responding to reviews—both the good and the bad—to show empathy (it matters!). Nearly 70% of online consumers read up to six reviews before converting. 
• Launching an email drip campaign to encourage past customers to leave a review—64% of consumers indicate they’re more likely to buy if an item (or service) has over 1,000 reviews, compared to only 100.  

6. PPC

A quality PPC campaign complements a good organic strategy. PPC (pay-per-click) is a paid advertising strategy where you pay each time a user clicks on your ad. 

While it’s not a long-term strategy (that’s SEO’s job), PPC can help you gain quick traction and leads. Think about it as a way to get in front of your target audience. This guaranteed exposure enables you to maximize the reach of your content.

Examples

Go to Google and search for “plumber near me.” Look at the very top of the search results. You’ll likely see some businesses marked as “sponsored.” These are driven by PPC campaigns. 

As you can see, PPC ads offer prime real estate, bringing your company name and services right to the top of the search page. Check out our 9 PPC trends to help guide your strategy this year. 

7. The Right Partnership

Successful SEO often necessitates a successful partnership. As we’ve noted earlier, this is often easier said than done. 

When looking for an SEO partner, it’s essential to carve out enough time to research and really think about what you’re looking for in a digital marketing agency. If you’re thinking, Gee, this feels oddly like dating, it’s because it is like dating. Before you swipe right, you want to ensure the other party aligns with what you want and need. 

Examples

When meeting prospective agencies, meet the team who will be doing the day-to-day work. Oftentimes, businesses simply meet the sales team and the managers, but meeting the entire account team can be invaluable. 

Contractors can have confidence that the relationship is on track to becoming a long-term partnership. 

Keep in Mind…

Creating a holistic contractor SEO campaign is essential. The best and most successful online campaigns include more than one of the strategies discussed above. This not only enables you to leverage multiple marketing channels but also ensures you’ve got a seamless online experience for your target audience. 

If Done Right, What Results Can You Expect?

Now comes the exciting part. If done right, your contractor SEO strategy can win results in five key areas: 

1. Improved search engine rankings: More prospective customers see your site when searching for contractors on Google or other search engines.
2. Increased website traffic: SEO boosts your search rankings, encouraging more people to see and visit your site. 
3. Enhanced brand awareness: With more online visibility, prospective customers become familiar with your business and what you offer. 
4. Increased lead generation: Additional online touchpoints allow you to connect with your target customers. Whether that’s through filling out a form or downloading a helpful guide, qualified leads start to grow. 

Improved conversion rates: More users take the action you want them to take. Whether that’s signing up for a free consultation or calling your business, better conversion rates feed your bottom line, increasing revenue.

AI’s Role in Digital Marketing

You’ve heard about all the AI noise lately. So we want to get a few things straight. 

While AI offers convenience, it currently has drawbacks. We encourage you to stay vigilant while navigating AI and digital marketing. Nurture a human-centric approach, and lean on ethical, white-hat and white-glove digital marketing strategies. This means being conscientious amid the rise of AI. 

Since AI is rapidly evolving, stay updated and educated by bookmarking these AI resources. We plan on updating these often as AI develops: 

• How Will AI Impact Digital Marketing in 2023 and Beyond? 
• Your One-Stop Shop for AI Marketing

SEO for Contractors in Action

So we’ve covered the groundwork, and now it’s time to see it all in action. 

Below, we’ve listed several businesses in the home services industries we’ve had the pleasure of working with. Each comes with an explanation for: 

• Why they sought digital marketing help and what they were looking for
• How we helped these businesses achieve their goals
• The bottom-line results 

SEO for Roofing Companies

Roof Maxx

• What/Why 

Roof Maxx was gaining online traction, but the team didn’t have the bandwidth to confidently leverage its online marketing efforts. 

• How

Together, we built microsites for each of their 200 dealers and developed FAQ pages and in-depth guides to provide more value for Roof Maxx’s audience. 

• Results
  • 30+ leads per month from new FAQ pages
  • 70+ featured snippets captured 
  • 611 keywords in the top 3 positions on Google

Pinnacle Roofing & Home Exteriors

• What/Why

Pinnacle Roofing wanted to gain more traction and spread the word about their roofing services, particularly in Northwest Arkansas. 

• How

Leveraging keyword research, we optimized their service pages to better speak to their audience. To bolster local search discoveries and rankings, we worked on refining their Google Business Profile and created service area pages to earn visibility at the local level. 

• Results

• • 100+ new lead conversion 
  • 40 new local citations 
  • 72% boost in keyword rankings

SEO for HVAC Contractors

OyBoy Heating and Cooling 

• What/Why

HVAC business OyBoy Heating and Cooling approached Big Leap because they felt they didn’t have enough ownership of their marketing efforts. They had previously worked with another agency but felt their ideas were not being heard or implemented. As a result, they weren’t earning the organic reach they wanted. 

• How

Providing OyBoy with plenty of space to execute a customized strategy, we helped this client prioritize local SEO efforts. We first made technical changes to their site to set the right foundation and then worked on building out local citations and major aggregators for their Google Business Profile page.

• Results

• • 990.9% increase in new visitors
  • 95.4% boost in organic traffic

Absolute Air

• What/Why

HVAC service company Absolute Air faced difficulties ranking for their service areas and branded terms. 

• How

Big Leap and Absolute Air conducted keyword research to identify content gaps. We then drove a content marketing campaign where we ideated several blog topic ideas based on keyword research data, audience FAQs, and trending topics.

• Results
  • 784% increase in organic visitors
  • 58 first-position keywords

Other Home Contractors

McCoy’s Knotty Alder Cabinets

• What/Why

McCoy’s Knotty Alder Cabinets and Flooring needed to strategize a better way to capture leads on their website.

• How

Together, we leveraged conversion rate optimization (CRO) strategies to revamp their website, such as updating CTAs, rearranging webpages, and optimizing images. We also improved our client’s site speed and tapped into content marketing to help them capture featured snippets. 

• Results
  • 60% increase in lead generation 
  • 2,665 ranking keywords

Removal Tech

• What/Why

Removal Tech had a competitor ranking above them in nearly all floor-removal categories. Our client was also not ranking for their key services. 

• How

We streamlined Removal Tech’s business across listings, along with building new citations to improve the accuracy and consistency of their information. 

To help with their rankings, our team optimized their site to include those keywords and created unique pages for each of our client’s services. 

• Results
  • 55% increase in site traffic
  • 45% increase in keyword rankings
  • 8 keywords in the top 3 positions

Best Vinyl Fence & Deck

• What/Why

Best Vinyl Fence & Deck was looking to improve its website authority and site content to reel in more traffic and conversions. 

• How

We pulled data from keyword and competitor analysis to craft valuable blog articles and conducted outreach to help our client win quality backlinks. These strategies would help reel in more traffic and bolster Best Vinyl’s domain authority (DA). 

• Results

• • 58% increase in organic traffic
  • 100+ keywords in the top 3 positions
  • 3000+ more lead conversions

We could go on, but you get the idea. For more SEO general contractor case study examples, check out these pages.  

• Roofing Contractor Client
• American Roofing 
• American Roofing (Social Media) 

Partnering with a Digital Marketing Agency—How to Know You’re Ready

Any partnership, professional or personal, can be nerve-wracking. It’s a big commitment, after all. So how do you know when you’re ready to connect with a digital marketing agency? 

It all comes down to reading the signs: 

Connect with a Big Leap SEO Specialist

SEO is constantly changing. Your team needs to stay on top of these shifts and make the necessary adjustments. Not to mention, finding the right digital marketing partner is a worthwhile investment. You deserve some peace of mind as you handle vital areas of your contracting business. 

At Big Leap, we don’t bite. We’re pretty chill folks who thrive on building customized strategies. We’d love to get to know you and see if we’re a good fit for each other. 

Connect with a contractor digital marketing specialist today.