5 Actionable Local SEO Tips for Contractors

I was recent­ly asked by Melody Infin­ger of A David Cre­ation to pro­vide a few of the local SEO tips con­trac­tors should fol­low to increase their online vis­i­bil­i­ty and leads. Here are the top five areas that every con­trac­tor that serves a spe­cif­ic ser­vice area should keep in mind.

Local Ser­vice Area Pages

For painters and con­trac­tors that serve more than one city or town, in order to be vis­i­ble for geo-tar­get­ed queries you may need to cre­ate ser­vice area spe­cif­ic pages. For exam­ple, if you are locat­ed in Glen­dale CA, but want to be vis­i­ble in Bev­er­ly Hills CA, you’re going to need to cre­ate a spe­cif­ic ser­vice area page that’s opti­mized for this area. A com­mon pit­fall I see many con­trac­tors make when imple­ment­ing this strat­e­gy is to dupli­cate their con­tent across these pages. Best prac­tices calls for mak­ing these pages as unique and as spe­cif­ic to the area as pos­si­ble. This can include: 

• Project pho­tos from the city or town
• Local­ized content
• Reviews from cus­tomers liv­ing the city or town

Start with some local­ized key­word research to see what ser­vices you pro­vide are being searched for in the cities and towns in your ser­vice area. In addi­tion to cre­at­ing ser­vice area spe­cif­ic pages, it’s always a good idea to pub­lish detailed project recaps that are opti­mized for the area the project was com­plet­ed in. See below exam­ple of a con­trac­tor who con­tin­u­ous­ly updates pages spe­cif­ic to a ser­vice and ser­vice area with new project pho­tos and descriptions:  Image Cred­it: New Life Bath & Kitchen

Google My Business

For many geo tar­get­ed queries or search­es with local intent, Google users will see a spe­cial 3 pack of local busi­ness­es that appears below the 4 paid ads on top and above the tra­di­tion­al organ­ic list­ings below This set of results can and will dri­ve new web­sites vis­its and calls from poten­tial cus­tomers. Rank­ing fac­tors for this set of search results are a lit­tle dif­fer­ent than tra­di­tion­al organ­ic results and include dis­tance, promi­nence and rel­e­vance, with dis­tance typ­i­cal­ly being weight­ed the most heav­i­ly. A few things you can be doing to ensure your pro­file ranks high­ly include: 

• Ver­i­fy and opti­mize your GMB page
• Add plen­ty of project and team photos
• Ask sat­is­fied clients for reviews
• Share updates on your profile
• Define your ser­vices area

The Impor­tance of Inbound Links

While there are over 200 rank­ing sig­nals that Google incor­po­rates into its rank­ing algo­rithm, I like to cat­e­go­rize them into two main cat­e­gories which are con­tent and links. Google uses the inbound links from oth­er web­sites to help it assess the author­i­ty and rel­e­vance of your website’s pages. Pages with more author­i­ty will often­times have an eas­i­er time rank­ing high­ly for the search terms they are opti­mized for. Here a few tips on ways you can earn inbound links: 

• Do some­thing news­wor­thy like a com­mu­ni­ty event and then get­ting the word out to local media out­lets, your cham­ber of com­merce, and oth­er web­sites that pub­lish com­mu­ni­ty news
• Cre­at­ing link wor­thy con­tent — high-qual­i­ty con­tent that’s opti­mized may earn inbound links from others
• Uti­liz­ing part­ners, affil­i­ates and oth­er busi­ness­es you have an exist­ing rela­tion­ships with
• Thought lead­er­ship – con­nect with and get pub­lished on indus­try relat­ed blogs. You are the expert. It’s like­ly you’ve learned some­thing through expe­ri­ence that oth­ers in your indus­try could ben­e­fit from

Look­ing for more ideas? Check out this post on the Moz blog.

Bar­na­cle SEO 

This term sim­ply refers to latch­ing on to or estab­lish­ing a pres­ence on 3^rd par­ty web­sites or plat­forms that are rank­ing for the key­words you are tar­get­ing. So the thought process is that you can increase your com­pa­ny’s vis­i­bil­i­ty by cre­at­ing and build­ing out a pro­file on these net­works. Bar­na­cle SEO is a key ele­ment to a suc­cess­ful local SEO cam­paign. For con­trac­tors, Yelp, Houzz, Angie’s List, Thumb­tack, Porch, and Home­ad­vi­sor are all online com­mu­ni­ties that sur­face fre­quent­ly. My advice is to try search­ing for a few key­words that are rel­e­vant to your ser­vice and see what plat­forms are con­sis­tent­ly rank­ing high­ly, then start there. The below image show a search result for the query ​‘Hunt­ing­ton Beach Con­trac­tor.” You can see that the major­i­ty of top posi­tions are held by review sites, online direc­to­ries, and oth­er platforms: 

Review Strat­e­gy

Earn­ing reviews from sat­is­fied clients is impor­tant for a cou­ple rea­sons. One, they pro­vide social proof that can influ­ence a poten­tial customer’s deci­sion to con­tact you. In fact, one sur­vey found that 90% of cus­tomers are influ­enced by online reviews and that 85% of cus­tomers report­ed read­ing online reviews. Two, reviews are a major vis­i­bil­i­ty fac­tor on plat­forms like Yelp, Houzz and Porch to name a few. Mean­ing, con­trac­tors with more reviews will typ­i­cal­ly receive more organ­ic visibility.  Make sure you have a review strat­e­gy in place to ensure you’re earn­ing online reviews from your sat­is­fied clients.

Wrap­ping It Up

By fol­low­ing and imple­ment­ing these five tips, you can increase your busi­ness’s online vis­i­bil­i­ty, traf­fic, and qual­i­fied leads. Email Melody Infin­ger with ques­tions or to request a free consultation.