Increase your website’s Google ranking – a practical guide to SEO
Increase your website’s Google ranking – a practical guide to SEO
The aim is to generate more traffic to your site, turn them into leads, then convert them into sales.
SEO in the Construction Industry
The Construction Industry is an ever-challenging landscape. It is more competitive than ever for building product manufacturers to influence architects and contractors as to why they should be using their products. How do you reach your prospective customers? How do you engage with them and convert them into buying customers?
According to Search Engine Journal, SEO leads have a 14.6% conversion rate. Compared with outbound leads (e.g. direct mail or print advertising) which only has a 1.7% conversion rate. With this in mind, it makes sense to portion more of your marketing budget to SEO rather than outbound, more traditional, techniques such as print advertising or direct mailers through the post.
But why is this? Buyer behaviour has changed significantly in recent years. There was a time where print advertising was the medium to use where marketing budgets spent lots of money in buying advertising space. Architects, contractors and other professionals would see an advert, realise the value in the product or service on offer, and take action.
However, fewer industry professionals get chance to read magazines. And the way in which we source information has changed exponentially in recent years, thanks to the popularity of search engines. In particular, Google.
Yes, there are other search engines such as Bing, Yahoo, Ask and a range. But these platforms generate little traffic compared with Google. As of 2019, Google accounts for over 76% of the search engine traffic according to Net Market Share. Bing is less than 9%, Yahoo is 3% and Ask is less than 1%.
With this in mind, we would recommend any SEO strategy to focus on Google’s best practices. Which brings us on nicely to the next part, how do you optimise your website to increase your Google ranking?
Increase your website’s Google ranking
Here we run-down four points you need to consider to increase your Google rankings:
1) Be genuine
Gone are the days where you cram all kinds of keywords (both relevant and irrelevant) onto a webpage in the hope of tricking search engines. Google’s algorithm (its guidelines or rules which determine how websites are ranked) is increasingly refined. It can even pick up if you use keywords more than you normally would in a regular conversation.
So make sure you are writing your page content in a genuine way and don’t try to force keywords in. Align this with your content strategy, which should in turn be aligned with your business goals. To maximise your marketing budget and your return-on-investment, think about your business goals. Do you want to grow a particular product range? Target a new sector? Or just promote growth across the business?
Once you have this in mind, create a 6 month content schedule to help you achieve it. So if you want to grow a particular product range, write a series of technical articles and thought leadership topics around the solution your product brings.
2) It’s a long-term project
SEO should be considered a long-term investment. It won’t bring in instant leads (unless you’re either very lucky or have an incredibly niche product or service). Be prepared and plan your SEO strategy over a 12 month period.
The higher your website ranks in Google for your desired keywords, not only will it bring in more traffic, but you will gain the trust quicker in prospective customers. The psychology of being near to the top of Google search results will gain trust with the user, as they perceive your website to be the best solution for their needs.
3) On-site page optimisation
We have got to the stage where we concentrate on your website. How can you improve it? What does it need to rank higher in Google results? Here are a few factors you need to implement:
- Make sure it performs well and is fast, on both desktop and mobile devices. Use tools such as Google PageSpeed Insights to get a good benchmark
- Have clear call-to-actions on every page, so users can easily contact you or request further information
- Make sure your contact details are displayed clearly on your site
- Ensure your page titles and meta descriptions are optimised
- Have clear links to your social media channels
4) Off-site page optimisation
Here are some factors to maximise your off-page optimisation:
- Build high quality backlinks; go for quality and not quantity
- Distribute your PR to external blogs and industry websites to gain more backlinks and increase your exposure to your target prospects
- Share your content over your social media content
Summary
We hope you have got some value from our practical guide to SEO and making it work for your website. And importantly, making your website work for you.
Time54 have helped many companies in the Construction and Interiors sectors with their SEO. We have increased the rankings for many websites for many keyword phrases, helping to increase traffic activity, engagement levels, conversion rates and ultimately driving profits.
We provide straight-forward, practical advice. Feel free to get in touch if you have any questions or if you are wondering how SEO can benefit your business. We can provide free website audits to show you the condition of your website and possible ways to improve it, just get in touch.
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