How Can Construction Companies Leverage SEO

As a construction company in Australia, having a strong digital strategy for your business is becoming increasingly important. Your businesses perception in the market by the consumers will be a differentiating factor in a competitive space, which is why it has become increasingly important to understand digital for your business going forward.

A great way for any building, construction or development business to gain a trust in the market is to become known within their industry to the average consumer, & a great way to achieve this is via SEO.

What is SEO?

SEO is short for Search Engine Optimisation and it is the process of assisting a certain webpage in increasing its online visibility for specific keywords.

This is an industry which is booming as the average joe internet user has realised that clicking the “sponsored ads” on Google know as Adwords PPC ads can sometimes not generate a good quality result & its the organic results that actually produce the best result for a given search.

What this translates too is average users trusting the organic search results a lot more than the paid sponsored listings. This is why you want to gain your customers and your potential partner’s trust but rank higher in the organic search engine listings.

How Can SEO benefit Construction companies?

A company ranking first shows the world that you are clearly a big name in the industry (which could also work the other way, making smaller companies look bigger than they are) which could elevate your company status as well as attract a higher level of partnerships within your industry, gain well researched customers & finally (but most critically) gain the ability to allow future customers to disc

Current State of the Construction Sector in Sydney

With a building boom which has dominated Sydney, both in terms of the unprecedented skyward development of apartments with 346 cranes with 254 cranes being located on residential projects that are currently on our city’s skyline, the expansion of greenfield urban development (examples being the North-west & South-west growth centres) & A $74 Billion infrastructure boom over the next 4 years in NSW alone, all the ingredients are there for massive expansion potential for building & construction companies.

Here is a graph of how spread out the construction is in a city like Sydney:

Sydney Crane Hotspot Heatmap – RLB

What this represents is so much opportunity in literally every LGA of the greater  Sydney metropolitan area. People are literally searching for construction activity in every region.

What this image does not show are the low rise buildings (one & two-story residential houses) which are going up which can be perfectly illustrated by the following map:

Western Sydney Infrastructure Map – NSW Government

The map above shows where most of the lowrise growth that does not require cranes in occurring. Many forms of construction are happening here currently, including roads, rail, airport, commercial, industrial, educational, & residential, making the potential opportunity immense for new companies to gain jobs with the help of SEO.

There are so many potential sectors that can be targeted that the opportunity to grow a new or existing business via SEO is immense in this industry, particularly B2C companies that require the end user to buy one of their product or service offerings.

Introducing SEO, something which many people in the industry may not be aware of or how it can help them sell their real estate, & make them stand out amongst the congested crowd of apartment developments & project homes.

Performing SEO for a development or construction project can mean the difference between finding a buyer, proving your authority in the tendering process & potentially achieving a higher sale price at the end of the contract.

Imagine your client typing in the keywords “best-rated builder” into google & your company website is then displayed in the organic results on the first page. That sends a strong signal to any would-be buyer of your development that you have a good reputation & takes you out of that “dodgy builder” category. This is the power SEO has, as an added benefit it will drive traffic to information on your website which could translate into a lead potentially converting into a sale.

The construction industry represents one of the biggest sectors of the Australian economy. Over the next 4 years, there is $73 Billion being spent on infrastructure by the NSW government alone, an unprecedented amount of money & the most ever invested in that space of time in history for a state in Australia.

It was recently announced that the NSW government is spending $14.4 billion in 2018 alone, ensuring a healthy pipeline of projects which could potentially spur employment growth & prop up high wages in the sector. This government-led spending boom encourages the private sector to invest, which, together with these major investments, comes with huge potential to gain an untapped marketing channel for your investments end-user market.

SEO Tips your Construction company can implement

Ensuring essential On-site SEO

Make sure you have your Brand Name & what the company does in your H1 & Title tag. This ensures you are targeting the exact demographic & keywords people would be searching for both in conjunction with your company & for its related industry. Ensure you have relevant content on the page about your development or building services your company may offer & provide value on the website rather than just using it as a lead generation as this will help in moving the website up the ranks.

Getting the correct location of your Construction business listed

Make sure you have a location page for your business with a Google map of the location, the address listed on the website in text, the geo-coordinates implemented into the LocalBusiness Schema & the business being submitted to Google My Business for insertion into the Map Listings. This ensures you can be placed on the local map listings which can be searched for on Google maps & Google recognizes your location so it can best provide searchers with the best result.

Submitting to local Directories

Make sure you submit your company to relevant industry directories such as the Architecture & Design Directory & relevant local directories such as Yellowpages, Hotfrog, LocalBD, Viasearch & Truelocal. The advantage is you get local “.com.au” websites linking to your company page which shows local relevancy & industry relevance which ties in directly with Google’s motto to show the best results for the search.

Creating industry-related content

Creating regular content on services your company provides can boost the relevancy of your website in the eyes of Google, it can give existing users a reason to return to your website & potentially grow a new audience which could potentially turn into new customers for your business.

While all sectors of digital marketing are important for your business, long term the best clients are going to be the ones that find you & the best way to do that is via SEO. We are in the midst of the biggest construction boom in the history of the state of New South Wales so now is the ideal time to think about your digital strategy & how best you can implement the tactics above with your company website to ensure your construction business gets the organic visibility exposure it deserves.