Random Ramblings Regarding SEO Wrongs in the Construction Industries

High Traffic Makes for a Tough Climb Up the SEO Ladder

Bringing more people to your website in the crowded fields of home building, construction, kitchen and bath remodels, and the like is by nature a difficult endevor, and even more so in America's eighth largest city. Faced with such a daunting task, many webmasters are understandably tempted to optimize their websites with a heavy emphasis on keyword stuffing and other well known SEO tactics. This too often occurs at the expense of readability, and I know this first hand because I just grappled with that very issue in my first sentence!

("Should I use the phrase "home building" separately or go for a more "long tail keyword"? What about "the buidling trades"? And is there a way to fit "construction companies" into the sentence structure? Hmmm...")

And so on...

Now, if you were in a more specialized field, say for example... manufacturing electric dog polishers, it wouldn't be a stretch to say that you could get on Google's front page within a month or so, even starting your website from scratch. Before you know it, you're sharing the Top 10 with a bunch of Steve Martin videos. But let's face it, considering our epic weather, San Diegans are much more likely to: a) be in the market for a new home, or b) live in a house or condo that needs repair than to have any need to polish their dog. Right?

And while it's great to know how to make your Google search results soar for your San Diego construction business (see, I did it again!), what really matters is that you communicate effectively to your best potential clients - the ones who actually read and not just look at the pretty pictures. With that little extra bit of effort, you can really make that high page ranking work for you by letting your content paint the best possible picture of your business in your readers' minds. That is the best way to build solid relationships with high value clients, whether you are a general contractor, architecture firm, interior design business, painting company, or building materials manufacturing plant (whew, that was a mouthful!).

Where to Start When it Comes to SEO for San Diego Design Firms and Construction Companies?

Without giving away the farm, one of your first tactics should be to make list of a few "long tail keywords". Start by putting together some four to six word combinations that:

• specify exactly what you make or do
• express how you do it (qualify the above further)
• explain any specialties that set you apart (this is where the "long" comes in in "long tail keywords")
• describe where you do it (maybe you want to target a particular neighborhood like Hillcrest, Encinitas or Fallbrook)

After that, find ways to put all of your most important search terms and key phrases into:

• H1, H2, and H3 page headings
• page titles
• meta descriptions
• meta keywords
• most importantly, your content!

I realize that not every individual or small business has the time or wherewithall to play the SEO game in a large market like San Diego, which is why I decided to build this site. When you sign up and start promoting your business with one or more listings, they will be categorized on pages that have already been optimized for that particular area of exprertise. For example, if you are making a listing under Stone and Tile Installation, the parent page for that category is already optimized to show results for all of San Diego in the field of masonry.

And more specifically, each listing you create also has its own page title, keywords, and meta description, and these fields are accessible right there on the page where you create and edit your listings. This data will be crawled by Google within a matter of days, meaning you could see your listing show up in search results very quickly, depending of course on how well you prepare your content, how specific you are in your description, and outside factors like the strength of the competition for that particular search term.

The link to create a new listing is here. And if you want some help creating your listing, please don't hesitate to ask.

In short, there is no reason that San Diego's small businesses in the design and buidling trades shouldn't be given every opportunity to be found on the web, and that's what this site is for.

Until next time,
Vince