Tips To Build A Contractor Website
Its been clear for a while now that a website is an essential asset for your construction company. There are still quite a few “Professional Home Builders” who do not take a website seriously enough.
This is your opportunity!
When opportunity knocks, are you taking advantage? Having a website for your construction company is a must today if you want to survive long-term. There is absolutely no reason for a contractor not to have a website with all the free and paid options to build a company website.
Don’t ignore, embrace online marketing and build your construction company website. With a little bit of knowledge and the help of YouTube, we can achieve anything within reason! If you have the time to learn and the drive to learn, you can build a website for your company that you are proud to display.
Outlined below are steps to build a construction website:
1. Get a domain name. To have a website, you first need a domain name that describes your company, preferably the company name as short as possible. Domain names are often referred to as a URL(Uniform Resource Locator). They have top-level domains(TLD) like .com, .net, .org, .io, and many more. While we recommend using a .com TLD, other options can be used to great effect. One of the best examples of creative domain name TLD is del.icio.us and proves that with some creativity, you can use TLDs to great effect.
2. Choose a website builder. Sure, you can hand-code a website, but who does that any more? Website builders are plenty when it comes to building a construction website. Search for “free website builder,” and you will get about 434,000,000 results. Sure, you can develop your construction website with one of the free options. Still, you will sacrifice quality, functionality, and ability to optimize your website for search in most cases. We recommend and use WordPress for construction websites because of the ease of use and robust development community. Yes, WordPress is also free and very powerful; 39.6% of all sites on the internet use WordPress in 2021, according to Hosting Tribunal.
3. Purchase hosting services. This is an essential step and is often bundled with the purchase of a domain name. Using a proven hosting service that is rated high in WordPress server speed is highly recommended. A website hosting service can affect your website’s performance, especially the speed factor. Having a fast website is a must in today’s world, and choosing the cheapest hosting option can deter your construction website in terms of load time. Find independent data on the Time to First Byte(TTFB) to tell if a web host is as fast as they claim. Another option to look for is easy WordPress installation on the server. Having an easy way to install WordPress is very common now and will help you save time and hassle.
4. Choose a construction theme. A theme is an overall style, look, and feel of your website. You can find thousands of different designs searching for construction themes, but you need to keep in mind a few things. Like, check on the developer support availability because if something breaks during an update, will you fix it? It would be best if you are looking for a theme to be mobile responsive, quick to load, and have cross-browser compatibility at the minimum. A good construction theme fits with your brand in terms of colors, fonts, and overall feel.
5. Design to your brand. Now is where you make your website look like your company brand. Your logo is the center of your brand, with your construction company’s font, colors, and feel all packed together. Putting your logo at the top left is considered a best practice when optimizing your website. The hero section is arguably the most critical part of your page because it creates the first impression. The hero area is what you see on the full screen when your website first loads, sometimes above the fold. You should have your best photo(s) in the hero section with a call to action to get potential customers to take some action. This whole process will seem complicated until you get started then it will get easier the more you work with WordPress.
6. Add pages. A one-page website can be enough if you are just getting started. Most construction/remodeling companies will want at least a three-page website, including services and a portfolio page. No matter the number of pages, make sure each page has plenty of written content, which will help with your SEO. It is recommended to have at least 500+ words on a page, with blog posts increasing 1000+ words per article. Make sure to utilize visuals, including images, video, and photos.
7. Test, test, and test some more. Testing is one of the most critical steps that is often overlooked. You need to test your website to find where the errors are before your potential customers. Check all of your contact forms and make sure you are getting the form email. Check to make sure all the images have the alternate text and all of your headings are correctly tagged. Outgoing links need to be tested, as well as internal links. Testing can take many forms; you can use tools to help audit your website’s health, you can manually check it page by page, you need to test it.
8. Make it easy to contact. Many contractors, heck, most businesses, hide their contact information behind a few clicks. It is recommended that you display your contact information, phone number at the top of your website. A potential customer should find your contact info as soon as the page loads if you are a contractor providing services.
If you have made it this far and have your construction website online, good job, you are ahead of most. Once built, a website needs to be optimized to help attract and retain potential customers. These same human optimization techniques are similar to Search Engine Optimization.
Are there tips to optimize my construction website?
- Use descriptive, accurate language for the titles of your pages. It is best practice to put different products, topics, or services on other pages. Write unique titles for every page.
- Completely list all of your offerings. You can list your offerings/products in lists, on a services page, or a new page for every service you offer. Google can only know what you tell it about your business offerings.
- Update your website often. Google and potential customers like updates, so give them updates. You can list current jobs you are on, new services or offerings, new hires, and promotions. Any news or changes in your company you can update on your website.
- Be topical with your content. For example, if your construction company also offers snow plowing, be sure to feature the construction in the summer and plowing in the winter when people are looking for it. If a new trend starts for outdoor living and you offer deck construction, highlight it prominently.
- Use text to convey information. Text is most accessible for Google to understand, so if you have words on images, it might not be understood by Google. For example, if you have your company name displayed as an image, make sure to use your company name in the page text as well.
Pro Tip: Clearly display your social media channels. Make sure that your social media business pages are branded to match your website.
Online brand management is becoming a growing indicator for search rankings. Having multiple positive reviews on networks like Google, Yelp, Facebook, House, and LinkedIn will give data to Google that your business is popular and it can positively affect your rankings. Online reviews carry the most weight for your companies reputation, most likely when a potential customer is researching you. Having positive reviews give social proof that you can do what you say you can do. It may take some time, but you should encourage past and current customers to leave a review to build your “social proof” and generate trust for your company.
The most important thing is to get started, don’t wait to build your construction website. If you still are feeling overwhelmed, don’t fret; you are not alone. Over 40% of business owners with a website choose to have someone outside of their company build the company website. Only 5.7% of new websites rank in Google’s top 10 search results for at least one keyword within the first year, according to a study by ahrefs.com.
Further in the ahrefs study shows that 66.31% of pages don’t have even a single backlink. This is where you could pull ahead of the pack and get your company website to rank high in Google. Get as many backlinks as you can pointing to multiple pages of your website, not just your home page.
Hopefully, now you have the information to move forward and take that step to build your construction company website.
If you have decided that you don’t have the time, reach out, and we can help with a custom solution to help build your construction website.
