Want to increase remodeling leads and book more high-dollar jobs? SEO for remodelers will do it. In this post, you’ll learn what SEO is, how it benefits your remodeling company, and how to implement a winning remodeling SEO strategy in 10 steps. The result? Leads that can convert 14x better on average than leads from print ads.
In November, 2007, House & Garden magazine delivered its final print edition before officially closing after more than 100 years in publication.
RIP House & Garden, November 2007
I’ll be honest—it wasn’t surprising. It was around this time that access to the world wide exploded and homeowners started ditching design magazines in favor of websites and digital media.
Now? Homeowners can plan, coordinate, and pay for a remodeling project all from their mobile phone. When they need to find a remodeler, 97% head to Google, and currently, homeowners perform more than 660,000 online searches for remodeling services per month.Considering more than 90% of people don’t go past the first page of search results, if you want homeowners to find and hire you, your website needs to be at the top of Google. How you get there is with search engine optimization (SEO).
You’re great at remodels. In fact, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt that you’re the absolute BEST remodeler in your market. Being a remodeler, you probably spend more time drafting up blueprints and coordinating project deliverables than you do poking around your website. That’s exactly why we created this easy-to-follow guide—one that’s implemented in 10 steps and produces leads that convert 14x better than print ads.
We used the same 10 steps to increase one kitchen remodeler’s leads by 486% percent, so you know they work. Keep reading to see the 10 steps to SEO success.
Want to skip the hard work and just have the experts take care of your SEO for you? Smart decision—and one you won’t regret. Contact us here »
Why SEO Is the Best Remodeling Marketing Strategy
Search engine optimization is the best marketing strategy for remodelers because it puts you in front of homeowners at the exact moment they’re searching for your services. That’s why SEO leads have a 14.6 percent close rate, compared to only 1.7 percent for outbound leads like print ads.
How SEO Works
Here’s how SEO actually works: Google and other search engines crawl pages on the web, indexing and categorizing them in what would be the universe’s biggest library. When you search for something online, you’re putting in a request to the library. Google uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to decipher your search term and produce web pages with the information you’re looking for.
Here’s where SEO comes in. Search crawlers speak a different language than we do—HTML. So, they need some extra help to determine what a web page is about so they can correctly index it.
Think of it like this: you’ve gone to the world’s biggest library, but the librarian speaks Russian, and all the books are in English. By optimizing your website for search, you’re using specific tactics—like adding in extra bits of code and structuring your website a specific way—that act like subtitles and make it easier for crawlers to understand, categorize, and index each web page.SEO is arguably the most reliable and profitable remodeling marketing tactic. But, before you ditch all your other advertising methods, understand that SEO is a lot like the stock market. You pick stocks—your keywords—based on information available at the time. Then, you wait for the returns, occasionally tweaking your strategy. Depending on how well-optimized your presence is, it can take anywhere from three months to a year to gather steam.
Like the stock market, results fluctuate—often due to factors like seasonal or yearly consumer behavior, Google algorithm tweaks, and advances in digital technology. That’s why we recommend diversifying your online marketing portfolio with these other remodeling marketing strategies.
Also like the stock market, one thing is certain: if you play your cards right with SEO, you’ll get accelerated returns as time goes on.
Proof SEO Works for Remodelers (When Done Right)
I like to put my money where my mouth is, so I’ll prove to you that SEO works for remodelers.
Back in 2010, a remodeler came to us with a problem (if your company was around back then, you probably had a similar issue): their leads had trailed off over the past couple of years, and they were struggling to increase new projects.
It was an easy fix—we upgraded their website and optimized it for search engines, and leads grew by 80% over ONE YEAR.
Want another example? Hold onto your hats.
Some years ago, a kitchen designer in the Washington, DC area came to us with a similar problem. We whipped out our mad SEO skills, and check out what happened with their website visits and leads:
1,522% increase in organic website traffic from SEO486% increase in leads from organic search
With targeted, long-term SEO, this remodeler saw 4x the leads and 15x the website traffic—and he didn’t have to lift a finger.
Remodeling SEO: 10 Search Engine Optimization Steps to Follow
The 10 steps below are the ones you should take to optimize your online presence for search engines. Before you dive in, remember that SEO is similar to investing in the stock market—it can go south real quick if you don’t know what you’re doing. Just like hiring a financial manager if you’re not a stock expert, I highly recommend you reach out to a remodeling SEO expert (like Blue Corona) if you’re iffy about any of the steps below.
SEO Step 1: Pick the Right Remodeling SEO Keywords
SEO is built on keywords, and picking the right keywords is like picking the right stocks. It’s a double-edged sword, though—pick the wrong keywords, and your SEO strategy will collapse like an unsupported roof.
Also, like stocks, the bigger, better, lead-enhancing keywords tend to have more competition and a higher cost, so you need to pick your keywords and phrases carefully.
You should pick your keywords based on:
Your target audience – This comes from experience. What does your target audience search for? How do they speak?
The keywords’ volume – You can use a tool like Google’s Keyword Planner and the free tool Keywords Everywhere to find out a keyword’s monthly search volume
The keywords’ implicated search intent – “remodeling company reviews” implies much more commercial intent than “kitchen design trends.” For the highest impact, choose commercially-inclined keywords that indicate the consumer is ready to start a conversation.
The keywords’ competition – The more people that choose to optimize for a keyword the harder it is to rank for it. That’s why you’re going to have a LOT more trouble ranking for “remodeler” than “bathroom remodeler near 20886”. Google Keyword Planner will be your best bet. Most tools that find how much competition you have are paid tools, but we use Moz and SEMRush (to name a few) the most often.
Sound overwhelming? I did some basic legwork for you. Below are the top general remodeling keywords, their competition level (how hard it is to get traction for this keyword), and their search volume:
As a reminder, the days of throwing 100 keywords into a web page and calling it good are gone (good riddance.). By all means, try it—but be prepared for disappointment.
Dive deeper into this topic by catching up on the following blogs:
SEO Step 2: Discover How You Stack Up to other Remodelers in Your Area
Once you’ve got your keywords, you need to find out how you’re currently performing in the search engines compared to your local competitors. While there are more than 200 factors that affect a page’s search rankings, the ones that matter the most are:
Whether or not your website is secure (HTTPS vs. HTTP)
Whether or not your website is mobile-friendly
How fast web pages load on your site
Whether a web page has the correct schema markup (a type of website code)
The quality of your web pages’ content
Presence of social signals that point back to your website
Presence of quality backlinks that point back to your website
Whether or not you have optimized images on your web pages
List all the above factors in an Excel document, then make columns for yourself and each of your top competitors. Then, compare yourself. You might find that you’re performing much better or much worse in some categories, but that will give you a good view of the playing field (or, we can do an SEO analysis for you).
Dive deeper into the topic above by catching up on the following blog:
SEO Step 3: Make Technical SEO Improvements to Your Remodeling Website
Once you’ve got the results of your SEO analysis, move on to fixing your website’s technical issues. If I could give you one remodeler SEO tip and that’s it, it would be to clean up your website. This includes:
Security – There is a cyber-attack every 39 seconds, and 43% of cyber-attacks target small businesses. Not only that, but 82% of people won’t browse an unsecured site.
Speed – Half of U.S. consumers expect a web page to load in 2 seconds or less and will leave if it takes longer. Test your site speed here.
Mobile-friendliness – Consumers now spend more than five hours a day on their smartphones, and 50.7 percent of searches for remodeling keywords happen on a mobile device:
Schema –Schema markup is a type of HTML markup that is universally understood by search engines. Schema removes any guessing games, allowing you to tell Google EXACTLY what the content on your web page is about, increasing your chances of ranking higher and lessening your chances of Google misunderstanding what your page is about.
Warning: some remodelers will dump tens of thousands of dollars into a pretty website that ends up hurting their overall web presence because it doesn’t function properly. Yes, your remodeling company’s website design matters a LOT, but it still has to operate smoothly. The best SEO services (like ours) always include cleaning up your website. If your SEO company doesn’t include website clean-up, find a better SEO company.
Dive deeper into the topics above by catching up on the following blogs:
SEO Step 4: Optimize Your Existing Web Pages for Search Engines
Once you’ve got your keywords and your website is cleaned up, you need to optimize your current website pages.
Make sure each page has a Title Tag and Meta Description that includes your keywords. Most websites you’ll see include an SEO plugin in the backend where you can enter in your page’s title and meta description. Here’s an example:
Make sure each page THOROUGHLY addresses each page’s subject. If someone would have ANY questions after they’re done reading it, you’re not done writing it.
Always use heading tags, which help search engines understand the structure and topic of your page. Do not use heading tags for emphasis—you can set that in your CSS stylesheet. Each page should have ONE H1 tag, multiple supporting H2 tags, and if you need them, a few H3 tags.
Ensure the key phrase you’re optimizing for—and variations of your key phrase—are used throughout your landing pages. That being said, avoid keyword stuffing (when you use your keyword as many times as possible). Here’s a tip: enter your target key phrase into an incognito Google Search (don’t know what an incognito search is? A regular Google search will work almost as well). Once the search results have populated, look for the “People also ask” and “Searches related to” sections. Make sure to answer those questions and include information on searches related to your main key phrase.
Optimize every single webpage for these attributes.
Don’t Forget Image SEO!
Remodeling is a unique industry because of how visual it is. As such, you need to be extra careful about using proper image SEO. Why? Because at least 23% of clicks on Google go to images, like in the image below:
That number rises each month, and Research from ViSenze found 62% of Generation Z and millennial consumers want visual search capabilities, more than any other new technology.
Dive deeper into the topic above by catching up on the following blogs:
SEO Step 5: Optimize Your Local SEO Properties, Including Social Media and Google My Business
Local SEO for remodelers gets your company at the top of search results for your local service area. It’s different than regular SEO because of the emphasis on the local pack (or map listing) in Google’s search results.
The information in the local pack is pulled from your Google My Business Account, which is why your GMB account needs to be claimed and optimized for local SEO.
How to Optimize Your Google My Business Account
Google My Business (GMB) is the fastest way to list your company on Google Maps and (potentially) gain exposure in the Google local pack, depending on your location and the competitive landscape on Google. Google uses the data on your Google My Business page to display your company’s:
Phone number
Services
Address
Business hours
Average reviews
Specials, coupons, and updates (Google Posts)
To optimize your Google My Business page, follow these steps:
Choose the appropriate business categories on GMB.
Write a long (200–300 words), keyword-rich description for your business.
Include the correct NAP information (Name, Address, Phone number).
Add a link to your website
Connect your social media and online review profiles
Add photos. Lots and lots of photos. This is key for remodelers.
Reviews are part of optimizing your local presence—88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations, so having a negative reputation online may deter potential clients from contacting your company. Getting more Google reviews and reviews on other online business directories can help increase your exposure on page one of Google.
Dive deeper into the topic above by catching up on the following blogs:
Now that you’ve taken care of the most important SEO ranking factors, it’s time to beef up your SEO efforts. Look through your website pages and make sure you have a dedicated web page for each service you provide. Think you’ve got them all? Browse through all of your competitors’ websites. Do they have any you’re missing?
Don’t forget Galleries, About, Testimonials, and other authority-building pages. Since you’re a remodeler, gallery and image pages will be gold—homeowners browse images for months (even years) to get inspiration for their remodeling projects, so having plenty of amazing pictures to fuel their remodeling dreams will pay off in the long run.
Dive deeper into the topic above by catching up on the following blogs:
SEO Step 7: Create SEO-Friendly Content, Including a Blog
You need a remodeling blog. It’s doesn’t have to be fancy, and you don’t need to add a new entry every day, but you do need one.
Not only does having a blog increase your chances of ranking on search engines by 434%, but it also builds trust in your remodeling company. Modern homeowners like to do their own research, which is why it’s so important to have digestible content that answers questions someone might have.
Bottom line—the better content you have, the higher you’ll rank, and the more leads you’ll get. Here’s why: 82% of customers have a more positive outlook on a company after reading custom content, and 70% of customers feel closer to a company after reading or watching their content.
And hey—who knows? You may write just the blog they need to make a final purchasing decision.
Google rewards great content in the search engines, but you can’t just throw up a 500-word blog full of word vomit. The best blogs (the ones that rank number one):
Are (typically) more than 2,000 words
Completely cover the topic
Have great images that illustrate the concept
Have videos accompanying the text
Are digestible (meaning any average Susan can read and understand it)
Are optimized for search engines
Dive deeper into the topic above by catching up on the following blogs:
Backlinks (links back to your website) are viewed as votes of confidence in your content and have a huge weight in the search engine algorithm. The more links you have back to a web page, the more authoritative Google assumes it is, and the higher you’ll rank in search engines. Building backlinks is not a passive remodeling SEO strategy—you need to stay on top of it, keep building more, and monitor the links you do have.
Great sources of backlinks:
Get interviewed
Reach out to local news stations and offer your expertise
Write guest articles on remodeling websites
Reach out to local bloggers and influencers to collaborate
Submit articles to interior design publications
Literally, just write more articles and submit them to any remodeling-related publication or blog
Promote your content on social media
Build internal links (link one page of your website to another page on your website)
Create amazing infographics and videos and amplify them by submitting them to publications and creating social ads
Claim every listing in local and industry directories (like the ones listed above for Local SEO citations)
Dive deeper into the topic above by catching up on the following blogs:
None of the above will work if you don’t measure, track, and analyze that data. Doing so will help you determine which remodeling marketing strategies work and which should be changed or eliminated.
However, don’t make the same mistake many remodelers make by looking at metrics when they should be looking at Key Performance Indicators (KPI).
These are metrics:
Rankings
Social shares
Impressions
Brand mentions
Website traffic
Bounce rate
You need to monitor the metrics above because these metrics give context to your KPIs. However, you should NOT make marketing decisions solely based on them. These are the KPIs that should drive your digital marketing strategy:
Total new booked projects
Leads
Revenue
Return on marketing investment (ROMI)
Lead-to-sale conversion rate
Booking rate (from calls)
Cost per lead (CPL)
Dive deeper into the topic above by catching up on the following blogs:
SEO Step 10: Tweak Your SEO Campaign Based on Analysis
The final step is to look at the results you’ve gotten and tweak your strategy based on those results. The best way to do this is to have a year-over-year comparison of your KPIs and another of your competitive analysis. Over time, you should see incremental improvements in all your categories.
You can rinse and repeat everything that’s working, but if you saw a decrease or not much movement in one category, like web traffic, it’s time to switch up your strategy. Here—I’ll make it a little easier for you:
If you saw a decrease in…
Website traffic – Find out which pages have decreased traffic. Did you alter them in any way? Did they get slower? Are there any broken links? Do you have any alerts from Google? Revert what you did and see if traffic increases.
Rankings – find out which rankings fell, and optimize the pages as fully as you can.
Leads – Was it calls or web forms? Are your web forms working? Are there outside factors contributing (like seasonality or economic influencers)? Analyze where previous leads came from, find the channel that’s lagging, and tweak your strategy.
New booked projects – Are leads down? Are you attracting the right kind of leads? Once you find the root cause, you can fix it.
Once you’ve gathered enough data, it’s time to start the process over again for the next quarter! The goal is to have a continual flywheel of tracking, testing, tweaking, and repeating.
It’s Go Time: Need Help with Remodeling SEO? We’re Standing By
We covered a lot in this remodeling SEO guide, and if you feel a bit lost, don’t fret about it. This is hard stuff, which is why there are remodeling SEO companies like Blue Corona. I’ve given you enough information to get started on an SEO strategy of your own, but if you need a helping hand or someone to guide you through the process, I’m happy to help.
Contact my team and tell us about your situation. We’ll listen to your frustrations and give you honest feedback and recommendations, and hopefully, we can help you use SEO to turn a dime into a dollar.
Blue Corona's Editorial Staff is determined to help you increase your leads and sales, optimize your marketing costs, and differentiate your brand by passing on our tribal knowledge. The team vigilantly stays on top of the latest in digital marketing, bringing you the top insights with expert commentary. Want to see something on our blog you haven't seen yet? Shoot us an email and our marketing team will get to work.
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SEO (search engine optimization) and paid media are the two most effective ways to increase qualified visitors to your website. If your business doesn’t dominate the first page of search results, you’re losing business to your competition. We help you maximize your search engine real estate across both paid and organic listings on search engines like Google and Bing. This drives more qualified website traffic, calls, and leads to your business (and not your competitors’).
At Blue Corona, we take care of your website for you—from start to finish. The best part? You own 100% of everything we create—the code, content, design—everything. Our websites capture the uniqueness of your brand, deliver a seamless user experience, and serve as the launchpad for your digital marketing campaigns. We provide:
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However, don’t make the same mistake many remodelers make by looking at metrics when they should be looking at Key Performance Indicators (KPI).
These are metrics:
