Martin Calvert of property-focused marketing agency Blueclaw (www.blueclaw.co.uk) shares his insight into the most effective ways for developers, builders, architects and other property professionals can win in SEO.
Property sector professionals know that competition can be fierce. If they’re not choosing a supplier based upon an existing relationship, formal process or word of mouth, there’s a slim window to capture the attention of potential private and commercial customers when they are conducting online research.
When it comes to making the decision to work or partner with a developer, contractor or architect, trust is all important.
Customers trust their own networks, referrals and – importantly – companies who can demonstrate that they are efficient, responsive and with local credibility.
It’s for this reason that there has been a trend towards a renewed focus on local SEO.
In this short article, we’re going to talk about how local search engine optimisation strategies can make sure your business is found and seen as a great option by potential customers in the regions where you’re active.
What is local SEO?
SEO is a method of winning new business by taking steps to give your company greater presence and prominence in search engine results for the search terms used by customers looking for your services.
Local SEO is the regional side of this type of strategy, making sure that your company is showcased in map views and results for specific geographical areas e.g. ‘architect Swindon’.
Showing up in the ‘three pack’ of companies that is visible at the top of search engine results is the ideal outcome from a local SEO perspective, increasing the likelihood that you’ll get traffic from potential customers who are looking for businesses like yours in their local area – an activity that shows clear ‘intent-to-buy’.
To show what we mean, here are the results of that ‘architect Swindon’ search:
If your firm is one of the three-pack seen, this means it is pretty likely that the search engine user will explore your company. That’s not the full story though.
The top three companies listed in this section are often different depending on the location of the person searching.
Three search engine users running that same search who are a couple of kilometres apart, though still in the same locale, will very probably see a different set of three results.
What this comes down to is that there isn’t much chance to force your way into this three-pack view unless you have a tiny amount of competition.
The best approach to maximise local SEO performance is to make sure you are properly categorised as a brick-and-mortar business with presence and credibility in your local region.
Upon clicking the map in the view we showed above, the search engine user is shown up to 20 businesses that match the search term they used.
Getting on this extended list is the critical part of local SEO as it is from here that the top 3 results are taken for the three-pack view, with the particular three chosen by Google based largely on the proximity to the search engine user.
To be categorised appropriately as a ‘local’ firm, there are three key steps to follow:
- Set up your Google MyBusiness profile – and keep it up to date
A Google MyBusiness profile ( https://www.google.co.uk/business/ ) is free and available to any business – but too many companies neglect it.
It serves as a central point of content about your company. By adding information about your firm you are giving Google the details it requires to categorise you accurately, and serve up the right details to search engine users.
Information like opening hours, office/vehicle pictures, examples of work, reviews, contact details and more are supported, and once added, can be presented by Google directly on search engine page results.
This gives people looking for companies like yours more information about your firm, and more of a basis to decide to choose to work with you rather than some other firm – or at least to ensure that you are on their shortlist.
It’s worth nothing that SEO is not just about being visible online – it’s about making sure you’re putting your best foot forward and making information available to potential customers – helping them to buy.
- Earn links to your site from other local websites
Links pointing to your site from local media publications, blogs and even business directories all help to confirm to search engines that you are a company with local credentials, and so should be a top result when people type in looking for your services plus a geographical term.
Links, citations and mentions in business directories are fairly straightforward – identify those that are of most relevant to your local area and ensure that they are kept up to date. Making sure that the contact details, address and other info you have listed with them matches up with the data you’ve submitted on Google MyBusiness is key – search engines do not like inconsistency.
In terms of the media, you can win links by making it a company priority to insist that your website is linked to whenever you get local media coverage. If coverage is a challenge, invest time in finding ways to make yourself and your services more newsworthy – partner up with other businesses, sports teams, councils and more if it means you get that coverage, and all-important link.
Keeping up progress in this area will help increase your local credibility and increase your chances of being seen in that valuable three-pack map-view of search results.
- Commit to Improving On-page SEO
Technical, on-page SEO can seem mysterious and a different language but it’s really quite logical. The purpose as ever is to make sure your site is understood correctly by search engines.
Some key principles that will have an impact are
- Making sure that your business name and address details are readable on every page, likely on the footer. These details must be consistent with what you have in your MyBusiness profile, and any coverage you have elsewhere in the media or business directories.
- Getting slightly more technical, having your town/area stated in the meta descriptions (and Title, Image Alt and H1 tags) of your website’s pages will be a boost too.
One very practical result of this second step is that when your business is shown in search engine results, information about your location will also be displayed.
Using the fictional example of ‘ABC Architect’, this may look something like this:
‘Swindon Architect| ABC Architect Ltd
https://www.ABCArchitect.com/locations/swindon
Established in 1992, ABC Architect in Swindon is an award-winnng architecture firm, working with all aspects of design and build. To discuss your project call 01234 567 891’