SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is the key to increasing your construction website’s ranking, boosting sales, improving brand awareness, generating more leads, and more. However, SEO can spiral down and may affect your website’s overall ranking.
But why is all happening? What factors can possibly slow down your SEO efforts and hinder you from achieving high rankings?
In this blog, we will explore the ten biggest factors holding back your SEO progress.
1. Keywords are not as competitive as you think
The higher the competition for a specific keyword, the more time it takes to achieve a higher ranking. If you are new to this SEO game, it is necessary to focus on long-tail keywords first. The keywords might have a lower search volume, yet they are more targeted and specific. Thus, making it easier for your construction website to rank higher.
In addition, targeting less competitive keywords can help build your website’s authority, making it rank higher for more competitive terms in the future.
More Actionable Tips:
- Perform comprehensive keyword research using SEMrush, Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs
- Analyze well your competition and determine words they are not targeting
- Use long-tail keywords that integrate specific phrases or questions related to your niche.
- Determine keyword difficulty and make sure to target keywords with low difficulty scores.
- Track competitor keyword rankings and target related keywords for your website.
2. Content quality
Relevant, high-quality content is critical for SEO. Content plays a crucial role in attracting and retaining web visitors. In fact, search engines like Google prioritize content that is useful, highly relevant, and well-written.
So, it shows that poor quality impacts your SEO progress. One very effective way to not hurt your SEO is to diversify your content into different formats. You can go for blog posts, videos, articles, infographics, etc.
More Actionable Tips to improve your content quality:
- Write clearly and concisely
- Research your construction topics first
- Use visuals like images and infographics
- Update old content
3. Unforeseen technical issues
Some technical SEO issues, such as slow load speed, broken links, and mobile optimization issues, go unnoticed, but they are known to affect SEO progress.
Technical SEO usually involves ensuring that your website’s overall setup assists search engines in finding and indexing your website content. Any common technical issue may prevent search engines from fully understanding your website.
Some actionable tips for most common problems:
- For broken links, you regularly check all your links and fix the broken ones asap.
- Check your meta tags if they are correct or not. Meta tags can sometimes be an issue. It is important that every page has unique and descriptive meta tags.
- Use simple, clean, and readable URLs with relevant and highly ranked keywords.
- Pay attention to the overall structure of your website.
4. Local SEO not optimized
SEO is not just global but it is local too. So, not giving it the attention, it needs is like totally ignoring the loyal construction clients who live around the corner. Local Search engine optimization plays a role in getting new potential leads near you and attracting them to your brand.
It is a hyper-focused type of search engine optimization that targets geographical areas and helps your local business connect with your target audience.
Here are some actionable performance tips for local SEO:
- Claim and optimize your Google Business Profile listing by showing accurate information about your construction business. Include contact details, address, and even operation hours.
- Use local directories and citations to show your business information consistently across the web.
- Encourage your customers to leave feedback and reviews on your GBP and respond to them immediately.
- Embed a Google Map of your company’s location on your website.
- Make sure your NAP information is consistent across all directories and platforms.
5. Insufficient Backlinks
Backlinks are the backbone of SEO, and they deserve your attention. In fact, having a strong backlink profile indicates the credibility and domain authority of your website. However, building a profile can be difficult. We see it more as an art that requires a clear strategy, patience, and, of course, the best link-building SEO services from a trusted agency.
Some few tactics to build your backlink profile:
- Broken link building: You can look for some broken links on other similar websites and businesses and suggest your content as a replacement.
- Skyscraper technique: Determine the best-performing content in your niche, create high-quality content, and connect with/reach out to the right people.
- Guest posting: create engaging, high-quality content for other similar websites within your industry. This technique provides many opportunities for backlinks and builds your brand’s authority.
- Link-building efforts: Make sure to always target high domain authority websites. Also, remember that consistency is key.
6. Google Manual actions
Manual actions taken by Google are every website’s owner’s worst nightmare. These actions often result from violating the webmaster guidelines set by Google. In many cases, it greatly slows down your SEO efforts. Yet, the good news is that you can always recover from any of the penalties by fixing the issues resulting from them.
Some actionable tips to further avoid manual actions:
- Check for crawl errors regularly and fix them right away.
- Familiarize yourself with Google’s Webmaster guidelines.
- Track backlink profiles and discard all spammy and low-quality links.
- Always keep an eye on hidden texts, keyword stuffing, and any other black hat SEO tactics that might lead to penalties.
7. Overlooking meta tags
Meta tags are the first impression of your website online, both by search engines and searchers. These tags summarize what your web page is all about, making them important for your SEO progress. However, the big problem is that many websites tend to overlook the importance of these meta tags, which often leads to missed opportunities for increased visibility in search results.
Here are some actionable tips when optimizing your meta tags:
- When optimizing keywords, use quality and relevant keywords in your title tags and keep them under sixty characters.
- Write a compelling meta description under one hundred fifty-five characters that clearly defines your page’s content and includes CTAs.
- Make use of alt tags for photos to show context and boost accessibility.
8. Not enough social signals
Likes, comments, shares and other online interactions on your social media posts are called social signals. While there is no direct relationship between search rankings and social signals, strong social engagement can impact your website’s SEO.
First, social media is a powerful tool for marketing your content and driving organic traffic to your site. Second, having a very active and fully engaged social media presence will improve your brand’s reputation, resulting in more backlinks and mentions from other reputable websites.
Some tips on how you can level up your social media SEO:
- Quality over quantity: The rule of thumb does not just post for the sake of posting. The goal is to ensure the quality of your content, making it relevant, engaging, and interactive for your audience. Social engagement is a two-way street.
- Engage more: Interact with your target audience through likes, shares, and comments. Make it all sharable so that your posts can go viral.
- Leverage influencers: In today’s marketing era, collaborating with top influencers with a huge following can positively boost your social signals.
- Sharable content: The goal is to make content that your audience will love to share. It can be a thought-provoking blog post, infographic, and more.
9. Poor Online Reputation
In today’s information age, negative reviews, comments, and feedback will absolutely harm your brand’s reputation. According to a survey, 49% of consumers trust online reviews as much as recommendations from friends and family. So, any negative comments and reviews about your business will discourage potential customers from engaging with your business and visiting your website.
Here are some actionable tips for managing your online reputation:
Track your brand mentions. Always be aware of what people say about your brand on social media. Check out online forums and platforms.
Respond to negative comments. First, address these negative comments and feedback right away. Addressing these firsthand will only show that you truly value customer feedback.
Always encourage positive feedback. Ask your satisfied customers to leave positive comments and reviews on your website or any platform. Doing so can counteract any negative comments and will improve your rating overall.
10. Not using analytics tools to track
There is a saying that goes like, “You will never improve what you do not measure.” It rings perfectly true, most especially in SEO. A lot of business people, even marketers underuse analytics tools, affecting their SEO progress.
As a construction website owner, failing to monitor your SEO efforts may lead to wasted resources. And you do not want any of this to happen. Here’s how to take full advantage of your analytics tools:
- Understand your metrics. Always know your KPIs or key performance indicators. Bounce rate, organic traffic, conversion rate, time onsite/offsite are some of the most common metrics you have to understand and track continuously.
- Use analytics tools. There are so many tools you can use to track metrics; some are free! SEMrush and Google Analytics, for example, provide valuable insights into your web’s performance and traffic.
- Track your progress. Check your metrics from time to time to see if your strategy really works. Be aware of changes and trends as well.
- Analyze and adjust. Based on your findings, fine-tune your SEO strategy. If something has to be fixed, never hesitate to change your tactics.
Achieve SEO Growth with ConstructionMarketing.io
SEO progress is a marathon, not a sprint. While challenges are always part of the process, addressing and understanding these factors that affect your SEO progress can ultimately have a big impact. However, another key here is to find out and solve these issues to speed up your SEO progress. But do you even know how to begin?
If you want to start and be committed to your SEO efforts, you can partner with us!
ConstructionMarketing.io, a leading and trusted construction marketing agency, can help you ensure your overall marketing growth. Our agency has been instrumental in helping many construction businesses reach their ideal SEO growth and achieve remarkable results. We always take pride in our strong background in construction.
From link-building services to technical SEO audits, we ensure long-term growth for your business. Here is a complete suite of our marketing services:
Get in touch with us today to achieve continuous SEO growth!