Content Marketing for the Building Industry. Focused on less blah, blah, blah and creating more meaningful content.
building connections: is your website showing up?
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Hi Reader, I see this at least 1x a year, and it drives me bonkers: prioritizing website design over marketing strategy. To put it in residential construction terms, the design supersedes the functionality. ARRRRGGH! Last week, I conducted a website analysis on a design-build remodeling company’s site, and low-and-behold, the site does not have a single service page. Not one. 😲 The site is pretty, but from a holistic perspective, it’s not functional. How can this company be found online without mentioning home remodeling services? There isn’t a kitchen remodeling, bathroom remodeling, or home additions page—essential elements of their business! And you know what makes me pace around my office? I see this at least once a year! A website designer takes advantage of a small business remodeling company by handing over a lovely website that will not generate traffic. Why? Because they don’t know a thing about content and SEO. A pretty website doesn’t cut it in 2025! Last year, I worked with a remodeling contractor who spent thousands of dollars on a website redesign that didn’t provide much SEO value. The company he worked with handed him a beautiful website, but according to my client, they never emphasized how the existing content needed to be revised to drive traffic. This is what they left him with: None of these pages are 1) service pages and 2) generating traffic. Notice the big goose egg under the traffic column. We ended up throwing out the content marketing “playbook” they provided him and focusing his marketing dollars on rewriting his service pages before we ever broached writing any blog articles or project stories. The goal was to get his website to generate traffic for his core offerings! By the way, service pages are the highest value for any service-based business. This is where the site is today, a year later: This site is now generating traffic for all its remodeling services: home remodeling, kitchen remodeling, home additions, and bathroom remodeling. We also continue to add project stories that generate localized search traffic for Dallas suburbs like Plano and Allen. Here’s another example from a different client. This page went live less than two weeks ago, and it’s already generating targeted traffic for a town in their service area. Although the market is becoming more competitive and SEO is becoming more challenging, it still works quite well for construction and home service companies.
Do you know if you are showing up? It’s okay if you don’t. SEO and analysis are skills, just like carpentry. You wouldn’t try to build a house without the right tools or expertise, and you shouldn’t try to optimize your website without understanding the ins and outs of SEO. Just like carpenters measure twice and cut once, SEO requires precision and ongoing adjustments to ensure your site stands out and ranks well. With the right approach, you can ensure that your business stands out in search results and your local market. If you want to see how your site is showing up online, check out your Google Analytics. It's free! Watch: How to Use Google Analytics to Identify Your Top Pages Wishing you a wonderful rest of your week, Tess Wittler |
Tess Wittler, Marketing Consultant
Content Marketing for the Building Industry. Focused on less blah, blah, blah and creating more meaningful content.
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