If you want to reach more customers online, it may take some adjustment to your SEO strategy. That starts with understanding web searcher behavior.
Building materials customers often start their search in a predictable way. They’ll fire up a search engine like Google, type in a simple keyphrase, and land on a website that hopefully displays helpful info on where to buy.
It seems simple enough from a consumer perspective, but the backend of SEO and achieving a top-listed result can be a challenging undertaking. One way to eliminate national competition for search engine results is to approach SEO with a local, geo-targeted strategy.
Building material manufacturer sites without good local SEO can end up frustrating buyers, and may even cause them to look elsewhere. With 68% of all trackable web traffic originating in search engines, and 88% of local mobile searchers calling or visiting a nearby business within 24 hours, it’s important to make sure your site shows up when local searches are made.
Contractors, homeowners, architects, and others who visit your site might be highly motivated to buy, and you don’t want to appear low on the results list when they’re at the bottom of the funnel. Use these 4 local SEO strategies to serve dealers and other buyers in their neighborhoods and take advantage of sustainable leads and sales down the line.
Strategy 1: Localized Page Content
For users that have geolocation detection enabled, Google automatically shows them relevant results that are local to them. If someone who lives in New Haven, CT is searching for “ceramic tile,” they’re likely to find retailers or dealers in that city, even though a location wasn’t specified in the search query. Having localized page content vastly improves your chances of being found by customers in this way, since you can bypass the nationwide competition.
A well-oiled blog with fresh content is one of the cornerstones of good SEO. According to Tech Client, blogging regularly can increase search traffic by over 400%. It’s a chance to demonstrate thought leadership while optimizing for common search terms in your market.
However, it’s time to take your blogging local. Blog content that not only targets popular keywords, but is relevant to your customers and their local market, and is a winning proposition for both search rankings and traffic.
For an example of great local blog content, consider Allura’s approach in writing about residential siding in Arizona. This page appears to be optimized for the local search term “house siding Arizona,” which should be effective in bringing Arizona customer traffic to the site.
Another example is Brava Roof Tile’s blog post about cedar shake roofing. A contractor, architect, or homeowner local to Salt Lake City, Utah who enters a search query like “cedar shakes salt lake city ut” may easily find a page like this one, that speaks directly to their needs.
Strategy 2: A Dealer Locator Optimized for Local SEO
Most building materials manufacturers have a web page that lists local dealers, supposedly to direct customers on where to buy.
However, these pages are often inconvenient for users. They’re often plagued with one or more of these problems:
- All dealers are listed on just one or two hard-to-navigate webpages.
- There are no clickable, direct links to the dealer’s sites.
- There are no maps.
- Store hours, addresses, and other dealer information is out of date, or just plain incorrect.
Obstacles like these get in the way of sales, but with the right software powering your website, you can keep potential customers on the journey they’ve started.
Bullseye Location Software is your all-in-one solution. It dynamically generates thousands of optimized, SEO-friendly local pages that point customers to dealers and contractors near them. Thanks to seamless integration with Google My Business, these pages have up-to-date retailer info, maps, and other key data that gives customers confidence when choosing a dealer.
A dealer locator software like Bullseye gives you the power to create content that’s personalized and relevant to your website users’ needs. The sooner you connect them to useful local information, the faster and more often sales can happen.
Strategy 3: Localized Lead Generation Websites
Localized lead gen sites aren’t as obvious a tactic as other SEO methods, but they’re a powerful tool for carving out a larger slice of the search traffic pie.
To be clear, these sites are different from your main website. They’re separate websites that are built to take advantage of local SEO keywords. They also make it easy for customers to enter their name, phone number, and other contact info as soon as they arrive on the page, which makes these sites powerful lead-capturing machines.
Two great examples of this are furnished by Warmup. They have a Canadian site and an American site. Both are optimized to generate leads in their respective countries, as they speak separately to US and Canadian buyers of heating solutions.
As you build out your own localized lead generating site, follow these best practices:
- Keep the website content focused on long-tail keyphrases that relate both to the local region and the types of customers you serve.
- Ensure that both your on-page SEO (such as keyword-optimized content, schema markup, and metadata) as well as your off-page SEO (such as backlinks from local websites) are implemented well.
- Engage local customers through social media links, blog comment sections, and more — with a focus on keeping it hyper-relevant to where they live and what their needs are.
When done right, lead gen websites give you a bigger footprint in search engines, with a special edge in big cities and highly competitive regional markets. They also funnel more leads to your local partners, which will help solidify your dealer relationships.
Strategy 4: Localized SEM Landing Pages
Most of the “local SEO” discussion entails organic strategies. However, don’t ignore search engine marketing (SEM), which involves intentional, targeted campaigns in pursuit of paid search traffic.
SEM taps into guaranteed, high-intent traffic. By adding localized SEM landing pages to all the other strategies we’ve discussed, you’ll tie together a complete approach to reaching customers wherever your business can sell to them. This is because you’ll be tapping into two kinds of search traffic: users who go straight to the organic search listings, and users who click on and engage with ads.
To get all the benefits of local optimization, SEM landing pages should feature keyphrases specific to your customers’ location. Traffic in this case, is originating from Google or YouTube ads, so make sure your ads “pre-frame” customers properly for the content they’re about to see…whether you’re offering a free consultation, quotes from local dealers, or gated content to educate and inform buying decisions.
You’ll also want to include maps, testimonials from prominent local buyers, and other relevant content that users will instantly recognize. These elements can make your landing pages feel more personalized, ultimately helping them convert better.
Targeted Local SEO Attracts Relevant, Highly-Motivated Buyers to Your Site
SEO works. Optimizing your website around a few generic keywords, however, isn’t enough. Contractors, architects, builders, and homeowners looking for your brand are best served by localized content that instantly feels familiar to them.
If you can show customers that your brand and dealers exist in their neck of the woods, you’ll sell more products and see more returns from your online presence. Implement the local SEO tips we’ve shared above, and the results will speak for themselves.
To see the real potential of local optimization for building materials manufacturers, you’ll want to have the Bullseye Dealer Locator Software on your side.
Sign up for an assessment of your current dealer locator page to see the lead generation and sales opportunities Bullseye provides.
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