Olivia Atkinson
Keyword research is the first step to optimising your website for certain keywords. Without effectively using keywords, how else can you ensure your website gets found on search engines?
In this blog, we walk you through the most effective way to conduct keyword research and how different types of keywords can generate different results.
What Is Construction Keyword Research?
Keyword research is the process of researching popular search terms people type into search engines like Google.
You then include those terms strategically in your content so that your content appears higher on the search engine results page.
Part of the keyword research process involves choosing a topic, which in this case will be based on the product, service or solution your building products company provides.
Let’s use an acoustic company as an example if it provides acoustic solutions to commercial properties such as offices, retail and hospitality.
You wouldn’t want to mention acoustic solutions for the home unless you provide that service. Otherwise, you'll generate the wrong kind of traffic to your website, people who aren't your audience without use for your product. As a result, alienating your actual audience.
When you go through the process of keyword research it's normal to have around 200 keywords depending on your industry and the number of services you offer.
That may sound like a lot but your keywords should reflect search terms, so you may have to flip them around. So ‘acoustic solutions for shops’ could also be ‘shop acoustic solutions’ depending on how people word it.
Different Types Of Construction Keywords
You may have read the previous section and questioned how long a keyword can be, it doesn’t have to be a single word, it can be a few words or even a phrase.
There are two types of keywords, they’re short tail keywords and long tail keywords.
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Short Tail Construction Keywords
Short tail keywords consist of 3 words or less. Sticking with the acoustics, an example could be “acoustic specialists” “office acoustics” “retail acoustics”.
It’s likely people search this way when they are initially researching a topic. If they can’t find what they’re looking for they’ll adjust their search term to be more specific, making it a long tail keyword.
Short tail keywords are harder to rank for as they’re vague, every single acoustic company in the country will be competing to rank for “acoustic specialist”.
Long Tail Construction Keywords
However less people will likely to be ranking for “office acoustic specialist West Midlands”. By being more specific, you’re narrowing the traffic down. This is a good thing as you the traffic you do bring in will be more specific to you.
Especially if location is a big part of your business, you don’t want to receive enquiries for a job 300 miles away if you’re company only works in a 50 mile radius.
Long tail keywords are more than 3 words. They are a lot more specific than short tail keywords; as a marketer this can be a big positive.
Discovering Construction Keywords
There are a number of ways to find out what keywords people are using to find your company, the main one is Google Search Console (GSC). However if you’re not getting a lot of traffic this may highlight the wrong keywords you’re getting found for.
Below is a list of tactics to use:
- Start typing on Google and see what it suggests
- See suggested similar searches at the bottom of the search engine results page
- Ask your customers the terms they use when describing the product/service you provide.
- Use a keyword research tool such as SEM Rush, GSC, Ahrefs Keywords Explorer, Moz
- See what terms competitors are using, do they reflect the same offering as you.
Find the best construction keywords for your businesses niche
The more defined your business niche is, the easier it is to find the keywords you'll need to rank better online. You can then spend more time creating content using specific keywords to get your website more organic traffic and produce sufficient leads for your business.
Your company's niche could be:
- Demographic
- Price
- Psychographics (how people think and feel about your product solution)
- Sector
Optimising your business niche will be much easier to gain quicker results as long-tail keywords are more specific but less competitive.
If you're a local business trying to gain more website traffic, you'll want to narrow down the area for a higher chance of being noticed by potential clients in your region.
For example: "Metal roofing in Shrewsbury" will be more effective than "metal roofing in Shropshire", which is too broad and decreases the chance of your business ranking on Google.
Having a strategy for using your construction keywords
Just knowing what construction keywords you need to use is not enough, it's how you use them that will provide results.
Place your keywords strategically so they are constantly visible in the content you post, use your keywords in blog titles, headers, text copy and even social media to increase your visibility on Google.
Implementing your keywords throughout your social media will also help you to rank higher, in today's age customers are now using social media more to look up solutions to their problems and looking up businesses.
Having a great social media presence will improve your chances of being found online and will also allow your customers to leave reviews about your business and again improve rankings.
Constantly review your construction keywords
Your business will constantly need to review your construction keyword and make way for any improvements., if you don't do this, you risk wasting time and funds trying to rank for keywords that aren't giving you effective results. If your keywords are too broad, look at more specific terms.
Using misleading keywords will damage your online presence to refer from using misleading terms. Google will lower your website's ratings, which could decrease your online visibility and damage your business's reputation. You want your business to be as honest and trustworthy as possible to retain and gain new clients.
Conclusion
There’s a lot more to keywords than you may have initially thought, there is also such thing as overusing keywords. This is called ‘Keyword Stuffing’ and can result in Google not ranking you because the content is of poor quality (due to overusing the same keyword).
This is why as previously mentioned you may have hundreds of keywords as for different products and services you will use a range of different keywords.
If this is all too much to take in then don’t hesitate to get in touch. Insynth’s digital content creators generate content so that Google recognises it, keyword research is included in this.
If you found the information in this post insightful, we recommend you look into some of the most popular articles in the Insynth Blog regarding SEO! Our favourites are:
- Using SEO To Future Proof Your Building Product Business
- Combining SEO and Content Marketing Effectively to Achieve
- How To Improve Google Rankings For Building Products
About Insynth
As the only HubSpot certified agency to major on construction marketing, we bring together construction marketing strategy, digital strategy, website design, SEO, content marketing, email marketing, sales automation, marketing automation and HubSpot CRM implementation to produce successful campaigns and great results for our clients.