How Do You Build My Contractor Website for SEO?

If you had a dollar for every time you heard the word โSEOโ youโd have enough money to retire tomorrow. But the more you read about SEO, the more confusing it gets. What matters and what doesnโt when it comes to building an SEO-friendly site?
Experts and โgurusโ will tell you Google has over 200 ranking factors, but you can disregard the bulk of those. Great SEO is about putting your customers first and making sure your site is easy to use. Hereโs how we build successful contractor SEO websites from the ground up.
Ask any builder worth their salt and theyโll tell you that the foundation is the most crucial part of a building.
It doesnโt matter how nice the fixtures are or how many marble tiles are in the bathroom, if the foundation hasnโt been built properly the home is a disaster waiting to happen.
Your website needs a solid foundation too.
When you invest in a custom website itโs not enough to have someone with โweb designerโ on their LinkedIn profile throw a few pages together. And that $50 custom website package on Fiverr might save you some cash, but when your tradie website fails to rank on Google, youโll leave hundreds of thousands of dollars on the table in lost clients.
It doesnโt matter if you run your own trades business, youโre a contractor, or you install window shutters in your spare time, if you want to appear on Google, your website needs to follow a strict SEO roadmap.
In this article weโll explain how we build custom websites optimised for SEO, cover why this is crucial if you want to appear on Google, and leave you with a few options if youโre new to SEO.


โBuilding a website with SEO? Donโt all websites appear on Google?โ
Yes and no.
If you know the name of a business and punch it into Google, 9 times out of 10 that business will appear in spot #1 (the exception being if the site hasnโt been indexed or โfoundโ by Google yet).
Which looks great at first. It means your new custom home improvement website absolutely can appear on Google โ in the #1 spot no less!
Hereโs the catch thoughโฆhow many of your potential customers will search for your exact business name?
Letโs say 100 people need some home improvement help around the house. And 5 out of those 100 people know you by name well enough to search for you on Google. At the very best youโll get 5 new customers.
But youโll miss out on 95 potential customers.
Most people donโt know the name of your business. Instead theyโll jump on Google and start describing their problem using keywords like โhome improvement helpโ, โbenchtop installations near meโ, or โroof tile replacementโ. You get the idea.
If your website hasnโt been built for SEO, it will NEVER appear when the majority of people go to Google to describe their problems with keywords. Youโll still get the small handful of people who searched for your exact name, but to everyone else youโll be invisible.
How we build your contractor website for SEO step-by-step
Our custom websites follow a system the same way furniture from IKEA follows a system. When you break down a complex contractor website, or a well-made piece of Swedish furniture, itโs more about doing each small step well instead of tackling one enormous project.
At Tradie Digital we donโt pretend to target keywords that are searched 10,000 times a month. Those keywords are beyond saturated, and they bring unqualified traffic that never ends up requesting a quote or asking about your services.
Keen to rank on Google? Find out more about our secret keyword strategies.
We only care about building SEO-friendly contractor sites
If a website isnโt built to generate leads, itโs not one of ours.
We ignore keywords that arenโt going to drive qualified leads to your business.
Instead, we create SEO-friendly custom websites designed to rank for relevant keywords that drive qualified leads. Thatโs why we offer a $300 cash back guarantee โ if we donโt increase your leads, you get money back no questions asked.
Itโs common for contractor SEO agencies to shroud their tactics in mist, mostly because it makes it close to impossible for you to call them on their bullshit. So we wonโt just pull back the curtain, weโll roll out the red carpet and guide you through each stage of our custom website building process step-by-step.
Switch Your Marketing Spend to Us, and Weโll Increase Your Return On Investment or Weโll Give You $300
Our 3-step system of building SEO websites from the ground up
Step #1 โ On-Page Set Up
โ Site Audit & Analysis:
None of our tradie websites are built on โgut feelingโ. We donโt care about the latest design trends or what website fad is doing the rounds.
We use SEO tools to analyse your existing site (if you have one) and run audits on your current traffic and keywords. This helps us identify their SEO features that are delivering results, and we use those to start building your custom home improvement website.
โ Keywords Research & Preparation:
Itโs not what you say, but what keywords you use to say it that count. All of our custom websites are created following a strict keyword-driven plan. This allows us to target multiple keywords your ideal customers use to search online.
We use our SEO tools to track monthly volume and competition to land on keywords that are getting searched, but havenโt been swallowed by the big boys with million dollar SEO budgets.
โ Competitor Analysis:
Success leaves clues so we scour your competitionโs websites looking for every SEO advantage they have. These websites are ranking on the first page of Google on the back of strong backlink profiles and strong user experience.
We find gaps in their current SEO efforts so we know where to insert your business. Best of all, thereโs nothing they can do to stop us finding this info. With our SEO tools (we tend to use these a lot), we dig up all the dirt we need.
โ Architecture Structuring:
With most of the research done we plan out how your contractor website will look to your future customers. Without this step your site will be a random mess of pages and links that confuse people and send them running back to Google to find a better website.
By analysing the keywords we found for you we create a simple website structure that guides people from page to page, right to your โrequest a quoteโ or โbook a callโ buttons.
Step #2 โ On-Page Development
โ Create a Staging Site:
Staging a website (which means we create a mock version before the real site goes live) lets us spot any bugs or flaws before your site goes public and your customers get a chance to browse your content. First impressions matter to your customers, and glitchy websites can hurt your SEO.
Since every second your website is down or facing technical problems is time youโre losing potential customers or sales, starting your website with a staged version means you donโt run into trouble and miss out on leads down the track.
โ Set Up Your Theme:
Setting up your website theme isnโt just a matter of choosing colours that match your brand, itโs about creating a website that does the little things right. This might include adding your business name, address and phone number to your siteโs footer to boost your local SEO and help Google see that every page is helpful to customers in your local area.
โ Develop Homepage Layout:
Your homepage is the hub of your trade website. This is crucial to get right. The homepage is where plenty of people will land when they find you through Google.
If your homepage isnโt easy to navigate and user-friendly, then people might exit back to Google. This is called โbouncingโ and if your bounce rate goes up, Google starts seeing your website as a dud, and your SEO suffers.
โ Develop Service Pages:
Our contractor SEO websites have been carefully planned so every service you offer is available on its own service page. This isnโt done just so you can blow hot air and talk about yourself. With specific service pages you can rank for a variety of keywords and dive deep into a potential customerโs problems.
If youโre able to show youโre an expert, and answer peopleโs questions/address their concerns, youโll be one step closer to a new customer.
โ Add Content:
Your SEO is only as strong as your content. All the technical upgrades and the flashy bells and whistles wonโt do a thing if your content hasnโt been created around the keywords your target audience is using.
Since we already know what keywords to build your site around (thanks to our Keyword Research earlier in your site development) itโs a matter of publishing quality content that catches Googleโs eye, and shows your audience that you can solve their problems.
โ Optimise Title Tags:
Your Title Tags are (apart from an SEO term youโll never need to memorise) how people see your content when theyโre on Google. Letโs say you searched for a local plumber and the top result said โCheap Local Plumber | Zero Call-Out Feesโ. Thatโs the Title Tag.
We place keywords in Title tags so that when people go searching for products and services in your industry, itโs YOUR business that appears.
โ Optimise Alt Tags:
Alt Tag is another one of those SEO terms youโll never have to know or care about. In short, itโs the words used to describe your images. Google is pretty clever these days, but it canโt โseeโ pictures so we add keywords to your images to give Google more clues about your expertise.
The more ways we can show you to be an expert in your space, the better your SEO.
โ Set Up Internal Links:
Internal links help your site visitors move from one page to the next. On the surface this sounds like a practical inclusion, after all, you want people to browse your site until they feel ready to get in touch with you for a quote or service. But internal linking is an SEO factor all sites need.
Google moves through internal links to index (or โfindโ) your pages, which is a necessary step if you want to appear when people search online. But more importantly, internal links make your site easy to use. If people land on dead-end pages and donโt know where to go, theyโre more likely to head back to Google and find a site that makes browsing easy. Thatโs how you lose leads to your competition.
Step #3 โ Quality Assurance
โ Check ALL Content:
Building a website is a technical process that needs to tick a ton of boxes, but thereโs a very human element to a successful SEO site โ the content.
Whether weโve created the content, or youโve given us content to publish on your site, we check every single word looking for spelling errors and whether your content is providing value or not. Your customers want content thatโs helpful, practical, and solves their problems. So we make sure our SEO websites do just that.
โ Check Responsiveness and Alignment:
Over 52% of all website traffic comes from mobile phones. If your home improvement site doesnโt display on someoneโs smartphone, theyโll shake their head in disappointment and find a business they can browse on their phone instead.
Our contractor SEO websites are fully mobile-responsive, meaning they fit to the size of the screen theyโre viewed on. Iphone, Android, iPad โ our websites look great on every screen. This helps improve your conversion rate, as people can contact you on the go, and boosts your SEO as Google uses mobile-responsiveness when applying their SEO algorithm.
โ Check Speed:
How frustrated do you get sitting at the lights when the car in front hasnโt moved and the light is green? Thatโs how your customers feel trying to access a slow website. We check your site speed using the performance monitoring tool Pingdom to make sure every page is loading fast.
More than a frustration for your customers, a slow site hurts your ability ro rank, with website speed something Google is looking for when applying their SEO algorithm.
โ Check SEO Features:
Weโve set up your SEO features already, but we do over every single ranking factor on your site to make sure nothing has been missed.
Are you Title Tags optimised? Are all internal links working? Are your menus taking people to the right place? If it affects your SEO, it gets checked to make sure itโs doing what itโs supposed to.
โ Test All Forms:
Without testing your forms there could be problems that you donโt realise until youโve lost tens of thousands of dollars in revenue. If that sounds extreme, consider what would happen if your โRequest a Quoteโ button didnโt direct leads anywhere.
Instead of putting you in touch with a curious prospect, those people would leave (feeling frustrated) and find a business that cares enough to fix their site. All our contractor SEO websites are tested to make sure every single form takes people from where they are towards a sale.
โIโm worried SEO is too confusing, should I bother with all this?โ
Youโre not alone if you think SEO is too confusing and youโd be better off sticking with the word of mouth thatโs got you this far.
Whether you work on roofs, in the yard, or inside your customerโs home, itโs the face-to-face dynamic that keeps people coming back as repeat customers.
But youโll never have the chance to โwowโ your clients with your workmanship and work ethic if they canโt find you in the first place. When search engines like Google are the source of 93% of web traffic, you need to be on Google if you want to attract new customers.
Think SEO is a waste of time because your competitors can outspend you? Find out how to outrank ANY business.
Luckily, SEO can be simple.
How to build a contractor website for SEO
Our step-by-step process for building contractor SEO websites is designed to:
- Figure out what your customerโs problems are
- Create content centred around those problems
- Make sure your website ticks Googleโs algorithm checklist
- Ensure your site is fast, easy to browse, and user-friendly
- Keep you up-to-date with the latest SEO changes to protect your rankings
With a website that covers these bases thereโs less uncertainty down the track. And your site becomes a lead-gen machine attracting people from Google, funneling them through helpful content, and showing them how to get in touch with you.
While your competitors scramble to rejig their keywords 6 months down the track or try to figure out why no leads are coming through their busted contact forms, youโll have a contractor site thatโs been purpose-built to rank on Google, attract site visitors, and deliver leads.
Ready to put your business on the first page of Google?

