Legit Construction Site

Hello to everyone at BHW,
Wondering if I could get some of your guy's help. I'm starting a web site for a friend, for his Construction Company. Wondering if I could get some tips for a noob for a site like this. I know there are probably not many people here running sites like this, but still. Just some simple tips or posts that I should read would really help out.

Already got a domain name... it's company initials follow by "construction" ... so it has the main keyword, ya?

Yes and no. I assume he's a local business, just located in one city? Having the city name in the domain, as well as construction, can be very helpful. Of course, if that makes the domain name so long that it's obnoxious to type, it may not be worth it.

Have you built many sites before? Do you know what you're doing? Will you be using straight HTML, or wordpress, or what? I'd check out some themes/templates to make the site look nice - you can get them for dirt cheap at places like themeforest.net and templatemonster.com, and you'll save untold hour compared to trying (and failing) to make it look as nice on your own.

Do you know anything about on-page/off-page SEO?

The business is local, well... 2 states. I have not built many sites, and I have a bit of an idea on what I'm doing. Don't want to go straight HTML, to plain, and don't know if wordpress will suit me. I would need to make photo galleries of past projects and current once, also in different categories of type of work so don't know how that would work out. I've found a theme already that i'm willing to put some time into.

Don't know jack about SEO, that's why i'm here, trying to read up on as much as possible, with what ever little time I have. But it's something that I'm defiantly interested in, and looking forward to some experience.

I'm not an expert by any means, but I've learned a whole lot around here, and I like to try to pay it back. The best way I can think of to do that is, rather than give my opinion, just tell you what some of the most popular options are around here, and why.

Wordpress is very popular around here. It's really easy to use, SEO friendly, and with all the plugins and widgets available, can be made to do anything or look any way you like. You'd never have a clue that lots of the wordpress sites you visit actually run wordpress. Since it's so easy to use, you have the option of letting customers make their own updates - something that can come in handy when you're doing work for a friend, who may ask for favors at some point, rather than paying. You can go check out some of the more popular wordpress plugins and see what it's capable of.

Along those same lines, if you do go with Wordpress, most people seem to agree that the first steps an SEO noob needs to take (besides reading everything you can find about SEO) is to get a plugin that helps you learn what you're doing. All-in-one SEO is a good one, and Easy WP SEO is excellent for helping you learn.

Easy WP SEO, like so so many other things, can be found in the Downloads section here. There's a ton of stuff there - check it out.

You'll also need to learn about/do some off-page SEO. This usually consists mainly of link building. Read up on it here and elsewhere, learn a little about how it works. If you want to do it yourself, great. If you try it out and decide it's not for you, you can always outsource it right here in the Services For Sale section. There are tons of people offering tons of services - check reviews, figure out which one(s) are right for you, and go for it. Most of the prices are excellent for what you get - it's hard to overcharge a bunch of SEO people for SEO services.

While you're thinking about links and SEO strategy, read up a little bit on Google Panda. It was an update to their ranking algorithm that took place late this spring. Because of it, you may want to take some of the SEO articles you read with a grain of salt, if they were written before panda.

Finally, while all of these will help with your SEO performance, the most important thing to remember, especially with a legit website, is this: content is king. Unique, interesting, useful content is the most important thing you can do for your site to make sure it ranks well.

Final thought: SEO is a slow process, so don't be disappointed when you don't see results overnight.

A couple more thoughts:

Go here, get Market Samurai, download and install it, and watch the training videos on their site. Until you learn which keywords you actually want to target, all of your SEO work is useless. Once you realize how useful that tool is, buy it - it's one of the few things that pretty much everyone around here agrees is worth the money.

Also, since the business spans 2 states, and presumably more than 1 city, you'll want to make sure you have a page for each target city, and that it's properly optimized for that city. You can either use a page (domain.com/citykeyword) or a subdomain (citykeyword.domain.com) - it's up to you. Google treats subdomains as their own domain, so it's more like having a specialized site just for that city. At the same time, subdomains can be slightly harder to set up, and, more importantly, as a separate domain, it doesn't get any of the link juice that you push to the main site. That's something you'll have to decide for yourself.

I run a couple of constructions sites and the people want to see:

1.pics of his work, before and after.

2. They want testimonials from real people.

3. Copy or notation of State License, Bonding Company And Insurance

4. Product links to HIS different vendors ... go ahead and grab pictures of products from the vendor sites and with links

5. Talk about being on Budget and Time when working on projects

6. Types of subcontractors he uses .. even with the names of his best subcontractors wouldn't be too bad ... you can even get testimonials
from them

I would use a testimonials right in the header image if you have a chance.

PM me if you have any other questions...glad to help

JQ

I am a contractor and have a site run by another company. I am on the first page of google in at least 12 towns for hundreds of keywords. If he wants to make money from his site, do him a favor and have him hire someone who can do a wordpress site.

WordPress it is. Just always thought it was strictly for Blogging. But will give it a shot.