One of the foundational elements of any digital marketing plan is a sound Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy. The practice of SEO focuses on ensuring that your website appears high in organic search results for the relevant search queries. For example, when someone types into Google, “home builder in [market],” SEO is what enables your website to appear higher up on the results list.
It’s important, too. The first organic result in Google Search has an average click-through-rate of 28.5%, while the 10th result has an average CTR of just 2.5% (searchenginejournal.com).
There are dozens of different strategies to accomplish this. Just searching for “SEO best practices” will yield you pages of results from SEO “gurus,” with each of them presenting their own ideas on how to best rank for the keywords that are important to you.
At Group Two, we recommend first focusing on mastering the basics. Today, we’re breaking down what those are and what you should do to ensure that your home builder website, and brand, has a good starting point to climb in the organic rankings.
Search Appearance
This is exactly what it sounds like… how your website appears in search results. You’ll need to make sure that your page’s metadata — the title tag and meta description of an individual page — is optimized with the primary keyword that you’re trying to rank for. Here’s an example of metadata that targets relevant keywords:
On-Page Content
If you want a page to appear in search results, there needs to be content on it. Often, a builder will wonder why they are not ranking for keywords related to a specific area, only to realize that they don’t actually have any meaningful content on their website about that area. At a minimum, make sure that every page on your website that you want to appear in search results has at least 500 words of copy, including any long-tail keywords that you’ve identified. Take care not to simply “stuff” keywords into the copy (that’s so 2002). Your content must be well-organized and well-written, and most importantly, interesting for a real person to read!
Website Performance
Google now utilizes its own Core Web Vitals analytics to determine the user experience of your website, which it takes into consideration when indexing your website. Google offers a free tool which you can use to analyze your web page’s performance, and see the specifics on what could be improved. Google recommends that your website loads in under two seconds to enhance the customer experience and increase your search rankings.
Name-Address-Phone Number (NAP) Consistency
This is a big one, especially for local search results. Ensuring that your company’s sales office, design studio, and community listings have consistent information across directory websites will signal to search engines that your business information is reliable. Moz offers a quick and easy tool to diagnose any inconsistencies across your directory listings online.
While SEO best practices can get much more technical and advanced, these basics will make sure that you start gaining visibility for the keywords you want your website and brand to appear for in search results. Need help getting started with home builder SEO, or taking it to the next level? Get in touch — we’d love to chat!
More SEO resources for home builders:
Google My Business Tips for Home Builders
