Digital / 08
SEO for construction businesses
You get an audit that says what a search engine cannot read on your site and how to fix it, and one real page for each service in each market you serve. Project pages carry permission on file, and the monthly report is read against your own search data.
Northvex does not build city pages, meaning a state hub with a page under it for every town in range, each one boilerplate with the place name changed. This page describes the method used instead.
Fix the site so it can be crawled and indexed. Build one real page for each service in each market you serve. Put your project pages to work as proof, then measure what happens in your own search data. None of it is fast and none of it is promised, which is why each step is described here in full.
What you receive
Each item is a document or a change to your own site and accounts. Nothing is held on our side that you cannot take with you.
- A technical audit with a remediation order
- A client ready report, not a tool export with a score on the front. Issues are grouped by indexation, crawlability, performance, structure, content and links, each with what is wrong, what it costs you and the order to fix it in.
- The technical baseline, fixed or specified
- Where we maintain the site, the blockers are fixed. Where somebody else maintains it, each fix is written so their developer can do it without a conversation.
- One page for each service in each market you serve
- Written in full for the buyer who searches that scope in that place. Never a stub with the town name swapped.
- Project pages, with permission on file
- One page per job you can show, describing the scope and what was done, anonymised where permission is not available. Never stock photography captioned as your work.
- A content plan
- Which pages should exist, what each one is for, and which search it is meant to answer. Written as a plan you could hand to a writer, with the things we would not bother with named.
- Internal linking that is structural
- Every service page links to its trades and its projects, and every project page links back. The links follow the structure of the work rather than a menu.
- The Google Business Profile, matched to the site
- The name, address, telephone, hours and service list on the profile checked against the site, so a buyer sees the same firm in both places.
- A monthly report
- What changed, what was published, what is still open, and what your own search data shows, written in your service language.
The technical baseline
Content on a site a crawler cannot fetch is wasted effort, so this is fixed first. The audit works through this list, whoever built the site.
- Copy, headings and links exist in the served HTML. Copy, headings and links are checked in the served HTML, not only in a browser.
- One H1 per page, a unique title and description per page, canonical tags, a sitemap, and a robots file that does not block the CSS or JavaScript the renderer needs.
- Explicit image dimensions and modern formats, so the layout does not jump while it loads, and a Core Web Vitals budget agreed rather than measured after the fact.
- Structured data where it is true: Organization, Service, FAQPage and BreadcrumbList. No review or rating markup unless the reviews are real and verified.
- Bot protection, firewall rules and challenge pages checked, because a host that returns an error to automated fetches is invisible to a search engine and to every link preview.
- Verified from outside, with Search Console URL inspection and a link preview debugger, not by loading the site in a browser. A page that loads in a browser can still be unreadable to a crawler.
One page for each service in each market you serve
A buyer searching a scope should land on that scope, not on a general services page. A general contractor looking for a facade restoration subcontractor in a particular state should land on a page about facade restoration in that state.
That is a different thing from a city page. A market page exists because you bid there and can say something true about it. Bid forms, unit price schedules, prevailing wage regimes and submittal formats can differ by state and agency. We write that page from the bid documents for that market, not by swapping a place name.
So the list of pages comes from the services you sell and the markets you actually bid in, not from a list of towns in range. If you serve a market but have nothing true to say about it yet, that page waits until you do. We do not publish a thin page.
Project pages as proof
A project page describes one specific job and what was done on it. We write it from the bid documents and the photographs you supply.
- Permission first
- Client work needs the client's written agreement before it is published, including the photographs. Where permission is not available the project is anonymised, and the scope is still worth describing.
- The scope, in the words a buyer searches
- Trade, scope, region and what the job involved, written the way a general contractor would read it. A project page for a facade restoration job supports the facade restoration service page and is linked from it.
- Real photography or none
- Photographs of your own work, with permission, or no photographs. Stock construction photography is never captioned as your work.
- No claims that cannot be backed
- No dollar value, no client name without permission, and no outcome that is not on record. A project page is evidence, and evidence does not need adjectives.
The content plan and the internal linking
- Which pages should exist
- Service pages, market pages, project pages and the informational content that supports them, each named with the search it is meant to answer.
- What we would not bother with
- Named explicitly. An audit that flags a long list of items and prioritises none of them is a way of looking thorough rather than being useful.
- Links are structural, not decorative
- Every service page links to its trades and to real work. Every project page links up to the service it demonstrates and sideways to related projects. A link is placed because a reader would follow it.
- Written for a writer, or written by us
- The plan is written so you, a member of your staff or another agency can write from it. Where you would rather we wrote the pages, we do, and you review each one for accuracy before it goes live.
The Google Business Profile, matched to the site
A buyer who searches your business name may see the profile before the site. It is brought into line with the site rather than treated as a separate project.
- Business name, address, telephone and hours entered exactly as they appear on the site, so nothing disagrees.
- Categories and the service list chosen to match the service pages, rather than every category the platform offers.
- Photographs of real work with permission on file, and no stock imagery.
- No purchased reviews, no invented reviews, and no review markup on the site unless the reviews are real and verified.
- A link from the profile to the page that answers the search, which is not always the homepage.
What is included and what is not
Stated here rather than discovered later. Where an item sits under another service line, it is named so you know what you are buying.
| Area | Included | Not included |
|---|---|---|
| Technical | Audit, remediation order, fixes where we maintain the site, written instructions where we do not | Hosting, domain and platform accounts, which stay in your name |
| Pages | Service, market and project pages in full, written or planned, reviewed by you for accuracy | City pages, keyword stuffed pages, or any page with nothing true to say |
| Proof | Project pages with permission on file, anonymised where needed | Stock photography as your work, invented reviews, client names without permission |
| Links | Internal linking planned and built into the site structure | Purchased links, link exchanges, or directory submissions bought in bulk |
| Google Business Profile | Details, categories, services and photographs matched to the site | Review generation of any kind, or a profile for a location you do not work from |
| Measurement | Your own Search Console data read monthly and reported in your service language | A ranking, a traffic figure, an enquiry count or a revenue figure promised in advance |
| Paid search | A plain statement when paid search is the right answer for a result needed sooner | Campaign management, which sits under Google Ads as its own service line |
From first call to live
The sequence is the same whatever state the site is in. What changes is how much of it your site already has in place.
- 01
The first call
What you sell, where you bid, who maintains the site, and what you have been told about SEO before. If you have an earlier audit or report we read it, because it is evidence of what has been tried. The fee and what it covers are stated in writing before anything starts, in United States dollars.
- 02
Access and the audit
Read access to the site, Search Console and the Business Profile. Then the audit: issues grouped by category, each with what is wrong, what it costs you and the order to fix it in.
- 03
The baseline fixed
Technical blockers first, because content on an unindexable site is wasted effort. Where somebody else maintains the site, each fix is written so their developer can do it.
- 04
The pages built
One page per service per market, then project pages, then the informational content that supports them. You review every page for accuracy before it goes live. Nothing is published that you have not read.
- 05
Published and verified from outside
Each page checked in the served HTML, inspected in Search Console and tested in a link preview, not just loaded in a browser.
- 06
Measured monthly
Your own search data read each month, in your service language, with a recommendation for the next month and the reasoning. The plan is revisited when the data arrives rather than defended against it.
What is reported each month
The report is written to be read by the owner of the business, not by another agency. Every line is either a change made or a figure from your own data.
- What changed on the site: pages published, pages revised, technical items closed and the ones still open, with who owns each.
- What your own Search Console data shows: which queries and which pages, in your service language, and what moved since last month.
- Which searches look winnable from where you are, which do not, and why.
- What arrived through the site, as far as your own forms and call records show it, without adjectives attached.
- The recommendation for next month with the reasoning, not just a task list.
- A plain statement when something is not working, and what we would change.
How this connects to the rest of the firm
The construction half of this firm reads bid sets and prices scopes across the CSI divisions. That is why the service pages can be written for the person they are for. A page about acoustical ceilings or facade restoration is written by people who know what a scope is and what a general contractor checks before an award.
Where we also prepare your estimates or your bids, the scope list on the site can be checked against the scopes you actually bid. The trade names, the units and the documents a buyer sends you are already known, so nothing on the page has to be guessed.
Within the digital lines, the boundaries are simple. Web design and development builds or rebuilds the site to the standard the audit asks for, and where the platform cannot serve crawlable HTML that is the right answer. Google Ads is the route where a result is needed sooner than organic can deliver it, and its search terms report is useful input to the content plan. Social media and branding keep the profiles and the mark consistent with what the site says, so a buyer who checks you elsewhere sees the same firm.
Questions clients ask
Can you guarantee a ranking?
No. What we can do is tell you which searches are winnable from where you are, which are not, and why, and then report against your own data every month.
Do you build city pages?
No. A page for a market you bid in, with something true to say about that market, is a different thing. A page for every town in range with the place name swapped is not built.
Will you audit a site somebody else built?
Yes. The report is written to be actionable by whoever maintains it, including another agency, with each fix specified rather than described.
Do we need a new website first?
Not necessarily. The audit says whether the site can be fixed or whether the platform cannot serve crawlable HTML at all. If a rebuild is the right answer we say so, and that is a separate service with its own fee.
What do you need from us to start?
Read access to the site, Search Console and the Business Profile. Then the services you sell, the markets you bid in, and project photographs with permission to use them. Finally, one person who can check a page for accuracy before it goes live.
Do you write the content or just plan it?
Either. The plan is the part that determines whether the writing is worth doing. Where we write, you review every page for accuracy before it is published, because it is your name on it.
How long does it take?
Months rather than weeks for organic search, and the audit and the technical fixes come first regardless. The fee and what it covers are stated in writing before work starts, in United States dollars.
Who owns the site, the content and the accounts?
You do. The site, the domain, the hosting account, the Search Console property, the Business Profile and every page written under this service stay in your name. There is no arrangement where leaving costs you any of it.
Do you perform the construction?
No. Northvex prepares estimates, quantities, drawings and reviews, and provides web, search and advertising work for contractors. It is not a contractor, it holds no contractor licence, provides no engineering design of record, and makes no site visits.
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