22. Create a
simple content plan with a list of topics that you think would be of interest to your prospects. Then
get writing with opinion pieces, ‘how to’ type advice, profiles of your team and case studies of your work that you can put onto your website (and some of which may also be suitable for PR too, see above).
23. Ask customers for
testimonials or case studies. Write up the story of what you did for them, but to make the stories more engaging and less braggy, tell the story from their point of view – your customer should be the hero and you the simple facilitator of their success. Get pictures (or even video) if you can.
24. Add an extra element to get customers to talk about themselves by asking how they started out in construction / surveying / architecture / housing etc. This helps you both get to know them better and gather information and content for future campaigns (see tip no. 9)
25. If you haven’t already,
list your business on
Google My Business. This free tool can help you create and manage your Google listings with lots of useful information including photos and videos of your business, your opening times, contact details, special offers and other useful details which can really boost your visibility in Google search results.
26. Web searches have surged for many businesses, so if your web presence is not as good as it could be, it costs nothing more than a couple of hours one afternoon to sit down and do an initial
website MOT. Analyse your strengths and weaknesses and check out your competitors’ sites so you can judge their strengths and weaknesses too. In particular, check if every landing page on your website has a strong
Call to Action – e.g. ‘register for our newsletter’, ‘request a callback’, ‘download our e-book’ etc. You want to make it very clear to website visitors about what is the natural next step to bring them closer to you.
27. Ask a family member or a friend to test your site – ask them to share their screen with you, tell them what a customer would be looking for and just watch them navigate around your website. I guarantee you’ll see simple things that could really help to improve the user experience of your website.
Hotjar is also an online tool that does something similar.
28. While you’re at it, see if you can
improve your website’s SEO (search engine optimisation). This might not be a DIY job, but there are many ways you could get stuck in if you are interested. The best place to start is to
research the keywords that you want to rank for.
29. Once you’ve identified your target keywords or phrases (ideally, based on what your customers tell you – see tip no. 9), make sure those exact words are included in the title of the relevant web page that best meets that search term, as well as the body copy of your page, and if possible, the URL. There is much, much more to SEO than this, but these are things that many businesses can do for themselves.
30. Site speed plays an important role in both SEO performance and the general user experience.
Research shows that once you hit a three second load time you can expect to lose 50% of your visitors. Google offer a range of tools to help you analyse and benchmark performance, alongside suggested improvements and fixes.
ThinkwithGoogle will look at your average performance on mobile and
PageSpeed Insights will let you test pages individually to review your desktop performance. We recommend starting with your homepage.
31. Is your business listed on all the
relevant directories, professional institute websites and ‘find a business’ type sites where customers might be searching, or which offer useful inbound links to your own company website? Check out industry advertisement sites, like the
Construction Enquirer directory.