Local SEO Strategies for Building Material Manufacturers

June 26, 2024

Do you want to increase your building products sales through SEO?

If so, then you need a localized SEO strategy that attracts architects, contractors, builders, and homeowners that are already searching for products and services like yours.

While it may make sense to target key terms such as “home siding” or “wood flooring”, the reality is that these terms are highly competitive and often don’t attract the targeted traffic that you need.

Local SEO involves targeting localized terms so that you are drawing in those prospects that are looking for products in your service area. Even more, it presents you with a range of terms that your competitors may not have thought to target–giving you a leg up.

If you want to stand out from your local competitors and generate leads that are ready to buy, then employ these six local SEO strategies for building material manufacturers.

How to Generate Leads with Local SEO

Your potential customers are using Google every day to search for products and services that you offer. Local SEO is just a strategy-driven approach to getting your website in front on their eyes.

Fortunately, there are several localization strategies that you can use to rank for local keywords and generate highly targeted leads.

These local SEO strategies include:

These will improve your chances of climbing above your local competition and increasing product sales.

1. Localized Lead Generation Websites

Searchers use local search queries such as “concrete flooring contractor new york city” and “roofing contractors houston” to find products and services in their local area. It’s a great idea to target localized terms in order to generate leads for partnered contractors.

This can work two-fold in that you are aiding your partners in their digital marketing efforts and are attracting highly targeted traffic–which creates a win-win scenario in terms of generating new business.

There are two ways to target these localized keywords: through creating a localized lead generation website, or with local SEO landing pages (strategy #2).

Why Create a Lead Generation Website?

A localized lead generation website is an entire website that’s dedicated to targeting local terms–as opposed to including a few localized SEO landing pages on your primary website. Fully localized websites tend to perform better with SEO and convert at a higher rate over localized SEO landing pages.

If your business serves a rather large and competitive service area or city, creating a localized lead generation website is the way to go.

This is because you are likely competing with many other sites that are already using local SEO to target those terms. Since you not only want to match but SURPASS their efforts, it’s best to make a hyper-localized site that aids in generating traffic for your contractor partners (and yourself).
Pro Tip:Get a cheap mailing address in each service area city. This will allow you to rank in the local 3-Pack, as displayed in the screenshot below.

How to Create a Localized Lead Generation Website

While creating a new website is a rather large undertaking, the pay-off will be huge when it comes to upping your local SEO efforts. Whether you are taking the DIY route or are working with an SEO agency, you need four things in order to create a successful lead gen site.

Localized Websites require:

1. Local Keyword Research: Use premium SEO keyword tools such as SEMRush to find localized keywords that include the services/products you provide + your service area, such as “roofing contractor seattle”. Choose terms that get a reasonable amount of search traffic with medium to low competition, if possible.
2. Local Keyword Optimization (Including Schema Data): Optimize your website, including your content, with your target keywords. Utilize schema data to mark up relevant pages to get them to rank in local search.
3. Google Maps and Citations: Make sure that your NAPW (business name, address, phone number, website) information is consistent across Google Maps, review sites, and any other citations. Find local and industry-related directories where you can feature your business in order to get a local citation and more traffic.
4. Localized Link Building: Use outreach and content marketing to attract links from local businesses in your niche, such as contractors, builders, interior designers, and more. Not only does getting localized links to your website improve your SEO, but they are also a way to get traffic from new potential prospects.

The foundation of your lead generation website is solid local keyword research. Then, you will want to optimize your site for these terms, build out your local listings, and attract relevant links.

With hyper-localization, you will attract users that are looking for your products in your local area and generated leads for your partners (again, a win-win scenario).

Examples of Building Material Manufacturing Lead Gen Websites

Duraamen NYC: This localized lead generation website is targeting the term “contractor new york city” and other localized terms. This serves to generate business for their local contractor partners, thus helping them increase their own product sales.

Duraamen New Jersey: Here is another example of Duraamen targeting local terms; this time, “contractor of northern new jersey”. They are able to attract traffic from searches in two of their service areas: New York and New Jersey. This would be more difficult to go through a few localized SEO landing pages on their existing site.

2. Localized SEO Landing Pages

For less competitive cities, simple localized SEO landing pages could be hosted on your primary business website. These landing pages work best if your service area city population is under 100k people.

Each landing page will target at least one localized keyword, along with related keywords. The primary focus here is to create a page for each localized term that you want to rank for and then funnel that traffic to the other money pages on your website, such as your product catalog or Contact Us page.

Localized SEO Landing Pages require:

1. Local Keyword Research: Find localized terms that are relevant to the products or services that you provide on your own website. Make sure these terms actually get search traffic and are low-medium competition.
2. Local Keyword Optimization (Including Schema Data): Use on-page SEO to optimize your website with your chosen local keywords. Use schema data to optimize for local search.
3. Localized Link Building: Reach out to sites and business owners in your local area and industry to attract relevant backlinks to your website. These links send the signal to Google that your website is part of your local network, making Google more likely to show your website in the localized search results.

Pro Tip: These landing pages can also be used to quickly test out new local markets in conjunction with a localized PPC campaign (See strategy #4).

Example of Localized SEO Landing Page

Here is an example of a nationwide real estate company using a localized landing page:

We Buy Houses – Round Rock, TX

The company ranks #1 for “we buy houses round rock tx”, a suburb outside of Austin, Texas, with a population of about 100k people.

3. Directories

When you think of directories, you may think of your local phone book or sites like Yelp. But did you know that directories can give your SEO efforts a huge boost? You’ll never look at directories the same way again if we have anything to say about it.

Directories, like localized landing pages, can also be used to rank for local keywords. Think of when you or any of your prospects type in “building materials pasadena” or “kitchen remodels los angeles”. It’s helpful to see a list of the best of the best in your local area.

A directory puts all of these resources in one place, which is highly valuable to your potential customers. Not only are you drawing them in by providing the information they are looking for, but you can also position your contractor partners in your own directory in order to generate leads for them and sales for you.

Examples of Directories for Local SEO

A great example of a directory in the construction niche is with GAF.com’s roofer directory.

They created this directory on their site and use it to rank for keywords like “roofing contractors denver”. This directory ranks well in 1000’s of cities across the country and drives traffic from homeowners searching for roofers in their area.

Buildblock.com also uses this effectively with their ICF Homes directory.

This directory is used to rank for “icf homes texas”. They could go even take their SEO further by setting up city-focused pages to rank for keywords like “icf homes austin tx” and the like.
See more case studies.

4. Localized SEM Landing Pages

Localized search engine marketing (SEM) landing pages are optimized for advertising campaigns (typically Google Ads) through use of localized keywords, hyper-local content, maps, and other local indicators in order to improve conversions.

These types of pages often convert better than generic landing pages when targeting specific geographical areas because they are super relevant to what the user is searching for and where.

In fact, studies indicate that of the highest performing landing pages, 80% are locally targeted. That means that they include a localized keyword in the page title and throughout the content.

When a landing page is more relevant (even geographically) to users, they typically convert better. So, if you are running advertising campaigns, it is best to direct users to a localized landing page instead of your usual Products or Contact page.

Pro Tip: Phone numbers in landing pages that display the customer’s phone number tend to convert better as well. These can be set up by using call tracking programs such as CallRail.

5. Localized Blog Content

Great content is the cornerstone of not only your SEO strategy but your content marketing strategy as well. That’s why it’s important to base your content on solid keyword research from the beginning, That includes the use of localized keywords.

As of late, Google has been starting to show tons of local results for many different keyword types.

For instance, if you search for “reclaimed wood”, you’ll see many localized results at the top, such as reclaimed wood product sellers, local lumber yards, and the like. So, to rank in these markets, you’ll need specific content that’s geared towards them and utilizes these terms.

Targeted Unique Markets with Localized Content

Also, people in different local markets often need different solutions from building material manufacturers. Like homeowners and builders in Colorado and California may need siding that can withstand wildfires or are looking for newsworthy content about a recent event in their area.

Perhaps you want to address certain markets, like “passive design” or those searching to weather-resistant building materials. Creating content around these specific terms will draw in highly targeted traffic.

Want to work with more contractors, architects, interior designers, and other professionals in your niche? You can create content specifically for them, too.

For example, content like How to Grow Your Architecture Business or how Texas architects can be more innovative.

Create localized blog content that is oriented around the market you are trying to reach and the local keywords you are targeting. This will result in better quality leads, more sales, and a competitive edge over your local competitors.

More examples:

6. GMB Set Up & Citations

If you are a nationwide company, it’s best practice to make sure you have set up your Google My Business (GMB) listing.

Chances are if you Google any localized keyword, a GMB listing (or several) will pop up. This is prime real estate and you want your business to be at the top. Even if your own web pages aren’t at the top of the search results, you still have a fighting chance if you optimize your GMB profile.

GMB listings will also show up in entity searches, along with reviews of your business. A user seeing your business at the top and with several positive reviews could be what they need in order to decide to click through to your website. You don’t want to miss out on that opportunity.

Build Out Local Citations

Beyond GMB, it’s beneficial to create listings in all of the top directories and any local directories. Popular directories include Yelp or YellowPages, but there are countless others. Each listing gives you a chance to rank when users search for “best ___ near me” or “best ___ in (city)”.

Citations are also useful in the initial link building phase to acquire high-quality links with ease. Created profiles in the top directories are usually free and give your business even more reach in the search results.

The key thing to remember while building out citations is to keep your business information consistent. Make sure you are using the same business name, phone number, address, and website URL, at the very least. This only strengthens those important local signals.

Pro Tip: Do a Google search to find directories in your local area. These can include your local Chamber of Commerce, a directory of construction businesses, or another niche-related cite. These can be great for directing local traffic to your business.

Turn Your Website into a Localized Lead Generating Machine

In the competitive space of building material manufacturing, you have to do everything you can to not only keep up with your competitors but get ahead.

By identifying localized keywords and content opportunities, you can hone in on that traffic that your competitors may be missing out on. Not only that. But you can expand to new markets, improve the conversion rate on your existing ad campaigns, and level up your content marketing efforts.

Whether you are a nationwide business or serve one local area, you can use local SEO strategies to generate leads for your business and push your site leaps and bounds ahead of the rest.

Have you been using local SEO for your business? Let us know in the comments below.

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