You get the emails. “I noticed your website is not ranking for home builders in [city].” Three a week, probably. You know what a bad subcontractor looks like, and SEO companies come in the same two kinds. Here are the six mistakes I see on builder websites over and over, and then the questions to ask before you pay anyone.
Mistake 1: A beautiful site with nothing to rank
A full-screen slider, a gallery, a contact form. No page about any one community, plan, town or question. Google cannot rank a feeling. The pages guide is the fix.
Mistake 2: One page for every kind of buyer
Communities, custom, build-on-your-lot and remodels, all on one page. The two searches guide explains why that page ranks for none of them.
Mistake 3: Hiding the price
No cost page, no price ranges on plans, “contact us for pricing” everywhere. Buyers search cost first and trust the builder who answers. The cost-to-build guide is about that one page.
Mistake 4: Renderings instead of homes
Every photo is a rendering or a stock kitchen. Buyers can tell. Google can tell too, because real photos come with real captions and real place names. Photos of homes you built, with the town, on every page. If a home is not finished yet, a photo of the framing with the date is still better than a rendering, because it shows that you are really building.
Mistake 5: Letting the listing sit
A Google Business Profile with the old office address, four photos and reviews from years ago. The listing guide and the reviews guide fix this, and they cost nothing.
Mistake 6: Buying the package
An SEO company sells you “ten keywords, four blog posts a month, a monthly report.” The keywords are generic. The posts are about kitchen trends. The report shows rankings for words nobody types. A year later you have paid a lot, and your model home is just as quiet. The package was built for every business, so it fits none.
What to ask before you hire anyone
- “Show me one site you rank in a local service trade.” Not a logo. A site, a search you can type right now, and a result you can see.
- “What do buyers search before they pick a builder?” If they cannot say community names, plan names and “cost to build” without looking it up, they have not done this trade.
- “What would you build first?” The right answer is community pages, a cost page and the Google listing. Not a blog, not backlinks.
- “What is the contract?” Be careful with a twelve-month lock-in. Good work shows in a few months. Month-to-month means they have to keep earning it.
- “Who writes the community pages?” If it is a pool of writers who have never driven through the community, the pages will be swapped-name pages, and Google ignores those.
- “How will I know it is working?” The answer should be tour requests and calls from the right kind of buyer, not a ranking chart.
What you can do yourself first
Before you hire anyone, build one community page and one cost page, finish your Google listing, and start the review routine at closing. Those four things are free, and they are most of the early result. Then an SEO company has something to build on instead of starting from zero.
What good looks like after three months
Not a report. Things you can see. Your listing shows on the map for “home builder” in a town you build in, searched from your phone. Your community page shows on the first page for that community's name. Your reviews are newer than they were. And a family books a tour and says “we found your cost page.” If none of that is happening after three months, ask why, and listen closely to the answer.
Want this done for you?
I run a home builder lead site in Tampa Bay myself, so you can type the search and see it. If you want me to look at your site before you hire anyone, including me, the audit is free and it will tell you which of the six mistakes you have.