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We Want to Help You Build a Framework of SEO Tactics That’ll Land Your AEC Firm More Projects
Want to ensure you’re on the shortlist of firms for a developer’s or business’s next big project? Relying entirely on word-of-mouth won’t cut it anymore.
As experienced AEC SEO marketers ourselves, we’ve crafted this practical guide to improving your firm’s online presence, outranking local competitors, and landing more high-value projects this year and beyond. We will go over some high-level basics for beginners, as well as some more technical strategies to help. Let’s start.
1. Understanding the importance of keywords
In order to have your firm’s website discovered by people searching for your services, you need to help search engines understand exactly what you offer. This allows them to match a user’s search intent to your website. But first, you’ll need to know that the keywords that will bring in the most money will be based on your niche. Here is how things typically differ for residential and commercial firms:
- Residential – Typically operate within a specific city or region, so their marketing strategies tend to emphasize local SEO to attract more clients in that specific area. This includes optimizing your content for local search terms, creating any helpful blog content that is relevant to that specific community, and ensuring a strong presence on local directories
- Commercial – May operate on a national scale and needs to target a broader audience. If you offer to travel or have multiple offices and service offerings across different states, it will require a combination of both local SEO and national marketing strategies to build brand recognition in each of these markets. This dual approach will help ensure you reach potential clients both nationwide and within certain regions where you have a presence.
You can use a free tool like Google Search Console to get an idea of what types of terms you currently rank for, which will help you analyze which pages on your site need a little extra love. Some examples of a basic keyword framework would be:
- City-based: Engineering firm in [city] or [city] architects
- Regional: Architecture firm serving [broad region]
- Niche: Commercial structural engineers
2. Building domain equity with backlinks
Aside from getting links from the projects you’ve completed, either on a local news site or by asking your client to link to you from their site, there are many other places AEC firms can obtain powerful links. Here are three different methods we suggest:
- List roundups – See what types of directories and lists come up, then see what ways you can be included. This can be from either creating a profile or kindly asking to be mentioned. Start by searching for “architecture firm” + “[your city]” or “civil engineer list” + “[your region].”
- Awards – Submit your best work to local AIA chapters, engineering councils, or regional business journals. Winning or being nominated almost always guarantees a high-authority backlink.
- Unlinked mentions – This is a combination of the two above, plus so much more. If you search for your business online, see what comes up. You might just have directory profiles from a decade ago with no link or maybe a mention in the local news. You can log into your profiles or email these websites to ask for proper attribution.
3. Utilizing your blog to drive traffic and ToF interest
If you haven’t already, set up a blog on your website. Most content management systems have them built in, but if you’re on a custom platform, you may need to fudge one, and it’s worth it. Blogs can act as the engine for organic traffic because they answer the questions your prospects are typing into Google before they are even ready to hire a firm. This means you can capture interest at the beginning phase of research, or what is often called “top-of-funnel” (ToF) visitors.
Here are some broad content ideas to kickstart your brainstorming:
- Top trends in [service] our firm is seeing right now
- When do I need to hire an engineer vs. an architect?
- [Company] skipped hiring a structural engineer. Here’s what happened
- How zoning laws in [city] impact new [commercial/residential] developments
4. Creating a great user experience
Because the architecture and engineering industry relies heavily on high-resolution photography to showcase completed portfolios, site speed is often a massive issue. Massive, as in your oversized images will completely tank your website’s performance! This can drive users away and make it hard for search engines and AI crawlers to read your site. Both of which can inadvertently hurt your rankings.
What you’ll want to do first is run your site through Google’s PageSpeed Insights. It’s a free tool that grades your site on both desktop and mobile and gives you a list of what is hurting your speed. Thankfully, accompanied by your score are also suggestions on what you need to do to fix these issues!
To save you some time, here are two options to consider (or send to your developer to do for you) if you already suspect that your images are slowing down your site:
- Use plugins for your images: If you have a WordPress website, install a plugin like Smush or Imagify to automatically resize and WebP-convert your photos upon upload.
- Or take a manual route: If your website builder doesn’t offer plugins or add-ons, you’ll need to have you or your team resize images manually. This can be done via Photoshop or a free tool like TinyPNG before you upload them.
But just wait, good UX doesn’t end there
A solid navigation structure also ensures that people won’t leave your site quickly. Because if they can use your main menu to find the information they need quickly, they’ll stay on your site. Below is an example format of a sound navigation to help users, in every phase of their journey, find what they need.
About Us
- Our story
- Meet the team
- Awards & certifications
Services
- Design-build
- Consulting
Industries
- Energy
- Healthcare
- Transportation
Our Work
- Current projects
- Completed projects
- Case studies
Locations
- Los Angeles
- Seattle
- Phoenix
Contact Us
- Office locations
- Request a quote
- Careers
And if you are a visual learner, take a look at a major firm like CBRE and notice how their services sub-menu parses everything out into distinct pages rather than lumping it all together:
5. Focus on improving conversion rates
Have you noticed that your site gets decent traffic, but no one is actually filling out your contact page or submitting RFPs? This often is the case for sites that lack a design for conversion. To convert more visitors into legitimate project leads, implement these quick fixes:
- Trim down your forms – We know that your projects often require a bunch of detail, which makes sense! But when a user sees a form with 10+ fields, it can scare them away. Try changing some forms and requiring only the essentials (name, phone, company, email, and a brief project description). You can then get in contact with them and ask for everything else.
- Switch up your CTAs – Are you using calls to action across your site? Such as pop-ups or embedded graphics? If not, now is the time! You should also test out some changes to the headers and buttons on your forms. Instead of basic “Submit” or “Enter,” test variations of “Schedule Your Free Consultation” or “Request an RFP.”
- Implement heatmaps – There are some great, free tools out there, such as Microsoft Clarity, that will allow you to watch user sessions on your site. You can see what they’re clicking (or not clicking) and their scroll behavior. This can help you identify where users get frustrated and click away, which can help you adjust your website accordingly.
6. Test, Measure, Rinse, and Repeat
Just as your firm has likely tested different materials or contractors, you can’t manage what you don’t measure. To get to the root of your issues and see if your marketing efforts are paying off, keep tabs on these three things:
- Conversions and traffic tracking – Monitor your website traffic and conversions on your Google Analytics 4 profile to help you understand where users are coming from, what actions they are taking on your site, and how well your pages are performing.
- Keyword tracking – Consider using tools like SE Ranking to track your keyword rankings. This will allow you to see how well your targeted keywords are performing over time and also identify room for improvement.
- Monitor backlinks – Assess your site’s authority and monitor backlinks with tools like Ahrefs, which provides detailed insights into the quality and quantity of backlinks pointing to your site.
Keep Learning from Our Blog
As we are an established construction digital marketing firm, we know a thing or two about what works when it comes to SEO, PPC, and web design services to bring you more bids. With that said, we hope some of our other articles could give you some pointed advice.
