Keyword Research for Contractor SEO

Google keyword tool is best if you create an adword account it gives you 800 keywords you can refine your search using "INCLUDE" "EXCLUDE" boxes.
And if you just want to focus on GEO TARGETING keywords in General words, if you want to target specific city, town or state just include them in the "INCLUDE" section along with your main keyword. That also helps in setting up a PPC campaign for your business.
And if you want to dit yourself, WATCH SOME VIDEOS ON YOUTUBE on how to use GKT. Better option hire someone to do it for you.

Hey Bob-
I run a lot of PPC campaigns, as well as doing organic SEO for people's sites. While I do recommend having a couple really good, targeted landing pages, I'm not a big fan of building a separate page for each keyword, it can get out of hand.
As for as keyword research, here's what I use to do mine:
-common sense
-Google/Bing search
-Google keyword tool
in that order. It's not really "short and simple'", but here's what I do:
Common sense - bust out the paper and pencil. Some people like to use mind map software for this, but I'm still a legal pad and pen guy. Anyway, start brainstorming. Have your main phrase (in your case it could be "interior remodeling" ) and then start thinking of every phrase you can that people might use to search for it ("bathroom remodeling" "best bathroom contractors in______", '"kitchen remodeling" etc). Don't rule anything out at this point, you'd be surprised at what search phrases people use.
Google/Bing Search - go to Google and bing and start doing searches using those phrases you thought of. See what kind of phrases it auto-completes. Look at related searches. Do broad and exact (with "quotes" around them) and see what numbers turn up. Be sure to take a look at last month and last year as well as the anytime results(using search tools). This should start giving you an idea of what's high volume / low volume, long tail, etc.
Google Keyword Tool - So now you've got a pretty good idea of what the phrases that have high search volume are, let's go see what the competition for those phrases is like. I have to say, I don't entirely trust the Google Keyword tool to give me 100% accurate information, and I think it's kinda useless for long-tails, so I more or less use it to round out my research from the pay-per-click side of things. It's interesting to see what people are paying for keywords.
Hope this helps. In general, I try and break things into 2 or three big groups - in your case it might be "interior remodeling", "exterior remodeling" and "new construction" (just off the top of my head)and then silo each sub-category off that, for both site structure and landing page guidelines.

I normally don't go for the conventional route.

I will first still go down to the Google Keyword Tool, but I will type in the strongest competitor site URL into the GKT (instead of typing a keyword into the tool) and let google tells me what are the keywords I suppose to target for. Refine this method few times with few other strong competitors' sites, select the seed keywords, go down to Super Suggester and let these softwares to generate the long tail keywords.

If this is still confusing, just PM me.

bob,

absolutely you need to be #1 on gog. This is what saving our bus in the construction field...Direct marketing and tv ad's are working but not cheap...Also you make sure your website is mobile comp. We are getting business as far as 80 mi.
But seo your website is a must. Let me know if I can help you.

Joe

No. Their tool is not the best for finding keywords you want to target. There are some softwares on this forum that can do the job. They use Google Suggest feature to show the keywords that are being actually searched by people.

I can't remember the exact name of the software, but you can start a new thread and they will show up :-)


Thomas

PS. KeywordXP by Paul Clifford looks good. It's a new software. I haven't bought it yet.

well....if you are a general contractor, pick the jobs that have the most profit first. target that for your general area, then subdivisions, then zip codes....all three to target into the profitable market in your area....get some videos out there using those areas as headlines, put your site in the description plus a ton of keyword info ...the more videos the better....
since you are getting most of your leads from direct mail and telemarketing, use your website as more of a 'showroom' with your videos ...have contact form on home page, plus telephone number of every page of website... key in on the most profitable jobs first, get some leads , sell some jobs...TAKE VIDEOS OF EACH AND EVERY JOB PLUS TESTIMONIALS...then referrals...then onto the number 2 area of profit...

interesting that you have a construction company in addition to doing the other direct mailings with the GiantPostcard...I know what is required to run a construction company with 25 employees and that was like a nursery/daycare regardless of the level of expertise of the employees...so you must have a good basic organization to use as a base...use that and just go ....you have estimators right?
anyway , email me if I can help ...