When it comes to writing content for your building company website to generate traffic and get new leads, we thoroughly recommend writing about your recent projects. There are many benefits to writing about your projects and in this article we will share some top tips for getting started.
The title of your project should be short enough to be easy to read but also include as many keywords about the service and location as possible. This will ensure that you get some good SEO and make it more likely to be displayed in the Google search results to new customers.
Here are some examples of titles you might use when writing about projects for your building and construction company. Notice how they all could be something that a potential customer would type into the Google search box.
It’s not important to have an exact date on each of your projects but it’s best to give the viewer some idea of when the work was completed. “Jan 2022” or even “Summer 2019” are perfectly suitable and in some ways are better than putting a full date because the exact date is unlikely to be important to the viewer.
Always add a location to your projects so the visitor can see that you’ve completed jobs nearby. It’s good to be specific here for example “Mercer Road, Langley” but understand that not all customers will feel comfortable with having part of their address on your website, and that’s fair enough.
If your customer doesn’t want the location of the job revealed then just use a wider area such as the county or even “South London” etc. Visitors to your website will know that not all of your clients will permit use of their address so they won’t be concerned if some locations are wider than others.
Each project should have at least one photo showing off the finished job but really the more photos you have the better. Unless you’re doing very high end work there should be no need to hire a professional photographer and just a regular camera phone will be fine for most situations.
Ideally you’d have photos showing the before and after of the project (see below for more details on this) but if don’t have the opportunity to do that then just a couple of different angles of the finished job will be enough to show people what you can do.
This is where you can write some details about the project. No need to go overboard here, just a couple of paragraphs outlining the job and describing the finished result is enough. There is a separate section for writing the description below which should help you get started and find things to write about.
Here are some ideas to help get you started when writing the description for your project. Don’t feel you need to include everything here, just pick and choose whatever seems right and don’t forget that these are just ideas so you’re free to change them if you want.
Mr & Mrs Jones of Priory Road in Weybridge came to us after hearing about our block paving services from a friend. They were looking to improve their front driveway and add value to their property with a professionally paved driveway and chose ABC Paving Ltd to complete the project.
They chose the popular and smart looking XYZ paving stones and a classic layout to replace the original tarmac driveway. Once the old driveway had been removed and the appropriate foundations had been laid, the team (Mark, Simon, and Andy) completed the new paving and the project was completed on time and within budget.
Mrs Jones contacted us later that year to say that they had spoken with an estate agent who had valued the house X higher than before thanks to the addition of the new driveway paving.
You can totally get away with just pointing and clicking and hoping for the best but if you want your building company website to look as good as possible then follow these tips for taking better photos of your work:
It’s true, everyone loves it so if you can get a ‘before’ shot then you definitely should add it to the project article. Before and after style shots really help the visitor see what they are getting when they hire you and that makes them way more likely to pick up the phone and ask for a quote.
A step up from the before and after style shots are showing the full process in a series of photos. These ones are harder to pull off though because you’ll have to remember to keep taking photos throughout the job at key moments and then compile them into your article when it’s time to write. However, the effort is worth it because it shows the visitor what they can expect when you work on their project.
I’ve been sent plenty of gallery shots where a beautiful piece of hand made bespoke furniture is surrounded by empty crisp packets and mugs of cold tea. Spend just a few minutes clearing out all the shit and you’ll have a great looking photo which will bag you new clients for years to come. It’s worth the effort, I promise.
If you want to avoid clearing rubbish and tools out of the way then give your customer a shout after the project is complete and arrange to pop round to take a few photos. In fact this is a good idea even if you have taken photos during the job because it means you’ll also get some photos of the work looking completely finished which can be beneficial.
Before you hit that shutter button and take the photo have a look at what’s in the background of the shot. You might be unknowingly capturing a dirty toilet bowl or group of guys on tea break chatting (yes I’ve seen both of these things in the past). It’s a huge shame to ruin a perfectly good photo because you forgot to double check the background.
Most cameras record location data and embed it into each photo you take. It’s great for easily finding your holiday photos on your phone but it’s not great for the privacy of your customers. Usually this won’t be a problem but it’s best to at least be aware of it so you can reassure your customer that their location will remain private because you always clear the location data.
You never know where a photo of one of your projects will be used so always take a couple of shots in both portrait and landscape. Landscape shots can be ideal for using on the homepage as sliders or backgrounds and it only takes a second to turn the camera 90 degrees so it’s always worth doing.
Always turn the quality of your camera up as high as it will go when taking photos of your work. It’s true that web designers will often dial back some of the quality when adding your photos to your website, but remember that you can always take quality out if you need to but you can never put it back in so crank that thing up to max before you take a snap.