Selecting The Right Keywords For Your Concrete SEO Campaigns

Audio Transcripts

Welcome aboard concrete contractors. Danny Barrera here for another episode of your concrete success podcast where we share success strategies for flat work and decorative concrete businesses and how they can succeed online and in today’s day and age. Yeah, my name is David Barrera, founder of concrete marketing crew. And today I want to talk about building your concrete keyword list. So what is a key word list? What what why do you need a keyword list? Well, keywords are the search terms that people are using to find your services in your service area.

So why don’t you like to know exactly what your prospective clients are searching for when they are trying to find you and your services, Right? We don’t. You like to know what those are. This way you actually can build a plan. And this whole thing came about as a conversation of, hey, who what what what search terms do we have to target to generate the best leads? How come I’ve tried a CEO in the past and it hasn’t worked, how come I’m ranking number one, number two for all these different keywords I’m showing up but I can’t seem to generate any leads where in this conversation in today’s episode we’re gonna talk about building your concrete keyword list and how to know exactly if your marketing company has been using the right key word list.

So if you don’t have a list of all the search terms or the major systems that you’re marketing agency or S. E. O. Agency or whether you’re doing it yourself and you don’t have a list to work off from, you’re going to have a flawed strategy. Now when someone hires concrete marketing crew, our agency and they come to us and they say hey we wanna we want to rack for all the services. The first thing that we do is we look at the list of keywords provided to us and a lot of times we figure out that those are not intent driven keywords.

Those are very, Very uh vague keywords or search terms that potential prospects would not be using to turn those clicks into actual phone calls or form submissions. So today’s conversation is about building your concrete keywords list from a proven process. Now, this whole conversation is also part of our uh new s. 2021 formula for decorative concrete contractors. So this is a webinar that we put together and you can go ahead and get more details if you’re interested in watching the entire presentation by going to concrete marketing crew dot com forward slash SCL.

Okay, concrete marketing Crew dot com forward slash S. C. O. You can also find more information about us by visiting concrete marketing crew dot com. And uh let’s go ahead and dive right into it without further. Or do I just want to give you an overview. So if you’re if you’re asking, well you know, what is it exactly? This is this conversation is about S. C. O. You might not be familiar with S. You, you might be familiar or you might not depending where you’re at in your business cycles.

So one of the main things that we want to understand is exactly how the market uh your services online the right way. So that this way you don’t waste money, you don’t waste time, you waste energy, you don’t waste your time with tire kickers. So we put together a concrete marketing plan which helps flat work. And that could have concrete contract towards double their leads online. And it starts with their website, which is the foundation, then goes into optimizing google maps which is the google my business and then uh taking over in the google organic search results with an S. E. O. Dominance program.

And this is where the key words coming to play. This is where the whole keyword research keyword validation, that whole strategy in the process that we use here internally goes into step number three here. So this is part of an actual process that’s working. It’s been proven to work for dozens and dozens and dozens of concrete contractors. So the new S. E. O. Formula includes a couple of things. So you got to have a couple of things in place for this S. E. O. Formula to work.

And the first one is you got to figure out what are the most important keywords that are based on your services and your service area and also by value. So remember when I told you that uh we have contractors coming to us with a list already kind of predetermined hey we want to rank for this keyword. Well we still have to validate if there’s any search volume and and what’s the intent behind that search storm. So some of the tools that we use here google keyword tool, I’ll show you that tool um in a minute which is uh it’s free to use.

However, if you want to get the right metrics, you have to have a paid advertising account. You have to be running google ads in order to get that data. Also some rush or ECM rush uh and then we have a choice refs which is another S. E. O. Toole that gathers information. So each one of those tools works very differently than the other. And we have another tool which is a bonus, I’ll show you what that one is in the moment, uh and what happens once we grab all these keywords?

What happens there? Well, in another episode, later episode, we’re gonna talk about setting up your website with the right keywords and where those keywords need to go. But basically we need to instruct google as they crawl to our website, what we stand for, who we are, what we stand for and who we service and based on the data and information that we provide there with our content, is that the google bots control our website and make sense out of the information so they can rank us higher.

And that also is the same thing for the google, my business listening, right? So you have to know what search terms you want to optimize for and use that very wisely so throughout the website, the content of the keywords get used in a very specific way. There’s a specific way in process for optimizing the website, uh and also for the user experience, knowing what terms are, are the primary terms in which are the secondary terms, so that you can optimize your pages for that specific purpose and how to apply that to the website.

So that being said, let’s go ahead and and that right in here into this conversation and let’s talk about keywords. So I want to go back up here and let me zoom out for a second uh and put up the screen right here, which what you’re looking at right now is the google ads keyword planner. Now the google ads keyword planner is is basically is for free and this is the starting point. And the reason I’m going to say this is the starting point is because we have all these other search engine optimization tools for keyword research.

However, when it comes to local, when it comes to local, the the search volume differs and it differs not by a little bit, but by a lot. And I see contractors get me sled by having the wrong information and not knowing how that applies to them. So I’m going to pick here uh concrete patios, okay? Or concrete patio, just gonna do a concrete patio here. And and I’m using the google keyword tool for those that are listening here and I’m going to select Dallas here in Dallas texas. Okay.

And I just want to see what surrounds that key word meaning what google determines to be that keyword and also the search volume. Now, if I wanted to get more concrete patio jobs and I am a flat work guy and I just want more concrete patio guys or jobs I should say um you know I come here and what I do is I look at okay how many individuals in Dallas texas looking for concrete patio every month On average use for that search term. About 90 give or take.

And you can see here there’s a bar where you can see sometimes it’s double that amount. Close to double that amount. 270 than 110. And you know it averages itself out to an average amount here. So this is 90 searches per month coming in for concrete patio in Dallas texas. When we look down here you can see keyword ideas under keyword ideas. You can see that we have stamped concrete patio. Guess how many search searches are happening for that specific search term in Dallas texas. 140 140 searches. Not only that, but you can look at the cost per click.

It’s also less than the cost per click for concrete patio. So if you are a smart concrete contractor, I mean look at it on the high months, You have almost close to 260, 260 searches coming in for concrete patio. So wouldn’t you like to be positioned well for the stamped concrete Patios versus just getting a small patio slab. Right? So I mean these are some of the basic things here. Now let me go ahead and re categorized by by the volume here. Now the other thing that I want to talk about is search volume.

We talk about search volume. And then let’s talk about search intent. So depending on what you do, if you do uh stamped concrete for example, you might also want to start ranking for terms like stained concrete patio, right, stained concrete patio. Because you have individuals looking for the staining factor and they may not be fully aware of what can be done with stamping, or they might not have the full clear idea as far as the process. And this is where you can rank your website, where you can rank your google my business, where you can create content that surrounds those specific topics.

And now if we go layer down, you can see here that there’s a painted concrete patio. And let me tell you this, the odds of someone looking for painted concrete patio and stained concrete patio being the same is very high. It’s actually very, very high. So it’s the same thing here that I was talking about. Look, painted concrete patio. Right? Uh The cost per click on that one on the low end, it’s about 79 cents stained concrete patio. It’s a dollar and 44 cents. Right? So you can see the big difference right there.

It’s, it’s a big margin of a difference where this is what you’ve got to consider. It’s, it’s basically what you have to consider is okay, How do I bring all these keywords together? And how do I start using in my marketing campaign? So this is, this is kind of like the data that we grab here on the back end and we start looking at these metrics because from service area to service area, it changes. So I want to have you look at this again, stamped concrete patio.

140 searches. Now if we go to a concrete patio is just 90 searches, this is Dallas texas. Now let me go ahead and do the same thing for Nashville. Let’s go into Nashville Tennessee And now check this out concrete patio. 260 searches for the keyword concrete patio. Now stamped concrete patio gets 320 searches now stay in concrete patio. 110 searches, painted concrete patio. 100 and 10 painted concrete porch is 110. So people are looking for this other related terms that to them. The difference between stained and painted, it’s it’s no different to them. It’s very, it’s very actually to them.

It’s the same thing. But you can see here that I can number one. If I’m running a google ads campaign, I I am paying way less. So for example, here painted concrete patios, I would pay 49 cents a click versus $1. 45 if I was starting in stained concrete patio. Right? So all of this, all of these different terms of variations, I can scroll down here and I can look at the different variations and how they relate to the content that I would be building for that one specific page.

Now, let’s take it to a different level here and say, we don’t want to target concrete parties. We want to do concrete coatings, This is another one, concrete coatings. And I’m just going to hit the results and you’re going to see here in Nashville epoxy garage floor. Again, these are part of the concrete ideas. Uh, Epoxy Garage floors, gets 880 searches per month. Now I can go down and concrete paint, concrete paint gets 480. Now, I can tell you this one thing. Someone looking for epoxy garage floor versus concrete paint.

Someone looking for concrete paint is probably looking for what painting can use on the concrete floors. Right? They can they just want to find out what information. So what I what I would do is if I’m managing this campaign, I would create a piece of content on a blog post that targets concrete paint. You know what, what type of paint to use on a concrete floor. Right. And target that one keyword in Nashville Tennessee, so that I can get the benefit of ranking for that keyword. And for epoxy garage floor, that would be a service page. Right.

That would be a service page. Now, what about concrete coatings, Danny? Well, let’s go ahead and look at what concrete coatings get. So Let me see here, I just want to rank practice by or categorizes by the keyword. Concrete coatings only gets 50 searches a month on average for in Nashville Tennessee. Now you can see a big difference right there. Big, big big difference. So as you are choosing your keywords, if you are given a list of keywords to your marketing agency, you know, or or you’re having to tell them, hey look, we do concrete coatings and they only do research on concrete coatings.

Not understanding that epoxy is it’s basically another different way of saying concrete coatings or floor coatings, you know, or police partick, you know, we have all these other terms that are within concrete coatings and you’re not optimizing for the right terms, I can tell you this. You know, you definitely want to cast the net on google search and make sure you’re optimizing for the right search terms. So again, this is the first layer, this is just google ads keyword planner. What I’ve showed you shofar and what I like to do is use the same example here and do concrete patio.

And I’m going to use this tool called H refs in the United States here. H ref does not let me select a geo target area. Does not let me go ahead and change the the location per se other than by country. So what we do here is what I like to do is look at matching terms and I like to do phrase match so that I can see how many how many phrases are matching here as well as looking at related terms. Okay. And when I do this, I can start categorizing and looking at at uh different parent topics.

So I would go to the parent topic of concrete patio and look at all the related keywords that are with the concrete patio. So just to give you an idea here, give me a moment. So I would go to matching term. Okay. And then I can include, Okay, include the concrete. The good old concrete patio. Here you can see here stamped concrete patio comes up 15,000 searches in the U. S. Concrete patio gets 14,000 concrete patio ideas, 6400 concrete patio cost 4100 D. I. Y. Concrete patio. Check that one out, D. I. Y. Concrete patio stained concrete patio, stamped concrete patio cost.

How to clean concrete, patio, stamped concrete patio ideas. So, as you can see here, some of these are very clearly. I mean, to me, when I look at the customer’s journey, how I would be building out how I would build out a content marketing plant. So, for example, anything that’s ideas based. So concrete patio ideas or stamped concrete patio ideas. I would be building a blog post for all those ideas. Also for D. I. Y. For example, right, Um you can build a marketing piece or a marketing black post that talks about why most uh D. I. Y. Concrete patios fell, right?

And then just target that specific keyword for D. I. Y. Concrete patio. And the reason being is someone is in the research mode and they talk about all these different layers. You know, you can talk about, you know, the biggest problems or issues that D. I. Y. Concrete patio do it yourselfers have when installing concrete patio and educate the prospect when it comes to concrete patio builder. That is something that you want to target. Uh as far as website optimization for a service page or for your google my business list and make sure that it comes up when someone’s looking for concrete patio builder, right?

It’s for a contract or not another one. Concrete patio contractors near me. So as you can see, they’re all of these terms. I would basically download all of this, compile them into a nicely organized spreadsheet and then categorize them by intent. Is this in a research mode intent? Is this the awareness mode? Awareness mode is when the D. I. Y, for example, or ideas or anything for that matter matter. So someone is looking for ideas. They’re basically in the awareness stage. Now, in the engagement stage, you’re going to get a lot of cost or you’re going to get more in depth search terms more in depth.

Now, the conversion stage is always going to be either near me or contract doors or builders or installation. That’s when someone is looking to click on that, click on the phone number or click on the website to submit their information. Right? And the same thing. We go to the keyword uh, magic tool here in some rush is the same approach here. I’ll take the main uh the root keyword, top keyword, top level keyword and then do the same thing you can see, gives me a similar uh similar results as in h rafts.

And again, it doesn’t hurt to see what keywords and keyword volumes come up and then correlate the data and see any patterns. So here are concrete marketing group. You’re interested in getting a list compiled for you. This is part of our concrete marketing strategy call where you scheduled yourselves into our calendar. And basically what happens via zoom call, we present to you all the search terms and what your competitors are using to generate leads. How is it that they’re generating leads? What type of ads you should be running, How you should structure your website, how to use these keywords within your website and your google my business and, and how to create a marketing plan for your concrete business.

And that could have concrete business. So if you’re interested on that, go to concrete marketing crew dot com and make sure that your schedule yourself and we schedule, we schedule a couple of days per week. So make sure that you go, if you’re interested in, get yourself booked in right now, I want to share one last tool here, which is the key word shooter. Okay, this one is, it’s a funny one is the name, uh, it’s, it’s a funny name. But what I like to do is just put in the again the route keyword, concrete patio and I’m going to hit the keywords and the side hit the keywords is going to start giving me hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of keywords.

And what I like to do next is a sight start looking at at um, and all the results. Okay. I want to see, I’m going to stop the job here because otherwise he’s gonna go into the thousands. I want to see for example, ideas. I want to see anything that has the word ideas, right? And now if you can see this, let me go ahead and zoom in here a little bit more. If you’re watching this on youtube, by the way, you give us a thumbs up.

Give us a like, give us a heart, Leave us a comment. If you’re listening in, make sure you subscribe to get more content just like this. If I type in ideas, you can see I get concrete patio ideas, concrete patio border ideas, concrete patio decorating ideas, concrete patio design ideas. I mean, this is my entire content marketing plan for building block posts. Remember how I told you that you got to make sure that you look at all these keywords with the intent as well as the search finding.

Well that’s exactly what we build for our concrete contractors. Our clients is we look at number one, we look at what are your desired um services that you want to get more jobs for. What are your most profitable projects, the most profitable jobs that you like to do more of what your service area. Let’s look at the demand and then let’s build a list from 1 to 5. What are the top five and then what are the top 10 services and based on that. We do the entire process of keyword research and then the analysis, competitive analysis.

And we look at the competition, the website structure and build your website that’s fully optimised to rank on google search, optimized your google my business listing and if you if you want to run a google ads campaign or being campaign then run the campaign with the specific keywords. So again, I’ve just showed you just the tip of the iceberg here and today’s conversation was about building your concrete keyword list and I’ve given you three ideas three ways you can do that. Number one, go to the google keyword planner again, you can do that, it’s for free, but you should be spending a little bit of money in order for you to get the data.

Number two is use a tool such as h rafts or some rush. There’s another tool that’s called Uber suggests which is similar to those two tools and last but not least is you can use the keyword shooter, there’s a couple of other tools that we use here internally. I don’t have time to go more in depth into showing you that, but hopefully you found this uh, today’s conversation um, interesting and the reason being is that, look, if you don’t set yourself up for success from the beginning, it’s like concrete, you don’t get to do it again.

Uh, and what I’d like you to do is if you haven’t downloaded a copy of our ultimate internet marketing checklist for decorative concrete contractors, the ultimate internet marketing checklist for decorative concrete contractors, just go to concrete market include dot com right now and this checklist walks you through all these different stages and faces of the entire concrete marketing plan. And what I’m telling you is we have the e book as well, which is the entire book, but this one, I’m going to show you what it looks like here for those of you watch.

And it’s really compiled of a lot of pages and examples and showing you the entire workflow of our marketing plan. Uh, this is broken down into the sections as far as how you can audit your business right now and uh, and see how you can apply some of these things into your business right now to generate leads and set yourself up for success. So go ahead concrete marketing, crude dot com and download the free checklist today. Thank you so much for listening into your concrete success podcast.

And again, we love it. If you could give us a thumbs up, a like a share and subscribe to our channel, have a great rest of your day. Thank you for tuning in.