Over 10,000 Ranking signals
Google’s algorithm is so complex that it looks at over 10,000 signals to determine where to rank your deck building website.
Some of these are the smallest of details that you’d think they don’t matter.
But we don’t care about these, as they’re often things we can’t even control.
What’s important for us are the SEO ranking factors we can control.
And the ones that move the needle the most.
This is why we’ll only focus on the top 10 ranking factors.
Top 10 SEO Ranking Factors For Deck Builders
#1. Local SEO and Google Business Profile
Local SEO is vital for all home service businesses, including deck building companies.
This is because as a local business, you service your local areas, not homeowners 3 states away.
So, you need to give Google signs that you build decks in your city, and you serve people from that specific area.
Unlike an international or nation-wide company (think of Lowe’s, Home Depot, Nike, etc.) who wants to capture Google’s real estate throughout the country, you want to capture online real estate only in your location.
For local SEO for deck builders, the most important ranking factors are:
- Relevance of your business is to the user - if the user looks for decks, it's relevant. If the user looks for shoes, not relevant.
- Proximity of your business is to the searcher - if the user is 3 states away, your deck building site is unlikely to show.
- Prominence of your business - if your business is well-known, old, and people talk about it online, the higher the chances to show.
You’ll also want a Google Business Profile for deck builders, as it has the potential to become your main source of leads.
To optimize it, you’ll want to:
- Use 'deck builder' as your main category
- Create a description that includes your most important keywords
- Constantly upload deck building photos
- Always ask for reviews from past clients, as these are an important ranking factor
- Look into building citations on business directories for contractors.
Don’t have a Google Business Profile for your decking business? Check out this article on how to build and optimize your GBP for the highest performance.
#2. Useful, Easy Content Related To Decks
Because of all the useless and impersonal AI content that’s popping up overnight, Google is taking measures to prioritize helpful content first.
If you want your SEO for deck builders to work, you need to put your knowledge to work and create some high-value pages for your website.
These can be decking price calculators, breakdowns of new decking materials, industry gold nuggets, or education videos.
How do you know if your content is valuable for users? The easiest way to see that is to measure the time spend on any particular page. The more time a user spends on a page, the better.
Another tips to keep users on your deck building website are…
- Keeping your language simple enough so they can read easily
- Keep your sentences short so the page reads easier
- Provide practical, actionable advice, like we're doing now
- Give your users what they want. Your searched for 'seo ranking factors for deck builders', I'm giving you the top 10.
#3. High-Quality, Relevant Backlinks to Your Deck Building Site
A backlink is when another website has a link that leads to your website.
The more sites have links to your website, the better.
A good rule of thumb to get backlinks is to create high-value, new, and unique content that people outsource from you.
For example, if you have a very in-depth deck pricing calculator, other websites might link to that calculator as a great resource.
If you can get backlinks from renown sites like Angi, The Spruce, Bobvila, etc, your SEO for deck builders will improve considerably.
#4. Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness
In the last Google core update from June 2025, this is one of the things that are now a whole lot more important.
And this comes after we’re seeing the internet is full of bots and AI posts.
EEAT aims to help Google determine whether or not your website or pages are worth displaying.
- Experience determines how relevant is your website, business, or content, depending on the numbers of years in business or the content you create. If you have a brand new website, it'll take some more time to rank in the top positions.
- Expertise is where you show Google that your website and content is well-researched and factual. You do this by citing other experts, showing statistics and data, and linking to other businesses relevant to home building (like NHBA)
- Authoritativeness is a bit more difficult to approach because it doesn't depend on you. For this, you need other websites to link to yours and mention you online. You also need more reviews on your Google Business Profile.
- Trustworthiness is dictated by how transparent you are on your website, with pricing, with reviews, and other information.
#5. Mobile-Friendly And User Experience Of Your Websute
Mobile responsiveness means your website is easy to navigate on mobile devices just as much as it is on desktop.
This is an important SEO ranking factor for deck builders because over 80% of your website visitors come from mobile devices!
To improve the user experience, you need to make sure the user (you, in this case) can easily read and use the website.
This is good user experience.
This is bad user experience.
#6. Search Intent And Semantics SEO For Deck Builders
Matching search intent means that your page has the answer to the user’s question.
For example, say you looked for ‘SEO ranking factors for deck builders’.
This page is about the top 10 SEO ranking factors for deck builders, so I’ll take my chances and say I matched your intent.
Your page needs to answer the query that the user looked for online.
Your clients might look for ‘best deck builder in NY’, and if your website says ‘best deck builder in New York’, then you’ve matched the search intent.
To match the search intent of users, you’ll want to use semantics SEO, which are other relevant keywords to what you were looking for. Other relevant words for your industry are deck framing, deck railing, decking materials, porches, and other.
#7. Page Experience and Core Web Vitals
Now we’re really getting into the nitty gritty.
These are more advanced things and if you don’t understand, that’s fine. I’ll make it as simple as possible.
The page experience and web vitals represents the health of your website.
Does it load fast?
Does every link lead to a new page?
Does every image load?
Are there any other errors in the background?
Testing for these is easy, but fixing the issues is where a lot of people get stuck at.
Want to test these? Go on any platform that checks your site’s speed (like Page Insights, GT Metrix, Pingdom, etc.), type in your website, and see what’s going on. As always, green is good, red is bad.
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) shows how fast your main content loads. Ideally, this must be super fast so users don't get timed out or quit waiting.
- First Input Delay (FID) to Interaction to Next Paint (INP) measures user interactivity. The more clicks, scrolls, or typing a user does, the better.
- Cumulative Layout Shifts (CLS) is what prevents page elements to shift and move unexpectedly. E.g. when a button moves outside of the screen.
#8. AI & Machine Learning As An SEO Ranking Factor
With the newest innovations in AI, it’s become a very important SEO ranking factor for deck builders.
All AI (ChatGPT, Gemini, DeepSeek, etc) learn from Google results.
But because there’s so much information, the AI will focus on learning from well-established websites with high-value content.
RankBrain (Google’s algorithm) and Google’s Gemini are already returning AI-driven personalized search results, which means users will get different results depending on how they trained their AI.
#9. Structured Data & Rich Snippets
Another SEO ranking factor that’s been increasingly more important over the years are the structured data and snippets.
Schema Markups improve how Google understands and displays your content because you’re giving it hints and instructions.
These schemas will also help you create featured snippets on Google, knowledge panels, and FAQ-rich results.
#10. Secure and Accessible Website
With newer website, this is very rarely a problem, as almost always they have HTTPS encryption.
But if you have an older website built by a friend of a friend, you’ll want to make sure your website has that HTTPS in the link. Otherwise, many users might be blocked from entering your site and you could be losing potential clients.
To make your website accessible to all users, including those with disabilities, you need to work with a developer.
What Can You Do Today?
- Your Google Business Profile. Make sure your main category is set to 'deck builder', add pictures of decks, choose other relevant secondary categories, and add your address.
- Reviews are not only an important SEO ranking factor for deck builders, but also a strong factor that influences prospects. The more positive reviews you have, the more prospects will contact you.
- Adding relevant keywords to your website, like 'deck building services in [your city]', 'decking company in [area]', 'composite and wood decks in [town]', etc.
We can do a thorough audit of your website, see what it lacks, and create a plan that’s guaranteed to bring you results. We’ll tackle local SEO, SEO, AI SEO, and every other marketing channel that you want to go after. If you’re interested, click here to learn more.