How To Track Your Home Builder SEO And See If It Works
Done some SEO for your website and you’re curious if it works?
Or maybe you just want to track your marketing channels better and see what brings you the most value…
Either way, I want to show you the easiest, fastest, and most accurate way to track home builder SEO.
What Is SEO Tracking For Home Builders
Tracking SEO means analyzing relevant data from your website to see what’s bringing in traffic and what not.
To fully understand your SEO’s performance, you need to determine the right Key Performance Indicators.
For our home builders here at Contracting Empire, these are the KPIs we use:
- Forms submitted from your website
- Website clicks and impressions growth
- Phone calls from your Google Business Profile
- Phone calls from your website
- Local rankings in the Google Map Pack (the top 3 local businesses)
- Your average position in the Google Search Results
- And even an increase in your social media activity (likes, shares, follows)
Is your Home Builder SEO working?
If you’ve just started doing SEO, it’s worth mentioning that it will take some time before you start seeing results. You can still track what it’s doing, but you’ll rarely get any relevant data.
If over 6 months have passed and you have yet to see any results (e.g. an increase in organic leads, more clicks to your website, or higher ranking on Google), you’ll first want to see if your SEO is working.
We have a different article that tackles this topic. You can read it here.
In a nutshell, your home builder SEO is working if you’re seeing a continuous increase in clicks on your website that should eventually turn into leads.
5 Most Important KPIs For Tracking Your Home builder SEO
#1. Forms Submitted From Your Website
Receiving quote requests through a form on your website is the most important performance indicator.
This is because leads that fill out a form are ALWAYS the most qualified leads you’ll get online.
Who else would spend time and effort to type in their info and even upload photos, if not a client who wants to get the job done?
How to track?
We use GoHighLevel (GHL) as a CRM, where you’ll see where every lead came from. We can integrate this is JobTread or many other tools that our contractors use, so you never lose track of where leads came from.
#2. Phone Calls From The Google Business Profile & Website
For many, getting a ton of phone calls is still the main indicator that business is booming.
And I can only agree. After all, talking to the lead on the phone first is perfect if you want to prequalify your clients.
These leads can either be hot leads that you’ll sell easy, or cold leads who just want a quote over the phone to compare it.
Either way, as long as your phone starts ringing more and more, it’s a clear sign that your SEO is doing its job.
How to track?
For tracking phone calls for home builder SEO, we use a tool called CallRail. This allows us to set different phone numbers for multiple marketing channels, and based on those numbers, you’ll know what’s performing best. All phone numbers will redirect to your main phone.
#3. Local Search Rankings
In its essence, SEO is about making your business show up higher on Google. Because of that, the search rankings is the 3rd most important performance indicator.
The direct result of showing up higher is the #1 and #2 on this list (form submissions and phone calls).
Say, for example, you rank as the first search result for ‘home builder in Knoxville’.
The direct result of that will be more clients inquiring about your home building services.
How to track?
Tracking the performance of your Local Search Rankings happens with Brightlocal or other tracking tools for local SEO. This is a paid tool that has a multitude of other options that helps us measure your SEO’s performance.
#4. Average Position In The Google Searches
For home builders and any other brick and mortar business, the position they rank on Google Searches is highly impactful in their lead intake.
If you’re ranking in the top 5 results for relevant keywords like ‘home builder in CA’, ‘home building contractor’, ‘custom home construction near me’, and so on, you’ve hit the jackpot!
That means your home builder SEO is paying off and the sudden increase in phone calls is because of it.
How to track?
You can track the average position in the search results based on specific keywords in Google Search Console, Google Analytics, Ahrefs, and other SEO tracking tools.
#5. Track Organic Traffic With Clicks & Impressions
The traffic your website gets is directly proportionate with the position you rank on Google. The higher you are, the more people see you, and the more clicks you get to your website.
Ultimately, if your website does its job, you’ll convert those clicks into leads for your home building business.
How to track?
The easiest way to track clicks and impressions for your home builder SEO is on Google Search Console. All you need to do is choose a timeframe and see if the clicks & impressions increased, stayed the same, or decreased.
- Clicks - will count every instance of when a user clicks on your website’s pages on Google.
- Impressions - will count every instance of when a specific page on your website was shown to a user.
Keep in mind that changes in these KPIs are completely normal. In SEO, performance can vary month to month due to seasonal trends or because competitors are ramping up their efforts.
Top 4 Tools To Track SEO For Home Builders
In order for you to make the most accurate decisions for your company, you need to track your home builder SEO accurately. Here are the best tools to do so…
Google Search Console (GSC) is a free platform provided by Google. It’s user-friendly, offers straightforward data, and consistently delivers up-to-date insights.
Just keep in mind that GSC only tracks traffic from Google searches. It won’t include visitors from platforms like Facebook, Instagram, or Yelp, unless you use URL parameters to track those sources manually.
Thanks to its simplicity, Google Search Console is ideal for beginners looking to monitor how their SEO work is influencing their construction business.
Google Analytics is like the big brother of GSC. It gives you a lot more details about what people are doing on your website.
It’s also free, and you can set it up by adding a small piece of code to your website or using a tool that links your site to your Google Analytics account.
The downside? It’s more complicated. There’s a lot of data, and it can be tricky to understand—especially if you’re not into marketing or tech stuff.
Ahrefs is a paid tool that shows how your website is doing in Google, and it also lets you see how your competitors’ websites are doing.
It’s a powerful tool with a lot of features, but it takes time and practice to really understand and use it well.
If you’re not planning to dive deep into marketing, it’s better to stick with the free tools like GSC or Google Analytics.
We at Contracting Empire use Ahrefs to do website maintenance, keyword research, checking on citations, research what competitors are doing, and a lot more!
Brightlocal is an SEO tracking tool as well, but for local SEO.
Tracking your home builder local SEO will show you how you rank locally in the county or cities you offer your services.
Local SEO is very closely connected with your Google Business Profile as well. That’s your business profile on Google, and you want it to show first whenever someone searches for “home builder near me”.
We have an article about optimizing your GBP to start capturing qualified leads for you.
Need Help Tracking Home Builder SEO and Make It Profitable?
Truth be told, we’ve seen agencies brag about stellar results when in fact the story was a lot sadder.
We’ve also seen contractors pay hundreds of dollars for SEO but without anything to show for it.
For us, tracking results is what allows us and our clients to make the best decisions for their business.
We give our clients a clear report every month showing how things are going. You’ll see everything, good or bad, even if rankings drop. We back it all up with solid research to keep your SEO on track and working for you. Want proof? Take a look at our case studies and see the results for yourself.
If you don’t feel like learning how to read and track data, you can get in touch with us, and we’ll give you an audit and see how your home builder SEO has been performing for the last couple of months!