Any home improvement or remodeling company seeking new customers online is all too familiar with the current battle for attention on Google.
Recent and ongoing changes to Google’s algorithm and the growing involvement of artificial intelligence on the web are transforming how businesses market themselves in ways that have left some people in the remodeling industry, like Premier Home Pros’ Vince Venditti, to reach a bold conclusion: “SEO is dead,” Venditti says.
R.I.P. for SEO
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a marketing strategy that dates back almost as far as the birth of search engines themselves. It features a techniques like incorporating keywords into websites and building pages of expert content paired with a network of backlinks to propel a business to the top of the coveted Google search results.
If you haven’t invested in SEO by now, it’s too late. Now you have to buy your way to the top.
Venditti, who spent the first decade of his career marketing a variety of home service companies with and without SEO, is 18 months into his new job as the president and co-owner of the Ohio-based Premier Home Pros. The company is on track to generate $120 million in sales this year, but Venditti is done chasing leads with SEO.
“Ninety percent of prime Google search results now are Google controlled, not organic,” he says. “The whole premise of Google was that it was a matchmaking company. Then ChatGPT comes around, and Google Bard and Microsoft Copilot and search becomes a scenario where you never leave those platforms. How important is website formatting and visuals if the way people are going to search the internet is going to give them plain text on a ChatGPT response?”
And for those potential customers still using Google?
“You can see the search results,” Venditti adds. “Are you really going to compete with Walmart and Home Depot?”
Venditti agrees the younger and more savvy consumers will eventually adapt to the new Google and come to a default understanding that most everything the algorithm initially feeds them is noise to scroll past. But early 20-somethings living in apartments are not the backbone demographic Venditti is targeting to build his home improvement business.
Venditti’s answer?
“If you haven’t invested in SEO by now, it’s too late,” Venditti said. “Now you have to buy your way to the top.”
That means no more endless hours of tweaking the layout and content of your website and redirecting your SEO budget toward partnerships with influencers in the space and established gateways like HomeAdvisor to get productive mentions and generate instant credibility.
“Websites are worthless without Google to help people find them,” Venditti says. “We can no longer control the web traffic in any meaningful way. It’s just not worth the risk or the time.”
Long Live SEO
Chris Behan is well-versed in the debate about the demise of SEO.
With 30 years of digital marketing experience, it’s a conversation he has just about every time Google updates its algorithm. The president of digital marketing firm Truvolv, says there’s a common theme in all those discussions.
“Anytime someone says SEO is dead it’s because they don’t want to do the work that it takes to do SEO well,” Behan says.
Put up a more relevant site than your competitor. Do that and you are going to be just fine.
Google is known to be secretive about its SEO algorithms, but its most recent and public search function change is its artificial intelligence (AI) overviews. The overview populates by scanning search results using Google’s AI, Gemini. According to Google, pages linked in these overviews receive more clicks than if they appeared in a typical search query.
Behan agrees with Venditti regarding more paid listings taking up the first page of Google than ever before. But that doesn’t mean that SEO, done in the correct way to achieve a quality organic ranking, is no longer a cost-effective pillar in any remodeling company’s marketing plan.
So, what does that look like? Appropriate linking. Siloed information. Helpful, original, readable content that isn’t duplicated everywhere. Concise articles with headlines that draw customers to the highly scannable content.
“Put up a more relevant site than your competitor,” Behan says. “Do that and you are going to be just fine ... If you are worried about what’s happening with Google’s algorithm, then you’ve been doing something wrong.”
Goldilocks-ing SEO
Caitlin Copley understands how easily SEO efforts can go wrong in the budding age of AI. As marketing director for San Diego-based Jackson Design & Remodeling, she knows the time it would take to push a website from 10 pages to 10,000 pages is now a fraction of what it was before the advent of ChatGPT and similar tools.
“There were companies who jumped on this AI train and pumped out hundreds of pages on their sites,” Copley explains. “They saw a temporary increase in traffic, and then it took a huge drop and left them completely off the map. We did not take that route, and we stayed pretty consistent with our search rankings.”
You have to constantly be adaptable ... if we’re not getting results, we need to figure out why.
Consistent means using a Goldilocks (just right) mix of SEO, pay-per-click ads, social media, and paid search listings. Determining the just-right mix is a matter of paying attention to the results and leads generated by each of those efforts.
“You have to constantly be adaptable,” she said. “Do we need to make changes to our website? Are ads on pay-per-click not working? Maybe our creative needs some work. If we’re not getting results, we need to figure out why.”
Copley said AI for content does have its place, but that place is as a research tool.
For example, AI can be helpful in coming up with new ways people are Googling questions about the remodeling industry and then using that info to generate targeted keywords. When it comes to content creation, Copley advises “using an actual person” so as best to connect with the actual people you want to be your customers.
And if you can’t do that, or aren’t willing to do that, then maybe that’s where SEO is truly a dead option for some companies, Copley says, because Google is clearly looking to weed out sites stuffed with AI content.
“I don’t think SEO will ever go away,” Copley says. “But if you don’t have the manpower to do it right, then you’re probably going to have to do paid ads or listings. I still believe the people who do a mix of SEO and paid are going to see the more consistent, successful results. It might not be as quick, but the slow build is worth it in the returns.”