Industry · Construction companies, from the family firm to the regional mid-sized contractor
SEO for construction companies in Germany: pass the name search and get found for “construction company + town”
SEO for construction companies runs through two searches: the one for your company name and the one for “construction company + town”, which people in Germany type as “Bauunternehmen + Ort”. According to the only industry analysis I know of, the town search is the bigger of the two. The name search is quicker to put right, and anyone who has been referred to you, or who wants to approach you as an architect or engineer, will google your name. I do both for you as a freelance SEO consultant: SEO audit from €600, implementation at €50 per hour, consulting at €100 per hour. This page is about construction company SEO under the rules that apply in Germany.
The short version
- Three groups google your company name, and each wants to see something different: private clients, architects and engineers, and commercial clients. Search Console shows you within a few minutes how often your name appears in the searches that lead to your website.
- People search for a service and a place more often than for a name. In an analysis by BrightLocal, the Google profiles of construction and roofing businesses appeared in 469 such searches a month and in 67 searches for the company name. For “construction company + town”, Google says relevance, distance and prominence are what mainly count. A better position cannot be requested, and it cannot be paid for.
- If your office or yard is staffed by your own people during the hours stated in the profile and can receive customers, your Google profile may show the address and name a service area as well.
- A reference without your role on the project (general contractor, shell construction, subcontractor) does not answer the question of the person checking you, however good the photos are.
- In public contracts, what counts is your bid and your proof of suitability; a Google position plays no part there. Getting started costs €0 (SEO check of one page) or from €600 as a fixed price (audit of the whole website).
Three groups google your construction company, and each checks something different
Whoever googles your company name is checking you, and what they want to know depends on who they are:
| Who is searching | What they type | What they want to see within a minute | Which page answers it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Private client, often after a recommendation | The company name, plus “construction company + town” to compare | Does this firm build projects like mine, here in my area, and who will be my contact | A page for the construction service (shell construction, extension, conversion, turnkey) with references from the region |
| An architect or engineer who wants to recommend a firm or ask for a quote | The company name, plus the service (“shell construction”, “civil engineering” + region) | Which trades does the firm carry out with its own people, at what scale, and which practices has it built with | References with role, trades and construction period |
| Commercial client | The company name, plus “general contractor” or “industrial building” + region | Scale, capacity, legal form, a person they can reach | Company page, commercial references, Impressum |
| Public sector | Usually puts the work out to tender | Suitability in the award procedure | No page of its own; see the section on prequalification |
The Impressum in the third row is the legal notice that German law requires on commercial websites. It comes up again below.
How many of the searches for your construction company contain its name differs from firm to firm. The only industry analysis I have found suggests it is not the majority. A study by BrightLocal looked at around 45,000 Google profiles, with data from 2017 and 2018 from the USA, the UK, Canada and Australia. On average, construction and roofing businesses appeared there in 67 searches for their name and in 469 searches for a service or category per month. What was counted is how often the Google profile was shown. Clicks to the website were not counted.
For a construction firm that lives on recommendations, architects and repeat clients, the picture can be different. You can check that against your own data. In Google Search Console, under “Performance”, filter the queries once by your company name and once without it. If nearly all clicks come from searches for your name, your business on Google is decided in the name search.
I start with the name search anyway, because it is the shorter job. For the website that means: first the pages people click on after a name search (home page, company, references, Impressum), then one page per construction service for the search by service and place. If you carry out a single trade at the customer’s property, as a bricklaying or tiling business for example, SEO for trades businesses suits you better. The page you are reading is for firms that are responsible for whole building projects or for the structural shell.
The name search first: five places where the person checking you gets stuck
You can test the name search yourself in ten minutes. Open a private browser window, type your company name plus your town, then look at these five places.
- Profile name. Your Google Business Profile carries the company name you also use on your company sign, your website and your letterhead. Google’s guidelines for representing your business ask for the real-world name and do not permit unnecessary additions.
- Title of the home page. The search result says what you build and where. It does not say “Welcome”, and it does not consist of the company name alone.
- Impressum. Name and address match the profile. For registered companies, the register and the registration number are listed too, as § 5 (1) no. 4 DDG requires. The DDG (Digitale-Dienste-Gesetz, the German Digital Services Act) sets out in § 5 what the provider of a business website has to disclose; the linked text is in German. A commercial client reads your legal form and registered office from this page. What your Impressum needs in detail is a question for your lawyer.
- Reviews. The reviews you already have are answered. Google itself recommends replying in its help page on local ranking. How you may ask for reviews is set out in detail on the trades page and applies to you in the same way.
- One click to a matching reference. From the home page, the person checking you reaches a project of their kind with one click: the private client a house, the architect a structural shell, the commercial client an industrial building.
If they get stuck at one of the five, that is the first job, ahead of any new text.
“Construction company + town”: category, visible address and mentions by architects
In the town search, your Google Business Profile is what counts first. According to Google’s help page on local ranking, three things mainly count there: how well the profile matches the search, how far the business is from the searcher, and how well known it is. A better position cannot be bought or requested. Three points are not the same for a construction firm as for a trades business or an architecture practice:
- Choose the category by what the firm is. Google asks you to pick the category by what a business is, not by what it has, and wants as few and as specific categories as possible. A construction company with an architect on the payroll is therefore not an architecture practice. Which narrower category Google currently offers for civil engineering or general contractors is something I look up in your profile. I am not going to claim one here.
- Show the address if someone receives visitors there. Google separates businesses without customer visits, which hide their address, from hybrid businesses. According to the guidelines, a hybrid business may show its address and add a service area if the location is staffed by its own team during the stated hours and able to receive customers. An office where clients choose finishes, or a yard with a staffed office, meets that. A storage yard with nobody there does not. The rules for the service area itself are in the service area section on the trades page.
- One profile per location, not per division. Building construction and civil engineering under one roof normally get one shared profile. Google allows separate profiles for departments only if they face the public as distinct entities and have a different name from the main business.
Under prominence, Google counts how many websites link to the business, among other things. For a construction firm these mentions are often already waiting. Architecture practices and commercial clients describe their projects on their own websites. Whether they name the contractor and link to it varies from practice to practice. A friendly request to be named with a link, project by project, is the link work that fits your industry. I do not offer anything in return for such links and advise you against doing so. If all you need is help with the Google profile, local SEO consulting is the smaller job.
References: for a construction company, the role on the project is what counts
A reference only answers the question once your role is stated next to it. A photo of the finished office building does not say whether you handed it over turnkey as general contractor or poured the floor slab as a subcontractor. That is exactly what the architect wants to know before sending you an enquiry. These details belong with every project, as text:
- Role: general contractor, shell construction, single trade as a subcontractor
- The trades your own people carried out
- Construction period from start to acceptance
- Scale, in a unit the client approves: residential units, gross floor area, cubic metres of concrete or metres of sewer
- Type of client (private, commercial, public) and the architecture or engineering practice, if it agrees to be named
Contract values only go on the page with the client’s consent. How a project page is structured beyond that, and what the approval form for each project covers, is described on the page SEO for architects. The procedure is the same, and text and photos are best agreed together with the practice that designed the project. I write the texts from a short conversation with your site management; more on that under SEO copywriting.
Building site photos: you need consent for your own people in the picture
Building site photos almost always show people. If someone is recognisable, the photo is a portrait within the meaning of § 22 Kunsturhebergesetz (KUG, the German Art Copyright Act; linked text in German). A portrait may only be distributed or shown publicly with the consent of the person depicted. § 23 KUG lists the exceptions. This covers your foremen and skilled workers just as much as the subcontractor’s people and the client at the topping-out ceremony. Get the consent in writing before the picture ends up on your website or Google profile. What else should stay out of the picture, and what applies to photos of buildings and plots, is described with sources on the trades page. What applies in your case is a question for your lawyer.
Go through the name search with me on screen. In the initial call you type in your company name and your town, and I tell you at which of the five places a person checking you gets stuck. The call takes 30 minutes, runs over video and costs nothing.
→ Book a time for the name searchPublic contracts: what prequalification and the Handwerksrolle still do on your website
No Google position will win you a public contract. Two pieces of evidence from that world are still valuable on your website for everyone else who checks you, because they can be verified with the body responsible.
The first is prequalification. The Verein für die Präqualifikation von Bauunternehmen e. V., the German association for the prequalification of construction companies, keeps the official list of prequalified companies (PQ-VOB). According to the association’s information sheet (in German), the list can be consulted online and contains the company name, the address and the service categories the company is prequalified for. The VOB/A is the German set of rules for awarding public construction contracts. Under § 6b (1) VOB/A, and above the EU thresholds under § 6b EU VOB/A, the entry is recognised as proof of suitability. If you are listed, the registration number and the service categories belong on the company page as text. If you are not, the page says nothing about it.
The second is the Handwerksrolle, the register of skilled-trade businesses that each regional chamber of crafts (Handwerkskammer) keeps for its district. Bricklayers and concrete workers, carpenters and road builders are listed in Annex A of the Handwerksordnung, the German Trades and Crafts Code, as trades that require a licence (nos. 1, 3 and 5). How to state the entry on your website is described on the trades page.
Full order books: when you do not need me, and when the work is about vacancies rather than contracts
Not every construction company gets something out of ongoing SEO work. In three situations I advise you against it:
- You win your contracts through public tenders only. Then your time is better spent on your bids and your proof of suitability than on the website.
- You work as a subcontractor for two or three regular general contractors and do not want to change that. Then a website that passes the name search is enough.
- You are booked up for the long term and do not want to grow. Then it is enough to put the five places from the name search in order once.
If you are short of people more than of contracts, the work moves to the job pages. Google can show job adverts in a separate area of Search if the page is marked up as a JobPosting. Google gives no guarantee of that. The markup belongs on a separate page for each job. The required details are title, description, date posted, employer and place of work. Filled vacancies have to come down, or the expiry date has to lie in the past. According to Google, anyone who leaves expired adverts up risks a manual action. Google also says a general “Careers” page listing several jobs should not carry this markup. A job advert in a PDF cannot carry it at all.
The work pays off if you want to win private or commercial clients in your region who do not know you yet, and your website so far shows little more than pictures and an address. I have no published project from the construction industry yet, and I do not promise you more visibility, enquiries or revenue.
What it costs: from the free check to ongoing work
The rates are fixed before you commit. You get the audit as a fixed-price quote. Everything else is billed by the hour or as a monthly flat rate.
| Way in | Price | What you get for it as a construction company |
|---|---|---|
| SEO check | free | One URL checked on 15 points, no sign-up. Useful for the home page or your most important service page |
| SEO audit | from €600, fixed price before you commit | The whole website in four areas (technical SEO, content, internal linking, markup), as an action list sorted by impact and effort |
| Implementation | €50 per hour | Setting up the profile, preparing references with role and key figures, service pages, job pages with markup |
| Consulting | €100 per hour | Decisions with you or your web developer: page structure, priorities, order of the work |
| MCP SEO | €400 flat per month | Recurring tasks prepared continuously and automatically; nothing goes live before you approve it |
| Ongoing support | from €500 per month (10 hours at €50), cancellable monthly | Ongoing work by hand, scope according to the number of projects and construction services |
Whether it pays off depends on what you are left with from a typical contract once materials, wages and subcontractors are paid. If that amount is higher than the fixed price of your audit (from €600), then on paper a single extra contract covers the audit. How the prices are made up is explained under SEO costs.
Two questions about references that construction firms and clients ask in German forums
May construction firms use photos of buildings as references without consent?
For recognisable people, as a rule, no: § 22 Kunsturhebergesetz requires the consent of the person depicted. § 23 KUG lists exceptions, for example where people are merely incidental next to the building; I would not rely on that for reference photos. For the building itself, what matters is where the photo was taken from. The details with sources are on the page SEO for trades businesses. My recommendation is the same either way: written approval from the client for each project before anything goes online.
The client does not want their house on the internet as a reference. What now?
Take the project down, or show it only in a way that nobody can trace back. Whether the law would oblige you to is a question for your lawyer. A reference against the client’s wishes does you more harm than good in the name search, because the client is the one who reviews you. What an anonymised project description looks like is covered in the questions on the page SEO for architects.
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