Why your website matters with Mike Stein

Paul Wurth:

You are listening to “The Building Code,” a podcast by Buildertrend where we talk all things technology and construction. Be sure to stick around to the end of the episode, where you can find out how to be a part of the building code crew. Let’s get it.

Hey, everybody. Welcome to “The Building Code.” You’ll notice that we’ve got a new intro there. We’ve stepped up the music a little bit. That was done by one of our own Buildertrend employees, Tyler Mancuso. He’s a super talented artist. He not only does a great job for us in his account management role, account executive role, but you can find him on YouTube. And a little teaser, that’s some showbiz language for you, check out the show notes, Buildertrend.com/podcasts and you’re going to have … I’ll send you a link to his YouTube. He’s got some great YouTube stuff.

I want to thank you very much for tuning in again to this podcast. We love each and every one of our listeners. My name is Paul Wurth, this is “The Building Code” where we talk all things technology and construction. We love to bring on people who are a part of the world that we love so much. Today is no exception. Today, we have somebody from inside the walls of Buildertrend, Mike Stein. Mike is with our Web Services team. Why is he here? Well, there’s may be a term you know, that’s out there as a small business when it comes to marketing called SEO, search engine optimization. It’s a word that not a lot of people know about, but I think people know that it’s important for their business as it relates to attracting people. So, we’re going to unpack that term, SEO, and talk a little bit about some services we have here that if you’re a Buildertrend client, you can get some access to. Mike, welcome to the podcast.

Mike Stein:

Thank you.

Paul Wurth:

Very much appreciate you coming in-studio. We’re socially distancing, but it feels good to be back inside these walls. You haven’t been back since what, March?

Mike Stein:

March, yeah.

Paul Wurth:

Holy moly. For all those people who have been to Buildertrend for a number of different things we have like Buildertrend University. Our clients understand that not only do we, I think, have a great service, our Core service at Buildertrend and of course our Pro Services, which is what you’re under. But I think they love the building. They love the vibe in here, and it’s been sorely missed by us and our team. Would you agree with that one?

Mike Stein:

Yeah. It’s hard being away.

Paul Wurth:

It is, yeah. We’ve got a social … our Christmas parties used to be really amazing. Have you been to one? How long have you been here?

Mike Stein:

My first one was last year.

Paul Wurth:

Okay. Good times, right?

Mike Stein:

Yeah, best time.

Paul Wurth:

Instead, tomorrow afternoon we have a Zoom toast with a little champagne.

Mike Stein:

It doesn’t quite live up to it.

Paul Wurth:

Doesn’t quite do the job, but I guess we’re all getting through it our own way. All right. So, we’re going to the end of the year, and one thing I just talked about in the intro, which you just heard, Mike, is this term SEO. Before we dive into that part of marketing for a small business, why don’t we talk in general or top level about what you do here? And more importantly, the team you’re on.

Mike Stein:

A little bit of background about myself. I started doing SEO with the team about two years ago. I ironically enough actually applied for a different role here. I got the role. And then about a month into that role, my current position opened up.

Paul Wurth:

Because we didn’t have that position when you were actually applying the first time, right?

Mike Stein:

Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

You’re on the Website Services team, which traditionally, when we first started, and this is actually one of our Pro Services. So, a Pro Service with Buildertrend is outside of our Core subscription of Buildertrend the product. Project management, lead management, financial management for a construction business. About a handful of years ago, David Arnold, our chief strategy officer, led the effort of creating these Pro Services. One we already had, which is website development, which we’re going to talk about. But then we’ve also looked into the other parts of what a small business may need to run their business. So, you talk about things like payroll and HR items. You talk about like online payments that you may need to do. We have a handful of these Pro Services, and Website Services is one of those. Right?

Mike Stein:

Correct.

Paul Wurth:

From the top level, what does Website Services provide first and foremost?

Mike Stein:

Our primary focus is websites, website development. Well, part of our process is we’ll reach out to clients who have a website that are not working with Buildertrend. We offer them a free auditing service. So, we’ll go through their website, completely just go through it, identify areas where we can improve upon what they’re doing, or where it’s not quite living up to expectations. We do this whole free audit. We give it to them, and then we’ll dissect it with them so they can understand it. Because we’re aware that not everybody gets the whole technical aspect of websites. So, we go through that with them. Then if they want to sign up, they’re happy with what we have to offer, we go through a website, it takes roughly about three weeks to push it live.

Paul Wurth:

That sounds pretty quick. Is that quick in terms of what it normally is?

Mike Stein:

Yeah. It’s pretty quick. We’re in a good position because we work in house and we have a full staff. So, we can turn it around pretty quick. We have a lot of eyes out on our websites. We’re in a good position to put out quality websites in a short amount of time.

Paul Wurth:

I think it was our first service outside of Buildertrend Core subscription that we offer because of high demand. It was before you, it was early days of Buildertrend. I would say, when I first started working with construction companies, calling on them and talking to them about Buildertrend, I would say 80% of the people didn’t have a website. That’s how crazy it was. That was about 14 years ago. Now, it’s probably flipped on its head. Maybe even more. I’m sure almost everybody has a website, whether that’s a true standalone website or a Facebook page that uses their website. Or a house page that use your website. Is that fair to say?

Mike Stein:

Yeah. It’s pretty rare that we come across somebody who doesn’t have a website already.

Paul Wurth:

I think people understand the importance of website in terms of getting your message out and brand, and all of that. This is interesting. So, if somebody were to come to us, one of our clients and say, hey, I have a construction business. I love Buildertrend, I need a new website. What can you guys do? I think that makes a lot of sense because it’s two things that you need for your business in one place. So, you actually do this audit. Is that basically analyzing their current site?

Mike Stein:

Yeah. They don’t have to be a Buildertrend client of ours.

Paul Wurth:

They don’t, okay.

Mike Stein:

They don’t have to use the software or anything. If they are interested, they want to take advantage of it. It’s a free service. We’ll do it. And it’s a good opportunity to either one, hold their current website developers feet to the fire and kind of hold them accountable. Or, if they’re interested and they just needed that extra nudge, it’s a good push to kind of …

Paul Wurth:

We may be identifying a problem that they just haven’t had time to think about, as it relates to web … And again, they’re not website people. They are in construction. So, what kind of things do you find? What are some things that you commonly find that maybe negatively affecting their website performance today?

Mike Stein:

Often, we’ll find things like site performance, it’s way down. Code quality.

Paul Wurth:

What does that mean? What does site performance mean?

Mike Stein:

It’s a miserable process. When they’re on the website, it’s slow.

Paul Wurth:

For the person who’s actually visiting their site.

Mike Stein:

Yeah. Or the site’s not secure. What type of code they’re using. The quality of the code, if they’re using too much, too little. We’re able to identify things like that. And just see if there are really opportunities to, like I said, improve upon what they’re doing or what they aren’t doing at the time.

Paul Wurth:

Okay. What does a negatively performing website do to a business? Are they not getting leads or people are maybe jumping off the site before they need to? What is the benefit of having a high performing website?

Mike Stein:

There are a few different side effects. You touched on one, whereas the leads … It’s going to be more difficult for them to acquire leads. Either one, it’s going to be difficult for them to get discovered organically through a search engine.

Paul Wurth:

Okay. If you don’t have a high-performing website, and that’s the words in the right place. And we’re going to get into that. You’re not even going to be on that organic search, custom home Charlotte, yours is not even …

Mike Stein:

More than likely. Or if you are, you’ll be on the 10th page, but realistically who’s going that deep in a search engine.

Paul Wurth:

Not me. Okay. What’s the other negative?

Mike Stein:

Some of the other negatives is, if your site’s not secure and you’re using, let’s say, Google Chrome as your browser, a new user will be discouraged from entering your website. They’ll get two warnings before they can even enter your website. Let’s just say, you’ve got a solid website, it’s built well, but it’s not secure, if people can’t discover it and they’re discouraged, they’re not going to take that chance on you. There’s other competitors with better websites.

Paul Wurth:

For sure. So, security is important. Let’s say that I’m a construction company that’s gone through this audit with you. And now, I actually have the ability to build a website with you guys. What are some of the benefits that Buildertrend website development team may have over anybody else?

Mike Stein:

Well, we do like an interview process. We’re a little bit different in that we don’t necessarily just put something together in front of you and we say, hey, this is what we did, hope you’re happy with it. If not, deal with it. We have a lot of iterations. We take a lot of feedback and that before we even start developing the website. We have about a half an hour to an hour long interview process. Just getting to know the client better, what their objectives, what their goals are for the business, as well as the website? Which puts us in a good position to actually deliver upon something that they want.

Paul Wurth:

Okay. That seems really important. You’re trying to understand who they are as a brand and the type of client they’re trying to attract, or the price point that they build in. All those things are in that interview process.

Mike Stein:

And we’re going to give our feedback as experts because we understand there can be a disconnect there, but yeah.

Paul Wurth:

I would have to assume … I don’t want to step on your value prop because this is your world, but we pretty much exclusively do websites for construction companies. Right?

Mike Stein:

Yeah. Very rarely do we go outside of that realm, which again, I think is another advantage. We’re industry specific. We’ve had a long time to really hone in on this craft and understand the market. So, it gives us a huge upper hand on the competition.

Paul Wurth:

That’s great. Okay. I don’t want to make this a sales pitch by any means. That’s not what this is about. This episode’s about SEO, it’s something that I’ve heard a lot. I was the VP of marketing for Buildertrend for about a year and a half, and helped spin up that that department we have. SEO is really at the Core of a lot of what marketing is about, especially when you talk about demand gen, lead gen. So, just taking it from the top, I can read it here SEO. Search engine optimization is the process of improving the quality and quantity of website traffic to a website or a webpage from search engines. Fair enough?

Mike Stein:

Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

That’s it?

Mike Stein:

Essentially, yeah.

Paul Wurth:

Okay. How does somebody understand their current performing SEO and how does somebody get better at it?

Mike Stein:

For the most part, that’s where we come into play, to making it better. But there’s a multitude of different ways, I would say. If you want to go the more traditional route or more easy to obtain, you can use a lot of online free keyword research tools or like Google AdWords.

Paul Wurth:

You said key word …

Mike Stein:

Research.

Paul Wurth:

Word research. Okay. Again, we’re here to break it down to its most simplest point of view for people like me. When you build a website, you’re saying that the words that you use in like the about us or like the services offered or whatever you’re doing on your website, those things are super important to somebody finding you through the search engines.

Mike Stein:

Absolutely. So, ideally you want your content to be relevant to a search query. If you have the proper keywords or you’re talking about specific topics, it’s going to be a match more than likely.

Paul Wurth:

Okay. Is your advice, and I know I’m taking you all over the place here. Would your advice for a construction company be cast the widest net possible, as it relates to the words they’re using their website? Or get super specific about their area, their services offered, the type of work they want? What is the advice there?

Mike Stein:

A little bit of both. You want to be honest with your audience, you don’t want to advertise services that you can’t provide.

Paul Wurth:

Just for traffic, that’s bad. Okay.

Mike Stein:

Absolutely. If people come to your website, and it’s a bunch of irrelevant content, and you can’t help them, it’s no good for anybody.

Paul Wurth:

You’re going to get a negative effect there.

Mike Stein:

More than likely, yeah. To your earlier point about broad or niche, honestly, it’s a balance in between. You want to ideally captivate the largest audience possible, but you want to be specific to the people that you can service. For example, let’s say, home builder. Pretty common term, you wouldn’t want to just identify yourself as a home builder. If you are a home builder in Omaha, Neb., you’d want to get a little bit more niche. Or if you offer a specific type of product like you do, let’s say specialty granite, countertop installation. And that’s your thing in the city of Omaha. You should talk about that, because that will set you apart and you’re going to accommodate that niche audience. But otherwise, if you’re a more like general remodeler, addition specialist, custom home builder, whatever it may be, then yeah, talk about that, but try and keep it to your local market. That way, if people come to your website, you’re going to be able to offer it to the specific audience or more qualified leads.

Paul Wurth:

Is there a strategy behind where you put these words on your website?

Mike Stein:

Yeah. I would say the first places you want to start is in the metadata, which is in the …

Paul Wurth:

What is that?

Mike Stein:

It’s something that realistically, if you’re kind of confused, you’d have to see it in front of you to make sense of it. But if you do just a general search on a search engine, you’ll see there’ll be about 10 results per page. There’ll be a little blue area where that’s the page title. There’s going to be a URL below that, and then the meta description beneath that.

Paul Wurth:

You mean on Google?

Mike Stein:

On google, yeah.

Paul Wurth:

Okay. Specifically on Google, they grab your website, and they sort of put it in three spots on the Google page when you search for something.

Mike Stein:

Yeah. There’s three sections to your website.

Paul Wurth:

Okay. Got it.

Mike Stein:

And that’s per result. So, you would want to update your page title, which is going to be that blue portion or the meta description, which is the longer written text.

Paul Wurth:

If somebody wanted to go look up their meta-description right now, all they would do is just Google … Go to Google, put their company name in and then just see what gets displayed?

Mike Stein:

They could do that. It might be difficult because if they’re not on the first page, they’ll look in forever and ever trying to discover themselves. There’s a lot of free resources that will help you to pull that data from your website, off the internet.

Paul Wurth:

Maybe we’ll throw a couple of those on the show notes.

Mike Stein:

Yeah. Absolutely.

Paul Wurth:

Stay tuned for that. I know I’m taking you off track, we’re talking search engine optimization. It seems like it’s important, because it’s going to get people to the website that you’ve built. Then in terms of getting people to convert to a lead, is that an expertise that we guide people down as well?

Mike Stein:

Slightly. That would be more so in your written content. That’s how you’re going to sell people or your images.

Paul Wurth:

But as far as our website development, we guide people through where those things need to be, what they should look like, that kind of thing.

Mike Stein:

Yeah, absolutely.

Paul Wurth:

Got it. We actually started offering because … and I think this was actually really just because of you. You had a past position outside of Omaha. Where did you come from?

Mike Stein:

Philadelphia.

Paul Wurth:

Okay. It sounds fun. Do you like it better here?

Mike Stein:

Both have their ups and downs.

Paul Wurth:

You can be honest with the audience. Okay.

Mike Stein:

I’m from Omaha, so I’m biased.

Paul Wurth:

Okay, good. It’s also like 10 degrees right now, we’re not putting our best foot forward right now. You were in Philadelphia, and you actually went to school or you worked in a business that did SEO stuff.

Mike Stein:

Both. I went to school and then I worked for about three years after college in Philly. Two different agencies.

Paul Wurth:

Ad agencies. Okay. Yeah, really it’s a credit to you because when you came back, you joined our Web Services team in a different role in a way. But then we had realized that you have this expertise and that’s really what it takes. So, now we actually offer this both as a part of our website. When you sign up for a website with Buildertrend, you get some layer of SEO guidance and management, but then if you really want to take it up a notch, we have another service you can do as well.

Mike Stein:

And I can speak to those a little bit if you want.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. Go ahead. Just tell everybody what our offers are.

Mike Stein:

With our websites, if you sign up for a website, this is a free service. So, you have to choose to take advantage of this, but it’s a free service that we offer. Primarily what that looks like is we can do a full competitor analysis. If you can indicate who your competitors are, we’ll crawl their entire website.

Paul Wurth:

Hold on a second. That’s awesome. I’m sure every construction company knows three to five people that they compete with locally. So, they’re going to give you those names, and you guys are just going to …

Mike Stein:

We going to draw comparisons, and we will identify what your website’s doing that’s unique. What your competitors are doing that’s unique, which it’s a really good opportunity to just get a better understanding as to like what techniques people are using. What they’re implementing. We can identify unique keywords, unique backlinks, how they’re just … in general, their score. Do they outperform you or are you out performing them? So, a lot of insight that you can take and really implement into your website or try and adopt similar strategies.

Paul Wurth:

That’s pretty amazing. And again, I’m not just trying to sell this service. If I’m a business owner, I know companies spend a lot of money on website development. If you go to like another type of independent agency to do this, you’re talking over $10,000 for a new website and this type of SEO stuff. And we’ll talk about how much ours is, again, I don’t want it to be about that. Essentially, you’re basically looking at other construction companies who may have paid that much money, what they did, and you’re just basically grabbing that information.

Mike Stein:

Yeah, absolutely. You’re entitled to all that information, if it’s a dot com website, it’s public domain.

Paul Wurth:

Awesome. That’s worth it right there. I cut you off. What else do you guys do? Keep going.

Mike Stein:

So, truth be told, this is an approach that I think is a little bit different, a little bit unconventional. Maybe not, but we’re pretty transparent in our approach. So, we give our clients full 24/7 access to their website’s analytics. They can jump in at any time. See, is the website on track with their goals? What kind of traffic are they getting? Is it primarily females? Is it males? Is it 20-year-olds? Is it six-year-olds?

Paul Wurth:

Wow.

Mike Stein:

We can provide all that information. What local metropolitan cities, things of that nature. So, if you’re serious about marketing, and that’s a next step you want to take with a website, you can understand your website better. That way you’re targeting specific personas online. And hopefully as a result, you’re getting more, again, qualified leads.

Paul Wurth:

Okay. We’re building a website to whatever specifications to meet their goals. Putting their best photos up there, putting the right content up there to hit on SEO. Adding the right contact us areas and trying to convert. But then we’re also going to peel back and give you looks behind the scenes of who’s coming to your website, and all that data.

Mike Stein:

Absolutely.

Paul Wurth:

We set all that up for them, and they can go in any time, but can they also call and run through it with us and just analyze that stuff?

Mike Stein:

Yeah, absolutely. It’s not a part of our process to necessarily have like weekly or monthly meetings, but if they want to set that up, we can accommodate that.

Paul Wurth:

Okay. You’re very accommodative. Very nice. I would want to do that for sure, at first, just to understand what am I looking at? And how do I pull the levers, if I want to pull the levers.

Mike Stein:

Yeah, absolutely. Some of it can be very technical. So, we use an extension called Google Data Studio, which presents the information and data more so in like charts and graphs. Which I think, regardless of what your expertise is, it’s very easy to digest.

Paul Wurth:

All right. That’s really awesome. So, all this is included in whatever the fee is for the website development?

Mike Stein:

Yeah.

Paul Wurth:

Okay. So, you can come to us, and again, I don’t want to make this a huge ad. But I think this is a part of somebody’s business. That whether they have a website with us or not, can they do the SEO service?

Mike Stein:

They would have to have a website with us, unfortunately.

Paul Wurth:

So, if you’ve had a website that you feel like is not performing right now, we can contact the web services team, do that analysis, the audit, as you called it. Understand if it is performing or not. And then we’ll talk to you about what our web services. Is our pricing pretty straight forward? What is the website development stuff?

Mike Stein:

Website is $199 a month.

Paul Wurth:

It’s just $199 a month?

Mike Stein:

Yep. To your point earlier, you were talking about that $10,0100 for websites. That’s not an outrageous price by any means, but we do $199 a month, and we’re a little different in that you can cancel at any anytime. So, there’s no upfront development fee, no cancellation fee. We’re aware, we’re not necessarily the best fit for everybody.

Paul Wurth:

I love that. So, we’re going to develop a website for you. We’re going to go through the audit. Then if you do want to sign up, we’re going to go through an interview, which is like, hey, what are your goals? Who are you? Let’s really get this thing tailored. It’s going to be developed for you in three weeks on average.

Mike Stein:

It could be quicker if they’re not picky.

Paul Wurth:

Could be quicker. And then we’re just trying to earn your business back, just like with Buildertrend. Buildertrend is month-to-month. This is month-to-month, we’re going to earn your business back every month. I’m not sure a web development agency could ever say that.

Mike Stein:

Yeah. And honestly, an advantage to having our websites as well as our software, which most of our clients do is, there’s a lot of Buildertrend integration. For some people, they get a high amounts of traffic coming to their website, or they get a lot of calls in. If you can direct people to your contact form on your Buildertrend website, that’s going to create a new lead within the actual software.

Paul Wurth:

Okay. I see.

Mike Stein:

So, it alleviates a lot of stress, a lot of double entry. Then in addition to that, you can actually host your Buildertrend login on your website.

Paul Wurth:

Right. If you’re a construction company, and your employee is at a computer, and they want to sign in, or subcontractors want to sign in or a client, that’s typically what you’re going to find instead of going to build their trend to sign in, they can go to your website URL to sign in. And that drives traffic. Right?

Mike Stein:

Absolutely.

Paul Wurth:

Which is a good thing. Okay, cool. Then SEO, so if you are trying to unpack what SEO is just like I am, and you want to see how it might benefit your business. Can they just contact you directly? Or can they contact the web services team and just have a call with you to understand if it’s going to benefit them?

Mike Stein:

100%, yeah.

Paul Wurth:

All right. What’s the best way to get ahold of you guys?

Mike Stein:

If you just go to buildertrendwebsites.com, you can get a hold of us there. It’ll have our pricing. What’s included? A lot of the content on our websites and a breakdown of our history and everything. So, you can check that out and then just fill out the contact form, and we’ll get in touch with you.

Paul Wurth:

Buildertrendwebsites.com, I’m on there right now. There’s also some great examples of websites we’ve done and visuals there, so check that out. If you have a website, if you need a website, check it out. It’s something that we offer as a service. It seems like a really good deal. And again, you’ve got Buildertrend you might as well have our web services and our SEO stuff. If you fill out that form, Mike’s going to get ahold of you. He’ll take you through everything. Otherwise, if you can’t remember that, and you just think about it next week, you’re a client of Buildertrend, just ask the next person you speak to at Buildertrend, they’ll lead you right to Mike and his team.

Mike Stein:

This is my little pitch.

Paul Wurth:

Let’s hear it.

Mike Stein:

The audit is a free service. So, even if you’re not interested in signing up for a website with us, take advantage of the free audit, see how your website is or isn’t performing. And I think it’ll give you a lot of good insight. So, take advantage of that.

Paul Wurth:

I like that. All right, Mike, we’re going to end with that, because that was a great pitch. Nothing to lose, have an audit, learn a little bit about SEO. Mike’s a great guy to talk to as you know, so he’ll call you directly, and it’s probably a really good thing for your business if you’re thinking about it. Thank you, Mike, for coming on. coming in these walls again, and to all the listeners, appreciate you as always. Have a good rest of your day.

Mike Stein:

See you guys.

Paul Wurth:

Thank you again for tuning into this episode of “The Building Code.” Make sure you subscribe and like wherever you listen to podcasts. Also, head out to Facebook and join The Building Code crew, and finally drop me a line at podcast@buildertrend.com. We want to hear from you. Suggestions on guests or topics, anything. Thanks so much for joining and appreciate you.