Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

How Exactly Can SEO Help a Plumbing or HVAC Business?

• SEO for plumbing and HVAC companies can help you be competitive online for buyer search terms. Using relevant and strategically researched keywords across your website can help you rank higher in search engine results pages (SERP) for search queries like “best HVAC contractors” and “plumbers near me”. This will make users more likely to click on your website listing and see what your company is all about, resulting in far more qualified jobs over time.
• SEO not only helps with search rankings, but forces you to take a hard look at your website’s content, the services you offer on the site, and will help you create a better user experience for website visitors AND search engines.
• 4 in 5 consumers use search engines to find local information, which makes it all the more important for you invest in SEO for your plumbing or HVAC business. Being listed at the top of search results not only makes you more visible, but also makes you seem more trustworthy from a searcher’s perspective.

How Long Does SEO Take to Get Good Results?

• SEO is not an overnight game — it will often take 3 months to start to show definitive improvements depending on the competition and your website’s starting point. Between the 6-12 month mark, after all of the initial work is completed, you should start to see incredible results that will stick around. Search engines need time to understand the changes that you’re making as well as time to crawl new links and content you’ve built.
• A longer campaign will typically yield better results. Sometimes business owners can get impatient, but it’s important to remember that you’re in this for the long haul. This is why we use SEO for plumbers and HVAC as only one part of our online marketing strategy. Other methods like Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC) can start to show results almost immediately while we wait for the SEO campaign to pick up steam.
• Between the 6-9 month mark, when the plumbing and HVAC SEO campaign has really done its job, you’ll start to see results plateau. This is normal since you’re going to hit a point where you cannot increase traffic any further. This is when it becomes more important than ever to monitor your competitors, and expand your strategy’s reach so you can maintain the results you’ve achieved.

What Kind of ROI Should You Expect?

How the Search Engine Results Work

When getting started with plumber and HVAC search engine optimization, you need to get a grasp on if your current website is showing up in Google searches for your main plumbing and HVAC keywords or not.

If you go to Google and type in the keywords that are important to your plumbing or HVAC company, does your business come up? These might be keywords like “emergency plumber your city”, “your city HVAC service”, “AC replacement”, etc.

Brainstorm some keywords on your own based upon the services that you offer and are most important to the success and profitability of your business.

Before we go even further on this subject, let’s make sure you understand the difference between which type of search result is which.

When you do a search on Google, you’re going to see three sections of listing come up:

1. Paid Google Ads Listings – Google ads listings generally show up at the top of a Google search result and there can be up to 4 at the top above any other listings (you’ll see the word “ad” next to them so you know they’re a paid advertisement, although it’s very subtle). In this section, you can pay Google to display ads for your business based on keywords that you select. It is referred to as pay per click, because you only pay when someone actually clicks on your listing if you’re showing.
2. Google Maps Listings – Getting ranked in this 3 pack of Google maps that show in search results for local searches is hands down the biggest qualified job generator for all of our clients. If someone searches for “plumber in your city” or “your city air conditioning repair”, the maps section will pop up with 3 businesses that Google deems important enough to rank for those terms. These are the easiest on the eyes and display Gold stars with reviews in them. You can’t pay your way into these (Although, there now is a way we do this with our system to sneak an ad in there as well which we’ll talk about later); you have to earn placement in maps. When you’re ranking in Maps, it is an unlimited free source of traffic.
3. Organic Search Listings – The organic section of Google’s search results displays underneath the maps listings for local searches. We deem these as important, but as the years have gone on these listings have been pushed further and further down the page in local search results, making them not as important as they once were. Although, if you can rank your way into the top couple spots in the organic section, you’ll definitely see some traffic. Again, these are not paid listings, and are ranked solely on Google’s search algorithms. This is where SEO comes into play.

In order to check your rankings accurately to see where you currently stand, I recommend doing the following. Go to this website for accurate search results from your location: citationbuilderpro.com.

Type in the city you want to rank in and the search term you want to rank for, hit “get URL” and see where you stand. It’s important to use a site like this for your search. Your own search history is stored by Google, so if you are looking at your website a lot, or searching for your own business, Google will give you back results that are tainted by your user history. Using this site takes away the bias and lets you see if you actually rank in Google Maps or not. 

When it comes to ranking in Google, the most important thing that we focus on is if you’re showing up in Google Maps for your main search terms or not. We’d agree that 60%+ of all search traffic will come through your Google Maps listing, so having those rankings work for you are key to success.

Many people know to skip over the paid listings right to maps, so make sure you’re visible there!

Choosing Your Keywords

So which keywords are you ranking for? You need to figure out what people are searching for first.

What will people type into the Google search bar to find you? Which services are they looking for more information on?

There will always be the obvious keywords like:

• “Your city” plumbing company
• “Your city” AC repair
• “Your city” emergency plumber

The less than obvious examples are things like:

• AC replacement service
• emergency AC repair
• residential plumbing “your city”
• tankless water heater installation
• commercial plumbing companies
• best HVAC contractor

And you may want to show up for many other service keywords that a great deal of plumbing & HVAC contractors also offer like:

• slow draining sink
• HVAC service
• gas line installation
• heat pump replacement
• toilet repair

I’d recommend mapping out a list of the top 20 keywords that you think people are typing when they need your plumbing or HVAC services. Separate them out into services and sub-services. You can use our keyword page on our website again for more ideas.