The way customers do business is changing—they prefer to do business online because it’s easy and convenient for modern, on-the-go consumers. The days of cold calling and going door to door have come and gone. People don’t want to spend time on phone calls, and they certainly don’t have time to chat with a business owner on their doorstep when they could just Google search plumbing companies. That’s why nailing down your company’s online presence is a must. And it all starts with plumbing Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
But when it comes to plumber SEO, things can get a bit tricky—or at least it can seem that way at first. A plumbing company typically only does local work, so finding out how you can increase your local SEO presence specifically is the key to gaining more customers online and growing your plumbing business.
In this article, we’ll discuss what plumber SEO is, why it’s essential for a plumbing business, and how you can tackle plumber SEO as a way to increase your website traffic and local online presence.
What is Plumber SEO, and why does it matter?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, a series of keywords you can add to the backend of your website to attract more organic website traffic online. With this internet marketing tool, you’ll also attract more “relevant traffic,” which means that you’re getting visits from more compatible leads looking for plumbing services. So, the more plumbing-related website traffic you receive, the more likely you will convert a lead into a customer.
Plumber SEO acts as a powerful marketing strategy, and the way you can begin to optimize your plumbing website is through keyword research. By using the right keywords, you gain a competitive edge in your online visibility and drive organic traffic to your website that’s actually in need of your services. If you’re curious about keyword rankings, you can check out this plumbing SEO keyword rankings list.
Another way to help improve your online presence, drive relevant traffic to your website, and boost lead generation is through optimizing your Google Business Profile.
What is Google Business Profile?
Google Business Profile is a free, easy-to-use online marketing tool for businesses. It’s designed to help business owners like you manage their online presence on Google—including Google Search and Google Maps.
How does Google Business Profile work? Well, when someone in your area searches for a local service, such as “plumbing company in Burlington, VA,” Google quickly weighs all of the information it knows about those search terms. It creates a curated list of the best plumbing businesses that meet those requirements.
Customers can quickly check out your services, see business hours, view each plumbing company’s star ratings, read reviews, and ultimately decide if they’re interested in working with you. Google Business Profiles are a powerful way to increase your search engine visibility and reach new customers looking for businesses just like yours.
A well-optimized Google Business Profile listing also boosts your business’s reputation by leveraging the power of online reviews. Since 84% of people trust online reviews just as much as word of mouth recommendations, a listing packed with 5-star reviews, and glowing feedback is one of the cornerstones of a reliable search engine strategy.
An optimized web presence on popular platforms like Google Business Profile encourages customers to check out your plumbing website and learn more about your local service offerings.
5 ways you can increase online customers with plumber SEO
01. Technical SEO
Technical SEO refers to website and server optimizations that help search engines index your site more effectively to improve organic search rankings. Search engines prioritize websites that utilize certain functions like responsive design, fast loading times, and more, and technical SEO is what you need to do to ensure your website has those functions. When performing a technical SEO audit, some things that you can implement to optimize your plumbing website include: using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), making sure that your site is mobile-friendly, speeding up your site, removing duplicate content, creating an XML sitemap, enabling AMP, and adding structure data markup to your website.
02. Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a free internet marketing tool that enables you to analyze data for your plumbing business to get a better understanding of who your customers are and what services they want. With Google Analytics, you can evaluate the performance of your marketing campaigns, content, products, and more. You also get access to Google’s unique insights and machine learning capabilities to help get the most out of your plumbing SEO data. Analytics is built to work with Google’s advertising and publisher products so you can use your analytics insights to reach the right customers through plumber SEO and higher search engine results.
03. Google Search Console
Google Search Console tools and reports help you measure your site’s search traffic and performance, fix issues, and make your plumbing website stand out from your competitors on Google. With Console, you can see which specific plumbing issues and concerns bring users to your site. You can also analyze your site’s impressions, clicks, and position on Google Search to see where your plumbing business ranks. Further yet, you can receive email alerts when Google identifies issues on your site, see which URLs are affected by these issues, and tell Google when you’ve fixed them, so your plumbing website can stay optimized all the time.
04. Optimize your Google Business Profile
With a Google Business Profile account, you get more than a business listing. And better yet? You get it for free. Your free Business Profile lets you easily connect with customers across Google Search and Maps, so you can post photos and offers to your profile to illustrate what makes your plumbing business unique. By optimizing your Google Business Profile account with accurate hours, contact info, directions, and more, you give customers reasons to choose you every time.
Plumbing Utah Heating & Air’s Google Business Profile is a great example of an optimized listing. They include all of their location and contact information, a slew of 5-star reviews, and a limited time discount offering to grab the attention of potential customers.
And since your customers want to connect, by updating your Google Business Profile listing, your customers can call, message, or leave reviews all in one place. Plus, with Podium’s Review tool, you can collect tons of new reviews—it’s as easy as sending a text. With a new, simple way to transact online, you can generate more leads than ever before.
05. Business citations
Business citations are an essential ranking factor when it comes to local search engine listings. But what are they, exactly? Business citations are an online reference to a business that features the business’ name, address, and phone number (NAP), similar to a Google Business Profile. By adding additional information like special offers, events, and more, you can make your plumbing business stand out from the competition. This allows you to improve your local SEO rankings and earn referral traffic to ultimately promote more lead generation.
Having your business listed in trusted online directories sends signals to Google to improve their degree of certainty that your business exists, helping to support local search rankings. When deciding which citations to list your business in, a good rule of thumb starts with the online business directories that are most relevant to your industry. Check out top citations for plumbers here and here. However, for local SEO, plumbing SEO experts agree that Google Business Profile, Bing Maps, Yelp, and even social media accounts like Facebook, are considered a “must-have.”
Conclusion
Making the jump from in-store to online may seem intimidating and complicated, but optimizing your digital marketing with a new plumbing SEO campaign can be a powerful way to increase your local online visibility. And at this point, it’s a must. 92% of clicks on Google are made on page one of its results, so it’s essential to make sure that your plumbing SEO strategies land you on page one as a way to capture more leads. All that said, your leads are only as valuable as your ability to manage them, so organizing them with a management tool like Podium’s Inbox can help ease employee burdens and save time along the way.
While you could hand all of this work off to an expensive SEO company that handles plumber SEO services, if you follow the steps outlined above to implement a plumber SEO strategy, you’re sure to see an impactful increase in your online customers.
