Top 10 SEO Tips for Plumbing & Heating Contractors

Over the past few months we’ve literally had dozens of plumbers asking us for some free search engine optimization tips and SEO advice to help their business grow by gaining a better position in the major search engines with their company website. The Plumbing and Heating business is a highly competitive business, especially online.

The top ranking plumber, for a search on “Plumbers Los Angeles”, on Google has a High PR, lots of indexed links, and will also have a high domain authority. These factors combined allow the content of that website to get a high ranking on search engines for relevant keywords and search phrases.

Which Search Engine Optimization Methods do plumbing and HVAC Contractors use to get more traffic and increase sales leads?

The Search Engine Optimization techniques used in the plumbing industry are almost the same as in any other highly competitive industry or field. First you will need to know you should be focusing on getting more quality traffic.

This means that you are looking to attract visitors that actually need a plumber at that moment.

SEO for plumbers for plumbers is all about getting the people to spend money with your company, and not with your competitors. Going after the people looking for “Plumbers Los Angeles” on Google may not be the best way to go.

Get people to:

• Search for YOU
• Find YOUR website
• Spend money with YOU

SEO Tools and Websites you need

You will need to get familiar with a few good SEO tools and websites These Search Engine Optimization Tools were designed to assist you in configuring your website(s) for search engine optimization within the different search engines, by giving you insight into hidden keywords, low cost adwords, website traffic analysis, competing websites and more.

Plumbing Keywords & Search phrases

The keywords tag is used by search engines to help them in indexing your website. These keywords or phrases are important because search engines use this meta tag to determine what search queries your website will come up under. To find out which plumbing keywords relate to the content of your website and web-pages and which of these keywords you need to put in the meta tags for the pages of your site.

Recommended Keyword Tools

SEOmoz : seo and social monitoring made easy.
SEOmoz can help you to go to the beach without worrying about your SEO. Our web app crawls your site each week, notifying you about issues that might impact your performance. We even monitor rankings for all the keywords you care about on the search engines your audience uses. Less busy work, more time spent optimizing (and tanning).

Semrush : to get hidden keywords and low-cost keywords.
Semrush will show a list of Google keywords for any site, Get the list of AdWords keywords for any site, Get the list of your competitors in organic and paid Google search results, Get the estimated SE and AdWords traffic for any domain, Get hidden related (and low-cost) keywords to optimize your AdWords campaigns.

iSpionage : to download your competitions top keywords & effective ad copies.
iSpionage helps to see your competitions top keywords & effective ad copiesand to monitor organic ranking & PPC campaign performance. iSpionage not only allows you to find out what keywords the competition is bidding on, but you can also view the ads that they are running on all of the major search engines.

Google Keyword Tool : to find low-competition/high traffic keywords.
The Google AdWords Keyword Tool gives you a sense of how many advertisers are bidding for a particular keyword. This information will help you determine how competitive your keywords are, and give you insight into the number of search queries for the chosen keywords, showing both the number of Global monthly searches and the Local monthly searches. Apart from finding keywords with high traffic and low competition the keyword tool is also useful to find a lot of related keywords and search phrases.

Keyword Density Tool : to find the keywords and search phrases of your website content.
The SEO Centro Keyword Density Tool helps you analyze the keyword density from your web pages and include a tag cloud for the most important keywords from your site.

Keyword List Generator : to create lists of keyword phrases, fast and easy.
The SEO Book Keyword List Generator is a web based SEO tool that allows you to generate a large number of keyword search phrases based on permutations of the keywords you enter.

Website Traffic

It is always a good thing to get to know the visitors of your website. Try to find out who visits your website, at what time, what pages they visit, how they found your site, what keywords they used and much more.

Recommended Website Statistics Tools

Google Analytics : to gain insights into your website traffic and marketing effectiveness.
The Google Analytics Tool is the enterprise-class web analytics solution that lets you see and analyze your traffic data to write better-targeted ads, strengthen your marketing initiatives and create higher converting pages.

Quantcast : to gain insight into the demographics and lifestyle of your site’s visitors.
The Quantcast Audience Measurement Tool provides detailed user demographics and deep audience insights.

Competitors

Find out as much as possible about your direct competition. Who fishes inside your water. Check which websites link to the website of your competitors and what keywords they are using to attract more visitors.

Recommended Tools to check on competitors

SEOmoz : competative analysis.
SEOmoz will keep an eye on your competitors without breaking into their office. Utilizing Open Site Explorer, our popular crawl of the web, the SEOmoz PRO web app monitors your competitors' rankings and link metrics so you can gain an edge on the search results page. Competitors will think you're hiding in their air ducts.

Semrush : to get lists of your competitors in organic and paid Google search results.
Semrush gets the list of Google keywords for any site, Get the list of AdWords keywords for any site, Get the list of your competitors in organic and paid Google search results, Get the estimated SE and AdWords traffic for any domain, Get hidden related (and low-cost) keywords to optimize your AdWords campaigns.

iSpionage : to view the ads that competitiors are running on the major search engines.
iSpionage lets you download your competitors' top keyword / effective ad copies and to monitor organic ranking & PPC campaign performance. iSpionage not only allows you to find out what keywords the competition is bidding on, but you can also view the ads that they are running on all of the major search engines.

We recommend the following SEO tools:

1. Use Google Analytics. If you outsource your SEO functions, make sure they give you a full detailed report, or at least access to your analytics data. This will allow you to see where you are getting the most traffic from, what is working for you, and what keywords most people are using. If anything it will open your eyes to the volume of traffic that can come from the most random places.
    
2. Spread your keywords / look for the long tail. Everyone is competing for “Plumbers Los Angeles”. I am not saying abandon this completely, but you also need to start thinking outside the box. There are more people searching locally for “Hot Water Service” than for “Plumbers Los Angeles”. Also would you rather do business with people looking for a “Cheap Plumber” or “luxury home plumber” or “best quality plumber Los Angeles“?
    
3. Build Relevant Content. This means that you will have to look at building up your quality content around lots of plumbing related keywords. I would suggest building a blog. You could write a few “how to” articles.
    
4. Use unique interesting title tags for each page. Do the same for the meta description.
    
5. Look for high PR links. Use the Open Site Explorer and Yahoo to find out where the most authoritative links are coming into your competitors. Try to get links in relevant directories. You don’t have to chase only the top PR websites on the web, that way you will probably miss out on a lot of other places that could give you quality traffic.
    
6. Gain publicity. Sponsor a local baseball team, donate to the local hospital, hold a “How to change your water heater” event for old people. Write information that can be used by the press and local media. The bottom line is, by doing all of this a) you will get a lot of people linking to your website and b) it will raise your profile in the local area.
    
7. Get mainly relevant links. Only initiate link exchanges and directory submissions from website that are highly relevant and have been indexed for a long time. Pretty much the only place you should buy a link from is the Yahoo directory. After that you might want to get a premium placement in a plumbing directory online. Everything else is a waste, until you know where your traffic is coming from.
    
8. Minimize the number of outbound links. On your pages and on pages where you place your links, avoid link farms, links to gambling sites, pills, etc. Only link to websites related to home improvement or plumbing. Only link to websites that are ranked on the first 2 to 3 pages of the search engines.
    
9. Spend time on Facebook and Twitter. If you want a cheap alternative to PPC Advertising, look at social media, or having a Facebook page, and spending some money on PPC. Also think about using Twitter actively to find clients.
    
10. Get a Google Places listing, and focus on improving that. Firstly your location matters in Google places, and that can’t be faked. Secondly it relies on a lot of data sources to see where your address is, so every time you place a link back to your website, make sure you put your telephone number and physical address down.
     
11. Write some articles on Blogger, or create a Blog on Plumbing on any other free blogging service.
     
12. Post free or paid clasified ads on sites.
     
13. Upload video's to Youtube, plumbing videos are a great way to share information and get some extra links to your website as well as additional visitors following those links. 

Plumber SEO & Marketing

With several years of experience in the field of search engine optimization and plumber marketing we can help you to launch new websites and/or increase sales through existing sites. We can make your websites visible and findable in the search engines, creating new opportunities and delivering more business and more potential customers. 

Higher search engine rankings, better conversion rates and a relevant traffic increase is what marketingplumber.com's Plumber SEO can achieve for your plumbing company website.