If you’re a plumber, you probably want to see your company’s website show up in Google search results when people search for plumbing services near them. Doing so will involve some search engine optimization, or SEO. Luckily, SEO for plumbers can get your website more online traffic, more plumbing leads, and more business.
How To Dominate Local Plumber SEO
Local plumber SEO is a form of organic search optimization that can help your plumbing business generate more local traffic and increase its customer base.
This type of SEO relies on Google algorithms and proximity factors to show up when people in your area search for specific keywords or phrases on sites like Google, Bing, and Apple Maps.
For example, if someone in your area searches for “plumbing company near me” on their smartphone, you want to make sure that you’re showing up in the Google Local Pack, which is where the top results appear when users search for plumbers in their location.
This is a great way to get more phone calls and build your brand’s reputation as a reliable and trustworthy business.
1. Build a Plumbing Website Optimized For Users
It’s important to remember that your website is your sales tool, and it needs to provide the right kind of information to prospective customers.
A website that isn’t user-friendly or has a poor design can cause your business to lose potential customers.
Using a professional plumber website design company is a great way to ensure that your plumbing business’s website provides the information your customers need and reflects your professionalism.
With a custom website, you can showcase your work, improve your plumber SEO and provide the information your customers need to know before hiring you.
2. Conduct Plumbing Keyword Research
As a plumbing business, you likely offer an array of services. All of these services represent an opportunity to create pages for different keywords.
Before you start optimizing your website, you should research plumbing keywords in order to know what services to target in the rankings.
Finding a couple dozen keywords to get started is pretty easy. Take the different variations your business name, your business location, and your services to see what should be featured on your site.
3. Optimize Your On-Page Plumber SEO
In addition to researching keywords, you should think about the structure of your site and how the keywords will be used.
It’s important to understand that all web pages, even the pages on your site, compete in search rankings for these keywords. To improve your chances of ranking high, you’ll need on-page SEO optimization.
On-page SEO is the process of optimizing individual pages on your website to rank higher for certain keywords.
Not only is this impacted by the structure and page layout of your site, but also by the optimization of each page on its own.
Optimized title tags and meta descriptions will improve the authority of each page.
If two pages are too similar in what they present, search engines won’t know which to rank higher. This is referred to as keyword cannibalization. To avoid this, each cluster of keywords should be designated to its own page.
3a. Create a Page Sitemap
You’ll want to make sure your website is easy to navigate for two entities: potential clients and search engines. Luckily, both people and search engines benefit from a clear page structure.
To get started, use your keyword research to create a sitemap of the page structure that your website will have. Here’s an example:
- Home
- About Us
- Services
- Drain Cleaning
- Plumbing Repair
- Dishwasher Repair
- Toilet Repair
- Plumbing Installation
- Dishwasher Installation
- Toilet Installation
- Contact Us
Since your customers will be searching online for particular services, build a page for all the services your business offers. This will increase the amount of keywords your website can rank for.
3b. Use Simple URL Slugs For All Pages
A URL is the string of letters, numbers, and characters within a link. An example of a full URL is this page: plumbingjobs.com/seo-for-plumbers. The part after the “.com” is known as a slug.
Why does this matter? Using simple URL slugs will improve the usability of your site, make information more clear, and improve your on-page SEO efforts.
Using the earlier example, let’s look at how the URL slug structure should be set up:
- Home: YourSite.com/home
- About Us: YourSite.com/about-us
- Services: YourSite.com/services
- Drain Cleaning: YourSite.com/services/drain-cleaning
- Dishwasher Repair: YourSite.com/services/dishwasher-repair
- Toilet Repair: YourSite.com/services/toilet-repair
- Dishwasher Installation: YourSite.com/services/dishwasher-installation
- Toilet Installation: YourSite.com/services/toilet-installation
- Contact Us: YourSite.com/contact-us
3c. Utilize Internal Links Across Your Site
Search engines rely on links to navigate the pages of a website and as a ranking factor in search results.
Whenever you reference a particular keyword on your website, link to another relevant page of your website to further tell search engines exactly what each page represents. This is called internal linking.
For example, if your Dishwasher Repair page references the term “toilet repair” in its content, this is an opportunity to link from the Dishwasher Repair page to the Toilet Repair page of your site. Doing so will reiterate to search engines what page of your site talks about toilet repair services.
4. Post Quality Content Written by Plumbing Experts
Creating quality content is a vital part of search engine optimization for any business, but it’s especially crucial for plumbing companies with staunch competition.
Having high-quality content that answers the questions of your target audience will make it more likely for those visitors to turn into customers.
Here are some different types of content to feature on your site:
Service Pages – Create a page for each service your company offers that describes who you are and what you do. If you have multiple locations, creating a single page for each location is a great idea. This will allow you to optimize the page for local search and drive traffic to your business from that location.
Blog Posts – As a plumber, you’ll have plenty of knowledge of interesting plumbing topics. Virtually all of these topics can be written about on the blog of your website. Topics like how-to guides, product reviews, completed jobs, and seasonal prep information can all be their own blog post.
4. Add Real Photos to Your Website
Another way that you can improve your SEO is by including photos on your website. These images will allow your brand and website to come to life and make it more relatable for your customers.
It’s also important to use alternate text descriptions for your images, which will tell search engines what each image is about.
Plus, adding real photos of you and your employees increases the trust factor and authority of your website. This causes more people to trust your website and improves your search rankings.
5. Build Local Citations (Google Maps, Directories, etc.)
It’s also important to optimize your Google Business Profile and third-party directory listings for your plumbing business.
This will help you build a strong brand reputation and improve your search engine rankings. Furthermore, it can help your business attract more incoming calls and increase customer referrals.
Search for plumbing directories, business listing sites, review sites, and other places to list your business online. By including your business address, you’ll solidify your relevance in a particular service area.
To start building citations to your website, list your website on directories and review sites like Google My Business, Yelp, HomeAdvisor, and plumbing directories.
6. Build Backlinks To Boost Your Plumber SEO
One of the most important SEO strategies for plumbers is link building. These links can improve your website’s search engine rankings and referral traffic, and they also give you more credibility in your industry.
While link building is a challenging, time-consuming, and sometimes expensive marketing strategy, it can be extremely effective in boosting your plumbing business’s website performance.
The key to successful link building is to create content that adds value to your target audience, rather than for specific keywords.
This content should be relevant to your customers, solve their problems, and provide useful information. If so, other websites will be more likely to link to your site.
To maximize the effectiveness of your link building campaign, you should implement a strong link building strategy that includes both natural and manual links.
For example, guest blogging on relevant websites is an effective method of linking to your plumbing site but shouldn’t be your only backlink source.
Instead, developing a blend of do-follow and no-follow links from directories, industry publications, review platforms, social media profiles, and local news organizations is more natural to search engines.
Hiring Plumber SEO Services
If you’re not sure how to get started with link building for your plumbing business, you can hire an experienced plumber reputation management company to help you implement a comprehensive SEO strategy that will increase your search engine rankings and website traffic.
This will allow you to reach your target audience without having to pay for advertisements and will reduce your advertising costs over the long term.