SEO For Plumbers
Table of Contents
When it comes to getting business for your plumbing company, the competition is very aggressive in the city of Toronto. Every new customer in this competitive market has always been hard to come by. Plumbers in 2020 have been shifting their focus to organic search engine optimization and the results have been plentiful. Positioning your plumbing company for the best possible results is an arduous, but fruitful task. By optimizing your website with a few other tips and tricks, it can catapult your plumbing company to new heights!
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Marketing For Plumbers
How To Optimize Your Plumbing Website
We’ve itemized a few items below to get the most out of your website and online presence. Check out our step-by-step guide to getting the best SEO out of your plumbing website.
Step 1: Planning Your Website
Keyword research is a major part of gaining more leads and success online through your website. To get started we recommend the Google Keyword Planner or Ubbersuggest. This extensive tool will serve as a great starting point to finding out what keywords are being searched in your industry. Scores of data, such as search volumes and geographical data, can be found when utilizing this tool. The Google Keyword planner allows you to understand what people are searching for when trying to get plumbing services in their local area.
As a starting point, it might seem daunting but things to understand are that the higher the search volume is for a particular keyword or phrase, the harder it is to obtain a high ranking for them. Over time, with patience and perseverance, you can obtain a higher ranking when it comes to the more difficult ranking key phrases.
Initially instituted as a way to gauge pricing on Pay Per Click words, the Keyword planner is a great way to see what keywords carry more clout than others. If the paid route is something you’d want to explore, you can see the value in each keyword or phrase and properly budget for it moving forward.
In the plumbing industry, a starting point usually starts with “plumber near me” or “plumber in [city name]”. People looking for plumbing services usually are locally based and will begin their search for a plumber in their locale. Google is geo-located based as well and will generate the users location and determine which area they are in when searching. For instance, if a user is in Toronto and they search for “plumber” – all local, Toronto plumbers will show on the results page for that user.
When searching for keywords, another angle that users tend to search for is for research. Using Google in our everyday lives has become the norm and simply asking Google questions to everyday issues has garnered many results. Generally, users will search in question form for self-help and how-to tutorials or tips. We recommend utilizing those results into website blog posts where you can write the question out and answer it on an informative post for all to see. Google was intended to give information to any layman or user and the more we contribute to the greater online world, the more you will be rewarded online!
Step 2: Planning Website Hierarchy
As you start the planning of building of your website, our recommendation is to optimize it in a way that best describes your plumbing company. For instance, if you’re plumbing company is centralized to a city or locale, you can have that as your home page’s focus (i.e. [City] Plumbers). Other plumbing companies can incorporate a certain niche that only they do or are focused on, such as residential plumbing work or snaking toilets or the like.
- Residential Plumber
- Emergency Plumber
- Commercial Plumber
Examples of localized keywords
- Plumber Toronto
- Plumber New York
- Plumber Miami
- Plumber Vancouver
Here are some ideas for plumbing companies looking to create a niche in some of the following services:
- Water Leak
- Burst Pipe
- Toilet Repair
- Toilet Installation
- Drain Replacement
- Blocked Drain
As your website moves to the secondary pages, which might include pages for services, blogs, frequently asked questions you can incorporate those keywords into the pages. The higher up the importance of certain keywords are, the higher up the hierarchal scale those pages should appear.
Step 3: Creating An Internal Link Structure
With the aforementioned secondary pages, you’ll want to ensure they are linked correctly throughout the website. For instance, if your website’s homepage is highlighting three main services, make sure to include links to those services. Alternately, if your plumbing company services multiple locations, you can add links to those secondary pages highlighting the different areas you service. As you would with pages, it’s also a good idea to incorporate linking within your blog posts as well. There are many interlinking opportunities for each of your blog post articles and you’ll want to make sure to give yourself enough interlinking for maximizing your searchability. Word of caution though – do not flood your blog posts with too many links as Google will now penalize you for doing so.
Page/Blog SEO
To ensure a high ranking for the keywords you’ve selected above, there are a series of steps to follow to make sure each page and blog post are SEO-ready. Follow these steps and your website will be optimized correctly and Google will rank you higher for obliging to their policies.
- Page URL Structure
When creating new pages or blog posts for your website, make sure to incorporate those keywords you’ve collected into your website URL. For instance, instead of creating an about page that would read out as, say www.yourwebsite.com/about, you can create your URL as www.yourwebsite.com/about-your-local-plumber/. As good practice, you should create your different website pages and posts using hyphens to connect the different phrase words. - Optimizing Title Tags
As the strongest factors to your search engine rankings, the title tag is the first thing your visitors see when the search results are presented. Your title tag should be less than 65 characters in length and should have your keyword or phrase in every page or post. A sample title tag on an SEO friendly service page might look like this: Clog Removal / Plumber Business Name - Meta Description Optimization
When you reach the results page after searching for a keyword or phrase, it will showcase the title tag of the page and a brief description. This is called a Meta Description and should be no more than 156 characters and should include the key phrase, a short description and a call to action for the user. An example of a meta description might look like this: Name of Business is your best option for clog removal. Contact us for the best service in town! - H1 Heading
As a good rule of thumb, the H1 tag (incorporating in the HTML of your website) is the title of the page and should be the first thing that appears on the top of every page or post. The URL, title and H1 heading are usually the same in all cases. - Body Content Optimization
When it comes to the content of each page, it’s important to remember a few factors. The body of each page or post should be at least 400 words, should incorporate your keyword in the first paragraph and throughout the page intermittently. Don’t flood the page with the keywords however, as Google has come down hard on websites that stuff pages with keywords in an attempt to get a higher ranking. Every page should have a call to action, or a form so users can internalize your content and decide what their next steps should be. A good website page or post will have relevant calls to the action corresponding to the content on the page. For example, if your content on a certain page is talking about clog removal, a good call to action could be “Are you have a problem with a clog removal? Fill out this form and a technician will be back within 24 hours”. It would be followed by a form for users to fill out explaining their issues. - Image Optimization
Each page should have at least one quality image to represent the content on the page as well. The image should have an alternative, or “alt” text to describe it for the visually impaired using a website reader. For good SEO, it’s good to use the same descriptive terminology for the image as you have for the page and title tag.
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Other SEO Tips
Making Sure Your Website Is Mobile-Friendly
A new initiative Google has launched recently is a mobile-first index, meaning Google will base its rankings on the website’s mobility, regardless of its ranking on desktop. Google has also launched a mobile speed tester online so website owners can test the speed of websites, indicating Google’s focus on mobile responsive websites. This website, among other testing websites and plugins, can give users an indicator as to how responsive their websites are or are not.
Fast Website Page Speed
Another new initiative Google has launched is giving clout to websites that perform faster. Many factors go into a website’s quickness with the advent of CSS, HTML and Javascript replacing heavy imagery and flash to ease a website’s load. Websites that now have a slower load time with large files and videos will be penalized when it comes to a website’s Google ranking. Other factors would include a sluggish hosting plan that can contribute to a website’s speed as well.
Other SEO Resources And Tips
Google Business Profile For Your Business
A new but essential part of obtaining a high ranking on Google is to establish a Google Business Profile profile for your business. You need to visit google.com/business and claim your profile. After a verification process, which will include Google sending a postcard with a PIN to your business’ actual address. Once you’ve followed these steps to verify your business, you can start optimizing your Google Business Profile page.
It’s good practice to fill out the most details on your Google Business Profile page, including logos, complete descriptions, business hours, business categories and photos of your services or products.
Adding Business To Other Online Directories
To give users more avenues to your website, it’s good practice to add your website to multiple directories. For a local plumber, using websites like Houzz or Homestars can go long way to giving your website more traffic. You will need to make sure all of the relevant information on all the directories are correct and consistent across the board.
Other websites like Yellow Pages or Yelp (for reviews) are other ways of giving your website more clout and exposure. Ensure you don’t have any duplicate information on any of these websites to give your website the best possible results.
Online Reviews
A great way to get more clout to your website is through reviews. Reviews are great indicators for other users looking to get plumbing services locally and to get honest feedback on your plumbing services. Being active on Yelp and Google reviews will give Google more reasons to rank your business higher on search engines. Note though you cannot directly ask for reviews for your business, you will need to show the link to where the reviews are and they can decide about leaving feedback at their peril.
Does Your Plumbing Company Need SEO Help?
SEO will always be a daily battle, whether it means optimizing pages, updating your Google Business Profile page or adding new content to your website. Ensuring your pages and all the relevant criteria have been checked can become an arduous process for those looking to gain more organic traffic. Ask us how we can help your business rise through the ranks on Google and beyond online!
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All The Way Up Media is an digital marketing company that helps businesses grow online, increase their visibility and get more clients.
To get started and optimize your plumbing website contact our SEO agency.
