How Can Plumbing Businesses Take Advantage Of SEO To Thrive In A Competitive Market?
Are you a plumber and you’re thinking how you can use the Internet to your advantage? You’re not alone. Most business owners probably know at a certain level that there is value in having some form of online presence. After all, even as individuals these business owners would likely own a laptop and/or a smartphone and at some point in their lives would have ordered something online from Amazon or used their phone to find a diner nearby where they could grab a meal.
Sure, some more traditional owners refuse to have anything to do with the Internet or can’t tell the difference between a hashtag and a hash brown. But as time goes on, this breed will slowly fade away. Having Internet access is just too easy nowadays and the children who were born at the dawn of the Internet are now adults and have become business owners themselves.
Nonetheless, plumbing services are in a unique position when it comes to having an online presence. It is because anyone who needs the services of a plumber usually does so urgently. When there is a burst water pipe or a leaking toilet, you will not spend the entire week looking for plumbers. Most probably, you will choose the first one you find who can help you at that time and that usually means the one nearest to where you live.
Then how as a plumber do you ensure your business is among those that come up top? This is where search engine optimization (SEO) comes in.
Does It Make Sense For A Plumbing Business To Use SEO?
As a plumber, whenever someone types something like “plumber near me”, you want customers within your service area to see your business. However, it’s also essential that they’re able to feel secure with just seeing a company like this. We’ll discuss several ways by which these effects can be achieved below.
Factors That Give Your SEO The Best Chance At Success
Optimize For Your Neighborhood
It doesn’t make any sense for your plumbing business to show up in search results for someone 100 miles away from you (unless you really want to travel that far). So your business must rank for searches in your local area. One way to do that is to complete your Google My Business (GMB) profile. Make sure all the important information is up-to-date, such as business address, office hours, contact numbers, service areas, and the like.
If possible, include pictures of your storefront, including a 360-degree street view, as well as your service vehicle and logo. This will help make your business recognizable and also assure people that you’re not a fly-by-night operation.
You can also list your business in online directories like Yelp. If your town or neighborhood has a local community board or forum, that’s also a good place to advertise your business.
Create Various Types Of Content
As mentioned earlier, if there’s an online community board or forum in your area, you can participate by submitting plumbing tips, including articles explaining why preventive maintenance is important, while also answering the most commonly asked questions when it comes to plumbing. Not only does this increase your visibility in the neighborhood, but it also improves your reputation as a go-to authority when it comes to plumbing.
If you have a website, you can also provide the same information in the form of blog posts and post the links in the aforementioned forums. Make sure to include important keywords (words that people tend to use when looking for plumbing services) in your posts to help improve search engine ranking.
An extension of customer engagement is using social media to promote your business. Almost everyone has a social media account and it also makes it easier for customers to get in touch with you. In the same vein, this also makes it easy for you to update your followers about your business. Examples include opening a new branch or service area, changes in operating hours, etc.
Just like posting on community forums, you can post links to your blogs and articles through your social media posts to increase traffic to your website. Just be careful though because a careless post can easily make your business go viral for all the wrong reasons. You would do well to have a dedicated social media manager for your social media accounts if you decide to pursue this route.
Producing video content can also help your business. Not everyone likes to read and they would rather watch video clips. You can make video versions of your blog articles and even embed the videos into the articles themselves so that site visitors have the option of watching the video or reading the whole article. Same with the written version, you can do how-to videos, demonstrate proper care and maintenance of piping and water systems, etc. You can even live-stream one of your projects via social media so that your followers can witness how you work or host live Q&A sessions with your audience. There are many possibilities.
Encourage Customer Feedback And Ask Them To Rate You
This one is self-explanatory. Reviews by satisfied customers build credibility. Even if you don’t have a website, customers can still leave reviews and testimonials in your Google My Business profile. Ratings can play a big role when it comes to purchasing decisions, so encourage your customers to leave those 5 stars.
Even negative reviews shouldn’t be frowned upon because this lets you know what you can improve about your business or service. As long as you keep acting professionally and genuinely try to address those negative concerns, customers will pick up on your sincerity and most likely give you a second chance.
Technical SEO for Optimum Site Performance
This is the under-the-bonnet make up of a website that makes it fast to load and easy for search engine algorithms to “crawl” through. Slow websites are a turn-off, thus optimize the code as you ensure your content uses the right keywords.
An aspect of SEO and web optimization involves ensuring that your website is mobile responsive and optimized for voice searches too. Try this situation: water just burst out in the garage while you were still having breakfast. At such a point would you power up your laptop to look for a plumber? Most people would reach for their phones which are conveniently placed within their hands’ reach, and if at that moment they are trying to prevent water from flowing with both hands they will put it on top of something like a table and shout “find me a plumber within less than 20 minutes from me!”
Taking The Long View
It’s important to see SEO as an ongoing process rather than a fire-and-forget operation. Just like any traditional advertising and marketing campaign, you need to determine if the strategies you implemented are having any effect. Some of it would be easy to see. If you get an increase in the number of inquiries or you’re getting referrals left and right, then you know that your online campaign is working. But sometimes results are not always as immediate.
You’ll also need to keep track of other data such as website traffic, bounce rates (instances where site visitors only view one page before leaving), and actual search rankings. These are indicators that will help you assess what needs to be tweaked. Remember, your competitors are not going to sit still. Other plumbers also want a piece of the pie and will be trying to rank their businesses as high as possible, so you’ll need to adjust to that as well.
Work With A Professional For The Best Results
Some of the strategies listed earlier are pretty straightforward. Just a little knowledge will allow you to create a social media account and it’s easy enough to post on forums. But there is also a more technical side to this that needs the attention of a professional SEO consultant who can guide you through this byzantine web of digital terms and methods. They also have the means to pull in the resources needed to achieve the greatest effect possible. This includes web developers who can optimize your site, social media specialists to make sure you don’t trip up on social media, and so on. More importantly, the right SEO professional will keep current on the latest trends when it comes to new techniques and updates to search algorithms (which happen often).
You don’t need to do everything yourself. When you build a house, you let the architect do their thing because you know they are qualified for the job. An SEO professional for plumbers is the architect's digital equivalent who will ensure that your online framework will hold up so that your business can take off.
So don’t wait for the pipe to burst and start your SEO campaign now!
Sure, some more traditional owners refuse to have anything to do with the Internet or can’t tell the difference between a hashtag and a hash brown. But as time goes on, this breed will slowly fade away. Having Internet access is just too easy nowadays and the children who were born at the dawn of the Internet are now adults and have become business owners themselves.
Nonetheless, plumbing services are in a unique position when it comes to having an online presence. It is because anyone who needs the services of a plumber usually does so urgently. When there is a burst water pipe or a leaking toilet, you will not spend the entire week looking for plumbers. Most probably, you will choose the first one you find who can help you at that time and that usually means the one nearest to where you live.
Then how as a plumber do you ensure your business is among those that come up top? This is where search engine optimization (SEO) comes in.
Does It Make Sense For A Plumbing Business To Use SEO?
As a plumber, whenever someone types something like “plumber near me”, you want customers within your service area to see your business. However, it’s also essential that they’re able to feel secure with just seeing a company like this. We’ll discuss several ways by which these effects can be achieved below.
Factors That Give Your SEO The Best Chance At Success
Optimize For Your Neighborhood
It doesn’t make any sense for your plumbing business to show up in search results for someone 100 miles away from you (unless you really want to travel that far). So your business must rank for searches in your local area. One way to do that is to complete your Google My Business (GMB) profile. Make sure all the important information is up-to-date, such as business address, office hours, contact numbers, service areas, and the like.
If possible, include pictures of your storefront, including a 360-degree street view, as well as your service vehicle and logo. This will help make your business recognizable and also assure people that you’re not a fly-by-night operation.
You can also list your business in online directories like Yelp. If your town or neighborhood has a local community board or forum, that’s also a good place to advertise your business.
Create Various Types Of Content
As mentioned earlier, if there’s an online community board or forum in your area, you can participate by submitting plumbing tips, including articles explaining why preventive maintenance is important, while also answering the most commonly asked questions when it comes to plumbing. Not only does this increase your visibility in the neighborhood, but it also improves your reputation as a go-to authority when it comes to plumbing.
If you have a website, you can also provide the same information in the form of blog posts and post the links in the aforementioned forums. Make sure to include important keywords (words that people tend to use when looking for plumbing services) in your posts to help improve search engine ranking.
An extension of customer engagement is using social media to promote your business. Almost everyone has a social media account and it also makes it easier for customers to get in touch with you. In the same vein, this also makes it easy for you to update your followers about your business. Examples include opening a new branch or service area, changes in operating hours, etc.
Just like posting on community forums, you can post links to your blogs and articles through your social media posts to increase traffic to your website. Just be careful though because a careless post can easily make your business go viral for all the wrong reasons. You would do well to have a dedicated social media manager for your social media accounts if you decide to pursue this route.
Producing video content can also help your business. Not everyone likes to read and they would rather watch video clips. You can make video versions of your blog articles and even embed the videos into the articles themselves so that site visitors have the option of watching the video or reading the whole article. Same with the written version, you can do how-to videos, demonstrate proper care and maintenance of piping and water systems, etc. You can even live-stream one of your projects via social media so that your followers can witness how you work or host live Q&A sessions with your audience. There are many possibilities.
Encourage Customer Feedback And Ask Them To Rate You
This one is self-explanatory. Reviews by satisfied customers build credibility. Even if you don’t have a website, customers can still leave reviews and testimonials in your Google My Business profile. Ratings can play a big role when it comes to purchasing decisions, so encourage your customers to leave those 5 stars.
Even negative reviews shouldn’t be frowned upon because this lets you know what you can improve about your business or service. As long as you keep acting professionally and genuinely try to address those negative concerns, customers will pick up on your sincerity and most likely give you a second chance.
Technical SEO for Optimum Site Performance
This is the under-the-bonnet make up of a website that makes it fast to load and easy for search engine algorithms to “crawl” through. Slow websites are a turn-off, thus optimize the code as you ensure your content uses the right keywords.
An aspect of SEO and web optimization involves ensuring that your website is mobile responsive and optimized for voice searches too. Try this situation: water just burst out in the garage while you were still having breakfast. At such a point would you power up your laptop to look for a plumber? Most people would reach for their phones which are conveniently placed within their hands’ reach, and if at that moment they are trying to prevent water from flowing with both hands they will put it on top of something like a table and shout “find me a plumber within less than 20 minutes from me!”
Taking The Long View
It’s important to see SEO as an ongoing process rather than a fire-and-forget operation. Just like any traditional advertising and marketing campaign, you need to determine if the strategies you implemented are having any effect. Some of it would be easy to see. If you get an increase in the number of inquiries or you’re getting referrals left and right, then you know that your online campaign is working. But sometimes results are not always as immediate.
You’ll also need to keep track of other data such as website traffic, bounce rates (instances where site visitors only view one page before leaving), and actual search rankings. These are indicators that will help you assess what needs to be tweaked. Remember, your competitors are not going to sit still. Other plumbers also want a piece of the pie and will be trying to rank their businesses as high as possible, so you’ll need to adjust to that as well.
Work With A Professional For The Best Results
Some of the strategies listed earlier are pretty straightforward. Just a little knowledge will allow you to create a social media account and it’s easy enough to post on forums. But there is also a more technical side to this that needs the attention of a professional SEO consultant who can guide you through this byzantine web of digital terms and methods. They also have the means to pull in the resources needed to achieve the greatest effect possible. This includes web developers who can optimize your site, social media specialists to make sure you don’t trip up on social media, and so on. More importantly, the right SEO professional will keep current on the latest trends when it comes to new techniques and updates to search algorithms (which happen often).
You don’t need to do everything yourself. When you build a house, you let the architect do their thing because you know they are qualified for the job. An SEO professional for plumbers is the architect's digital equivalent who will ensure that your online framework will hold up so that your business can take off.
So don’t wait for the pipe to burst and start your SEO campaign now!
