A Beginner’s Guide to Local SEO for HVAC Companies

All local businesses in this day and age know the importance of ranking higher on Google organic listings. Search engine optimization (SEO) for HVAC companies helps bring your businesses in front of future customers.

If statistics published on Ahrefs are to be believed, 92.96% of global traffic comes only from Google Search, Google Maps, and Google Images. Following a simple & strategic local SEO checklist, your website may rank at top of the Google search engine result pages (SERP).

You’ll see an increase in traffic, qualified leads, close rates, and other factors that help expand your business further. But what does local SEO for HVAC companies look like? How long does it take to rank high? And why should HVAC companies invest in SEO?

Let’s find out:

What is Local SEO for HVAC?

HVAC SEO is a process of creating, editing, and optimizing your website to rank higher on Map & search rankings by establishing Expertise, Authority, and Trust (EAT). The process involves keyword optimization, updating Google Business Profile, building a rank-worthy website, and many other steps.

Why Should HVAC Companies Invest in SEO?

Currently, HVAC companies heavily rely on utilizing lead gen platforms, PPC ads, and whatnot to generate quality leads. They may get you immediate results but are not cost-effective to sustain your local business. Also, consumers are moving towards local organic searches.

A Brightlocal report found the consumer ratio for local business searches increased to 81% in 2021 from 63% in 2020.

SEO for HVAC companies is a cost-effective alternative. You can benefit immensely by investing in local SEO to bring a continuous flow of free traffic, generate qualified leads, and improve conversions.

How Long Does it Take for HVAC Contractors to Rank High on Google?

SEO is not a get-rich-quick scheme. It takes time to grow and offer dividends after a certain period. However, you can start to see visible changes after six months of continuous optimization.

The key is to be patient, scrape the outdated SEO practices, and follow the best ones to optimize your website and other local profiles. Once you build expertise, authority, and trust in your niche, you’ll see higher rankings, an increase in conversions, ROI, and other metrics.

Google Search Ranking vs. Google Map Ranking: What to Optimize for?

Local businesses like your HVAC company can rank in two ways on Google: either in Google Map or In Google Search Results.

Google Map listings also appear on Google search as Local 3-pack as seen below.

These listings are meant to target local, nearby customers.

Google search rankings or organic listings targets users who want to learn more or get information about a business or particular topic. As seen in the above image, organic listings start just after the Google Map listings or in many cases without Map listing.

But which one’s best out of the two? What SEO approach do HVAC contractors take to build their web presence? Let’s understand this with an example:

As you can see in the image, one of the HVAC contractors ranks well high on Google searches but not in Google Maps. Since Google Maps favors companies close to user locations, Google searches are dominated by rank-worthy websites with quality content.

Even if you don’t rank for one, your HVAC company may rank on the other. It helps you target not only the nearby but customers in outlying areas. Further, it increases your chances of targeting interested buyers along with not interested ones (who may later go down the road).

Thus, you should focus on boosting SEO for both Maps and Search listings.

Let’s see how local HVAC business can begin their SEO optimization journey starting with Google Map listings:

Local SEO for HVAC Companies to Boost Google Map Rankings

1. Claim & Update Your Google Business Profile

The first thing you want to do is claim and update your Google Business Profile (GBP). Now, start optimizing your GBP to indicate Google that you’re worthy to rank on the local 3-pack.

Here’s how you can claim & update your GBP:

How to Claim & Update GBP for Local HVAC SEO?

GBP presented several opportunities for local businesses and streamlined the process of claiming their listings. HVAC owners can access & claim these listings from the Maps and Search function on Android as well as on Desktop.

Few pointers to note while updating your GBP:

Keep NAP Consistency: Your HVAC company’s Name, Address, and Phone Number should remain consistent across your business listing including GBP.
Choose Correct Category: Your primary category for business listings should be correct and specific to what you are offering. Instead of listing your business as a contractor, choose HVAC/AC or Heating Contractor. It helps Google to pop your listing for the right keywords.
Fill Out Necessary Information: Mention all the necessary information such as open hours, images, appointment booking details, CTAs, etc. Here’s an optimized GBP listing of one of the HVAC companies:

Remove Duplicate Listings: It may be possible that a duplicate GBP listing for your HVAC business exists. Type in your business name to find such duplicate listings and start removing them at once.

2. Develop Local Citations, Links, and Reviews

Citations, backlinks, and reviews can highly affect your Google Map listings. They build the authoritativeness and trustworthiness of your HVAC brand in the eyes of Google. The more citations you have, the more chances your business will have to appear in the top 3-pack.

How to Get Local Citations, Links, and Reviews?

Here’s how you can build local citations, Links, and Reviews:

Citations: Apart from Google, you can get citations from Facebook, Yelp, Yellowpages, Foursquare, etc. You don’t have to build 100s of them — 10 to 20 from authoritative sites is enough. Ensure that NAP information stays consistent on all the citations.
Links: Getting backlinks from local businesses can be a tough nut to crack. However, with the right link-building strategy, you get links from local press, relevant publications, business directories, etc.
Reviews: As per a survey, 77% of consumers always or regularly read reviews for local businesses while 89% of them highly or fairly use a business that responds to their reviews. Encourage your customer to leave a review and make a habit to respond to all even if you have to handle a negative review.

3. Optimize for Searcher’s Proximity

When optimizing for Google Map listing, we can’t leave out the searcher’s proximity from the discussion. It’s the most influential ranking factor when determining the Map listings.

However, HVAC contractors aren’t able to control the proximity factor. The furthest searcher’s location is from your business, the chances of appearing in Map listings reduces.

However, since you know you can’t control this factor, it helps you keep your efforts focused in the right direction. Instead of focusing on appearing in Map listings for searchers that are too far away from your business location, you can focus on optimizing your organic search rankings.

Let the dice keep rolling with search listing optimization for HVAC businesses.

SEO Guide for HVAC Companies to Boost Google Search Rankings

1. Optimize Your HVAC Website for Keywords

Keywords are search terms your customers and visitors use to find your HVAC services online. So, the first step is to find relevant location-specific keywords.

Let’s see how you can do so:

How to Find and Optimize Your HVAC Website for Keywords?

Keywords are immensely important for search engines to determine the relevancy and context of the page to rank on search listings. Your prospects either have the buying intent or research intent when searching.

Let’s see some examples of keywords your HVAC website should optimize for:

AC repair in Tarrytown Austin (Location-specific)
How to get my AC working (Long-tail)
AC Installment services
Heater Installation
HVAC maintenance
Duct repair & replacement
HVAC air filter replacement
Emergency HVAC repair service near me

Here are some best tools for keyword research,

These tools are more than enough to find location-specific and even some of the long-tail keywords you can optimize your website for. Make sure that your website titles, headings, URLs, content body, etc. cover your primary keywords.

The keyword insertion should look more natural and not forced or unnecessary as if they are being stuffed.

2. Build Rank-Worthy Website for Search Rankings

The first step to building a rank-worthy website is to perform a local SEO audit. Analyze if they are well optimized for location-specific keywords, follow the proper structure, have original & quality content, dedicated service pages, and optimized for user experience.

Let’s see how to build a rank-worthy website:

How to Build a Rank-Worthy Website for Search Rankings?

Apart from the website copy and blog post, there are certain places you want to optimize and include keywords to make them rank-worthy. Keep a healthy balance between primary and other relevant keywords on a page.

Let’s see what a rank-worthy website looks like:

Structure Your Content: Out-of-format content is undesirable from both Google and users’ perspective. Keep your content in format with heading tags, title tag, meta description, URL structure, Alt Image text, etc. Optimize them with primary keywords your HVAC website wants to appear in local SEO searches.
Improve Speed & Mobile-Friendliness: Since the introduction of mobile-first indexing and speed as the ranking factors, websites stress more on improving page load speed to improve the rankings. Google’s PageSpeed Insights is a great tool to start optimizing your website’s page load speed for mobile and desktop.
Internal Linking: Through proper and structured internal linking, you can define what pages on your HVAC websites are more important. This will aid Google to crawl, index, and rank them on local SEO for HVAC searches.
Build Your Web & Social Presence: We have already discussed various ways to build your web presence by updating GBP, building local citations, backlinks, etc. Also, create your social presence by registering on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and other relevant social platforms.

Even though they are not ranking signals for Google, they help improve your organic social engagement.

3. Establish Authority with Link-Worthy Content

Your HVAC website can rank for two types of content: either for website or blog posts. Content marketing helps you target additional keywords you haven’t already covered in your website copy.

Most companies shy away from creating and publishing content on a regular basis. But here’s how you can leverage it to your advantage:

How to Build Link-Worthy Authority Content?

Blogging is all about sharing your knowledge with others. Its primary objective is to let your users have the information typically not available elsewhere. However, if you establish expertise, authority, and trust with your content, other industry people would like to link to it.

Let’s get to know what types of blogs are considered link-worthy:

Seasonal Content: Latest trends or topical content gets high engagement from users if published in a timely manner.
Provide Insights on Your Industry: frequently write and provide insights, statistics, or the latest discovery in your industry that users and industry insiders find interesting and willing to link back to more often.
Historical Posts: Write posts on a valuable piece of information about HVAC equipment from the past. Share some fun and interesting facts about the history of HVAC.
DIY Maintenance Guide: Write in-depth maintenance and repair guides. This would help HVAC equipment owners to run basic tests on their own before contacting you.
Create Content for Locals: When optimizing Local SEO for HVAC contractors, your business must pay attention to the local community. Highlight the collaboration & partnership with other industry businesses, schools, etc. and mention them in your blogs. This will help you get links & mentions from them as well.

4. Track Performance to Mold Your HVAC SEO Strategy

Tracking results and performance of your local SEO strategy can help you gain more insights and provide information on whether your campaign was a success or not. There are certain metrics and local SEO KPIs your HVAC business needs to get familiar with. Let’s have a look:

Click-Through Rate
Traffic
Conversion
Page Rankings

Implement Google Analytics to get more insights on your SEO metrics and track the performance. Based on the data, you can make changes and mold your strategy accordingly for your HVAC SEO.

Wrapping Up

SEO for HVAC contractors doesn’t offer overnight success. It means your rank-worthy website and link-worthy content will help you get ahead of your competition in Google Map and Google Search rankings.

However, it takes patience and constant efforts from your end to appear on the local 3-pack as well as rank on organic search rankings. Since you are not an SEO expert, you wouldn’t know if your SEO strategy would work or not.

But a team of SEO professionals such as Ronkot will help you by implementing a strategic SEO for your HVAC business. Let’s grab a cup of coffee and get in touch to discuss your HVAC SEO needs in more detail with our local SEO specialists.

A Beginner’s Guide to Optimize Local SEO for HVAC Companies