A Definitive Guide on Local SEO for Plumbers to Rank Higher

Local SEO for small businesses is all about being where your customer can find you with ease. As per Brightlocal consumer survey 2022, 81% of respondents used Google to evaluate local businesses.

Thus, Businesses like plumbing companies need to show up in local searchers whenever customers look for the services they offer.

It’s taken that small plumbing companies may already have a lot on their plate to complete jobs and run business. And part of that job is to get qualified leads to sustain their local business and keep the cash flowing in.

Since ranking for local searches on Google is highly competitive, acquiring new traffic has become stiff. To ensure your website or Google listings get a fresh flow of traffic, small plumbing companies need to follow certain tips to master SEO.

Since most of you would be new to this local SEO for plumbing concept let’s get to know what it is, how much it costs and why do plumbers need it:

What is SEO for Plumbers?

SEO for Plumbers is a way to get more organic traffic and qualified leads that convert without much difficulty. Optimizing for local searches helps plumbing companies gain more visibility. It helps them find more opportunities to procure leads and find more customers by ranking high.

Why Do Plumbers Need SEO?

Implementing a local SEO strategy for your plumbing website has many advantages. Creating and optimizing it or updating Google Business Profiles (GBP) for local searches is far better than leveraging social media or other digital channels.

As per Brightedge research, SEO continues to dominate and brings more than 53% of the organic traffic.

(Source: Brightedge)

Here’s more on why plumbers need SEO:

Improved Visibility: Implementing local SEO tactics such as updating GBP boosts Google’s confidence in your listings and website to promote your website at the top of the organic rankings.
Increased Traffic & Conversions: Optimizing local SEO for your plumbing website helps you gain more traffic, customers, conversions, and improve other local SEO KPIs at a fraction of the cost.
Gives You Competitive Advantage: Out of all, a few plumbers have started leveraging the local SEO to their advantage. But there’ll be many who didn’t. So, adopting local SEO for your plumbing business gives you a competitive advantage.

How Much Should I Pay for Local SEO for Plumbers?

A typical local SEO for plumbers may vary from company to company and location to location. The total cost you may have to pay may depend on a number of factors such as your SEO optimization needs, geographic location, local competition, and many others.

To get a full overview of the cost, we suggest you get in touch with expert SEO services providers.

Local SEO for Plumbers: How Plumbing Companies Can Rank Higher?

1. Research and Optimize Website for Plumbing Keywords

There are already many guides stressing the importance of keywords for SEO. Let’s get to know what these keywords are and how you can research & update your website with them.

What are the Plumbing SEO Keywords?

Plumbing SEO keywords are the search terms that your potential customers use while searching online for their plumbing needs. Updating for such query terms will help Google identify the content and context of your website, and rank pages appropriately on SERP.

How to Research for Plumbing SEO Keywords?

Researching is the first step when it comes to optimizing your plumbing website for local SEO. Google Keyword Planner is a great keyword research tool that comes integrated with Google Ads.

Other free tools for keyword research include

Some examples of Plumbing SEO Keywords

Water leakage repair
Plumbing repair works
Drain repair & clog remover
Urgent plumbing services
Sink & Kitchen plumbers
Plumbers for Bathroom/Toilet repair
Shower/bathtub repair
Waterlogging & clog removal

2. Take Care of Site Hierarchy & Internal Linking Structure

Site hierarchy plays a vital role in informing Google about the most important pages on your website. And internal linking is one way to establish the site hierarchy.

Let’s delve deeper into it.

What is Site Hierarchy for Plumbing Companies?

The inverted pyramid is a common type of hierarchy model where your homepage sits at the top followed by other important pages such as Services, About Us, Contact Us, etc. Optimize your Homepage with primary keywords and the location/city you operate your local plumbing business from.

Design your site hierarchy in a way that makes it easy for users to navigate through your site and reach their destination page within 3 clicks.

Internal Linking Structure for Plumbing Website

Through internal linking, you can pass on the link equity from one page to another. Linking back to important pages on your website frequently helps get valuable and high attention from search engines.

Also, their chances of appearing below the snippet of the homepage in search results increase as seen in the image below.

3. Improve On-Page SEO for Your Plumbing Website

The above-mentioned steps are essentially the on-page optimization techniques. But there’s more to it. Here’s more about the on-page optimization of your plumbing site:

What is On-Page Optimization for Plumbing Site?

On-page optimization is a practice of optimizing page elements such as heading tags, metadata, title tag, URL structure, speed, and user experience.

Let’s see how to optimize these elements:

Optimize Heading Tags: H1, H2, H3…, etc. are heading tags where H1 is a primary tag and H2 to H6 are used to define the subheadings.
Title Tag: Title tag or page title refers to the title shown in Google searches generally as a blue headline. It must include the primary keyword and the location you want to rank for in local SEO searches.
Optimize Metadata: Meta descriptions and meta keywords provide Google with more context of the page and should generally be written between 150 to 300 characters.
Optimize the Body Content: The body of your page should have enough content consisting of primary and other LSI keywords. Also, try to include long-tail keywords naturally in your body content without forcing or stuffing them unnecessarily.
Optimize URL Structure: Keep your web pages’ URLs short and keyword-rich. Use letters and dashes instead of numbers or underscores.
E.g., exampleplumbing.com/kitchen-plumbing-service/

Optimize for Speed and User Experience: Use PageSpeed Insights to analyze your website for speed and user experience and improve them as suggested.
Include Alt text of images: Each page should inculcate one image, which should be optimized with Alt text. Alt-text is brief descriptions of the image that Google can read and know what appears in the image.

4. Optimize Your Google Business Profile

Google Business Profile formerly known as Google My Business is an essential tool for local plumbing businesses to appear in local searches. Updating your GBP provides several opportunities for local businesses to rank higher.

Google result pages show a handful of local businesses along with their Maps when searched with specific keywords. Here’s how you can optimize your GBP listings:

How to Optimize GBP of Your Plumbing Business?

GBP listings give users access to vital information such as Name, Address, Phone Number, Open Hours, Website, Reviews, etc. Here’s an example of an optimized GBP listing:

Let’s see how you can optimize your GBP profile:

Claim & Verify Your Plumbing Listing: Businesses can now access their GBP listings from Search and Maps with a streamlined process to claim and verify their plumbing business.
Keep NAP Consistent: Keep your business’s Name, Address, and Phone Number (NAP) consistent on Google and other local directories you list your business on.
Title & Categories: Ensure GBP title and categories are up-to-date. They tend to impact highly on your local SEO searches.
Business Description: Use the description to elaborate on plumbing services you offer to your potential customers. Describe your qualifications, length of service in the field, and an appealing CTA that triggers action.
Open Hours: Ensure the hours of operations mentioned on GBP are consistent across other platforms such as your website, Facebook, and other directories.
Images & Review: Include some relevant images and videos of your plumbing services. Also, ask your clients to post reviews on Google if possible and make a habit to reply to your customers’ both positive and negative reviews.

5. Keep Off-Page in Mind for Local Plumbing SEO

Off-page optimization is one of the important parameters on the local SEO checklist for your plumbing business. But leveraging it to your advantage is a big dilemma. Here’s how you can approach off-page SEO:

What is Off-Page Optimization for Local Plumbing SEO?

Everything that you do off your website to impact rankings on Google for local SEO is counted as off-page optimization. GBP is one of the methods, others include building citations, backlinks, social media marketing, etc.

Let’s get deeper into the Off-Page Optimization:

Build Local Citations: Citations widen your net to start moving up in local plumbing SEO searches. They are essentially listings of your plumbing business on other websites and directories.

List your business on Yelp, Trustatrader, Ratedpeople, Apple Maps, and other local directories. Keep NAP & other business information consistent across all platforms.

Build Backlinks: Links that point from other authority websites to yours are considered as votes of popularity by search engines. Acquiring more backlinks from relevant, local, and authoritative websites helps your website rank higher on SEPR.

Monitor your competitors, post guest blogs on industry-relevant sites, and share link-worthy pieces of knowledge or content to form a link-building strategy.

Social Media Marketing: Along with web presence, social media presence plays a vital role for Google to rank your website on top. Your social profile does appear on the business listing pages such as GBP as seen below:

Similarly, when people make a search for ‘best plumbers near me’, they get to see your GBP profile along with the social profile links to research more about you. This improves your GBP and social engagement and ultimately improves local SEO rankings.

6. Implement the Right Technical SEO

Implementing and taking care of Technical aspects of your local websites are as vital and necessary as any other aspect listed above. Here’s what technical SEO is for plumbing websites and how to optimize it:

How to do Technical SEO for Plumbing Company

Technical SEO involves optimizing your website’s structure, crawlability, implementing sitemap, Robots.txt files, etc. It ensures your website is free of any technical issues and in line with Google’s SEO guidelines to get ranked on SERP.

Let’s get to know how to implement the right technical SEO:

Optimize Your Site Structure: Site structure is a measure of how well-connected pages on your website are in relation to one another. Optimize it for visitors and not bots to improve your local SEO rankings.
Reduce Crawl Issues: Through Google Search Console, you can run tests and find if there are any crawl errors. Remove any 404 errors by 301 redirects to new URLs.
Implement XML Sitemap: Sitemaps ensures that none of the web pages are left behind by Google bots when visiting your website for crawling and indexing.
Create Robots.txt File: Robots.txt files inform search engines what pages need crawling and indexing and what pages don’t. It improves the speed and efficiency of crawling.
Use Structured Data: Structured data is additional information added as HTML to your website that enables search engines to better understand and rank your website. Structured data such as schema markups enhance your search appearance with rich snippets.

Final Words — How Can My Plumbing Company Rank High on Google?

Small businesses need to understand that optimizing their website for SEO to rank higher is not a one-time process — it’s an iterative one. Since Google releases new algorithms for ranking, your SERP performance may get affected.

However, by following the best practices and steps listed in this guide, small plumbing companies can improve their local SEO rankings on search engines like Google.

Alternatively, you can take help from a team of SEO professionals such as Ronkot. We are a dedicated team specializing in helping small businesses such as plumbing companies to rank better by implementing strategic SEO.

Feel free to get in touch with us to discuss your SEO needs and get a complimentary best cup of coffee.

A Definitive Guide on Local SEO for Plumbing Companies to Rank Higher for Local Searches