SEO for Plumbers: Guide to Boost Visibility of Plumbers on Google

As a plumbing business owner, attracting new customers is your top priority. With ever-increasing competition in this domain, you need to make sure that you utilize all available marketing channels alongside SEO for plumbers to leverage your success.

Most people tend to search online for local plumbing services. They judge your business based on its online presence, business profile, and customer reviews, among many other factors.

In United States around 21% of customers used internet in 2023 to find a local business online. The best way to ensure that you get organic traffic to your website is through Search Engine Optimization.

SEO helps you set yourself apart from the crowd. It is the defining factor that can make or break the success of your plumbing business in the competitive plumbing market.

In this ultimate guide to SEO for plumbers, we are going to share with you proven strategies that you can use to drive more traffic, leads, and conversions to your business.

So, without further ado, let’s get straight to it! 

What is SEO for Plumbers?

SEO for plumbing services is about implementing optimization solutions that enable your plumbing website to achieve top rankings on SERPs. The optimization efforts enhance the online visibility of your business in the online space. SEO boosts engine rankings of plumbing websites. 

It involves optimizing the on-page and off-page elements of a plumber’s website. The optimization activities include keyword research & incorporation into the content. Along with keywords, the use of meta tags and content optimization also matter. 

Effective SEO for plumbers is incomplete without local search optimization. Building citations and managing online reviews also play a huge role in developing a well-rounded strategy. These steps are crucial for attracting customers in specific geographic areas.

Importance of SEO for Plumbers

Search engines like Google and Bing are the primary platforms that people use to look for products and services online. It is the same for plumbing services.

For example, “Near Me” mobile searches for local businesses have increased more than 500% in the past few years.

So, if you own a plumbing business, it is imperative for you to ensure that your business appears at the top of search engines.

Appearing on the first page of Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) increases your chances of getting more conversions. To strategically grow your plumbing business, implementing effective plumbing marketing strategies is essential. A complete Plumbing marketing guide involves a combination of online and offline methods tailored specifically to the plumbing industry. It helps you establish yourself as an industry leader in the plumbing market.

Here are a few reasons why SEO is important for plumbers:

• SEO for plumbers increases the online visibility and presence of your online business.
• SEO helps drive more traffic to your website.
• Higher search engine rankings result in more potential customers.
• Being cost-effective, SEO for plumbers is ideal for small to medium-scale businesses that want to grow their customer base.
• SEO for plumbers helps build brand awareness, garner customer trust, and establish brand authority for plumbing business owners.

How to Get Started with SEO for Plumbers?

Getting started with SEO for your plumbing company might come off as overwhelming. But you can streamline the process by following a strategic approach.

Whether you want to do the SEO for plumbers, or you want to hire a professional SEO company, you need to understand the basic process to monitor the process of your SEO efforts.

When it comes to lead generation for plumbers, there are several effective methods that can help you connect with potential customers and grow your business. By combining lead generation methods, plumbers can effectively increase their visibility, attract potential customers, and grow their business within their local area.

Throughout the rest of this article, we are going to walk you through the basics of SEO for plumbers. Along with that, we are going to share with you plumbing industry-specific SEO strategies that you can use to grow in your local market.

Plumber SEO Checklist

SEO for plumbers requires you to work on different on-site and off-site optimizations, to make your business stand out from the competition.

Here is a brief overview of the SEO checklist for plumbing services:

1. On-Page SEO for Plumbers

On-page SEO involves optimizing the on-site elements of your plumbing website such as the content, URL structure, and other UI elements. This optimization helps your plumbing company’s website rank higher on search engines.

On-page SEO for plumbers includes:

• Keyword research and optimization
• Meta tags and descriptions optimization
• Header tags optimization
• URL optimization
• Internal linking structure optimization
• Content optimization
• Mobile responsiveness and page speed optimization
• User experience optimization (UX)

2. Off-Page SEO for Plumbers

Off-page SEO refers to the efforts that you put into increasing brand awareness for your plumbing business. You do that through off-site channels such as backlinks, brand mentions, and social media marketing.

Here is what off-page SEO for plumbers includes:

• Building high-quality backlinks from relevant and authoritative websites
• Social media marketing and engagement
• Online reputation management and reviews
• Influencer outreach and partnerships
• Brand mentions and citations
• Local SEO and directory listings
• Guest blogging and article submissions

3. Local SEO for Plumbers

Local SEO for plumbers involves search engine optimization activities that make your plumbing business visible to your target audience, in your local area.

This is what makes local SEO incredibly important. By knowing more about local SEO strategies and how to implement them effectively, you can increase your visibility in local search results, outrank competitors, and ultimately drive more targeted traffic to your business. Here is what you need to focus on when optimizing your plumbing business in terms of local SEO:

• Google Business Profile Optimization

The easiest way for local plumbing businesses to increase their online search visibility is by claiming your free Google Business profile (Previously known as Google My Business). When you claim your Google Business profile, your customers would be able to find you on Google Maps when they search for plumbing services.

• Online Reviews

Reviews help you establish yourself as a trusted leader in the plumbing business. You can get online reviews on your Google Business Profile and publish them on your website as well.

• Local Citations

A local citation is the listing of your website on another website or an online directory. The citation includes the name, address, and phone number of your business. With local citations, plumbers can drive more traffic to their business from different sources.

• Backlinking

Backlinks are one of the most important rankings factors when talking about SEO for plumbers. Backlinks help your business stand out from the crowd. You need high-quality links from relevant yet authoritative sources to get better local search rankings on search engines. 

• Local Content Marketing

Local content marketing is about creating geographically targeted content that is specific to those in your local area. Plumbers can leverage local content marketing to grab the attention of their target market.

• Social Media Marketing

Plumbing businesses can utilize social media marketing to drive more traffic to their website. Social media has become a powerful tool for businesses. By being active on social media platforms and growing an audience through valuable content, you can grow your business at a much faster pace once you hire the best social media marketing agency.

4. Technical SEO

Technical SEO for plumbers is about improving the backend elements of your plumbing website to make it easier to crawl and index for search engines. If you want to rank your website faster on Google, having a solid understanding of technical SEO audit checklist is crucial.

• Website Architecture Optimization

Site architecture optimization is one of the foundations of SEO. Instead of creating posts and pages randomly, create a strategic and SEO-friendly website architecture. This way, you can make it much easier for Google to index your website.

• Mobile-Friendliness

In the last quarter of 2023, around 58.67 of all global website traffic comes from mobile devices. You want to make sure that your website loads and works well on mobile devices including smartphones and tablets, to make the most out of your SEO efforts.

• Website Speed

Website speed matters a lot when it comes to running a plumbing business. If your website takes a lot of time to load, your customers would move on to better and faster options. You can check your website speed for free using Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool.

• Website Security

You need to set up security measures to protect your website from cyberattacks. The most basic yet most powerful way to do that is through the installation of the SSL certificate on your website.

• XML Sitemap Creation

An XML sitemap is a file that has all the pages of a website to make sure that Google can find them and crawl them all. It helps search engines understand the structure of your website.

• Robots.txt Setup

Robots.txt file tells search engine crawlers about the URLs that the crawler can access on your website. The purpose of Robots.txt is to avoid overloading your website with crawl requests. You can add the unnecessary pages that don’t need to be indexed, in the Robots.txt file. 

• Structured Data        

Structures data is the markup that search engines use to understand, interpret, and display the content on your website. Using structured data, you can make your website easy to understand by search engines.

• HTML Tags Optimization

Optimizing the HTML tags including title, Meta description, headings (1-6), image alt text, schema markup, etc. helps you optimize your website for better rankings on a deeper level. 

• Broken Links Fixing

A broken link is a hyperlink that points to a page or a resource that doesn’t exist on your website. You can fix broken links by remaking the page, using redirects, or deleting the broken link altogether.

Step-By-Step Guide to SEO for Plumbing Companies

1. Choose the Right Keywords

Keywords are the backbone of SEO. Your prospective customers use keywords or phrases to look for the services they want to buy.

For a plumbing business, you need to target keywords based on the services you offer and the area that you serve.

You should take your time with SEO keyword research because it is going to impact your entire SEO strategy including content creation and Google Business Profile optimization.

Create a list of relevant keywords in the plumbing domain with high search volume and low difficulty. Once you have the list, you can move on to the next step, which is content creation.

How to Do Keyword Research for Plumbing Services?

1. Make a list of the plumbing services you offer i.e., drain cleaning, radiator repairing, etc.
2. Get a keyword research tool and change the location to your country of origin.
3. Place the keywords in the tool to find their search volume and keyword difficulty.
4. Target the high-volume and low-difficulty keywords first, before going after the ones with higher difficulty. 
5. Use the keywords when assigning names to different pages on your website.

2. Write Valuable Content

Based on the list of keywords, start creating content for your website. You should add the keywords in your content for landing pages, as well as your blog.

During the initial stages, it is recommended that you work aggressively on your content marketing strategies.

The more valuable and informative content that you put out, the more you come off as a trusted industry expert. 

How to Write Engaging & Valuable Content?

1. Write content that addresses the problems and challenges that your target audience is facing.
2. Use your copywriting skills to convince your target audience to choose your services over the competition.
3. Write attention-grabbing headings and valuable body content to establish your authority.
4. Write about your business, your experience, mission, and values in a way that resonates with your target audience.

3. Analyze Your Competition

You can speed up the optimization process by analyzing your competition. Search the keywords that you want to rank for on Google and pick the top 3-5 results that show up on SERPs.

Now, you need to look at the way these top plumbing businesses in your domain are using keywords in their content, title tags, Meta descriptions, and more.

This gives you insights into the SEO strategy of your competition. After that, it’s all about reverse engineering your competitor’s SEO strategy and then coming up with a way to outdo them with your SEO efforts.

How to Analyze Your Competition for Plumbing Services?

1. Identify your competition.
2. Evaluate keyword difficulty using a keyword research tool.
3. Find content gaps that you can target.
4. Analyze the on-page and off-page strength of the competition.
5. Analyze the competitor’s backlink profile.
6. Analyze the website architecture and user experience.
7. Learn about their social media presence.

4. Improve Your Website Speed

Website loading speed is one of the most important ranking factors for Google and other mainstream search engines. Check your website’s speed on different devices such as desktop and mobile web browsers.

Ideally, according to Google probability of bounce increases 32% if page load time goes from 1 second to 3 seconds. If the loading speed is not up to this standard, you’d need to tweak the technical elements on your website to boost the loading time. You can also check other tool GTmetrix to check your website for free

How to Improve the Loading Speed of Your Website?

1. Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN) service.
2. Use a better hosting service.
3. Optimize the size of images on your website.
4. Delete unnecessary plugins.
5. Minimize the number of CSS and JavaScript files.
6. Use website caching.

5. Design Quality Landing Pages

Designing practical, attractive, and engaging landing pages is extremely important. You need to design plumbing service-specific landing pages that clearly describe your service offering in a simple and easy way.

Make sure that these landing pages are easy to navigate. Avoid using complex UI design elements that distract your target audience.

We have found that using a minimalist approach when designing landing pages always works the best.

How to Design a Quality Landing Page?

1. Use a clean, organized, and minimalist approach.
2. Use attention-grabbing headers to broadcast offer value.
3. Make your landing page mobile-friendly.
4. Tailor your landing page to your target audience.
5. Write a captivating copy.

6. Optimize Your Google Business Profile

The next step is to claim and optimize your Google Business Profile. The Google Business Profile for your plumbing business is the place where your target audience rates your business and leaves reviews.

Be precise when adding the location for your business. If you offer plumbing services in multiple locations, add their details to the profile.

A well-optimized business profile helps you establish your authority as a trusted plumbing services provider in your area.

How to Setup Your Google Business Profile?

1. Open Google Maps to add or claim your business.
2. Enter the business name in the search bar.
3. Click the business name and make sure to choose the right one.
4. Click “Claim this business”, and then Manage Now.
5. Select a verification option and then follow the steps that show up on the screen.
6. Set your business category.
7. Choose your service area.
8. Add details including phone number and opening hours to the profile.
9. Add the list of services you offer to the business profile. 

7. Optimize Your Website for Local SEO

Local or geographical SEO for plumbers helps you reach out to your target audience. When displaying relevant search results, Google integrates location data in the form of geo-coordinates.

When someone searches for terms such as “Plumbing services near me”, Google uses the geographical data to display plumbing services operating in the area.

When executing the SEO strategy, you need to ensure that you keep the local SEO component in mind. Optimizing your website for local search helps you rank higher in search results.

How to Optimize Your Website for Local SEO for plumbers?

1. Optimize your Homepage for local SEO.
2. Use local business, organization, product, and service schema.
3. Update NAP (Name, Address, Phone) Citations on your website.
4. Add your business to local directories.
5. Set up social media signals.  

8. Set up a Review System

Most of the customers don’t use a business if it has less than a four-star rating. New customers to your business look at the online reviews for your plumbing business before giving you a call.

The reviews need to be authentic so that you can build trust in your target market.

You can ask the new customers that you have served for leaving a review for your services. Or, you can reach out to your existing clientele and ask them for a review.

Don’t be pushy when asking for reviews as it can have a negative impact on the customer experience. The more positive reviews you get, the better your chances become in terms of attracting new customers.

How to Get More Reviews for Your Plumbing System?

1. Use your Google Business Profile to create a review link and send it to your happy customers.
2. Give your satisfied customers a call and ask them for a review.
3. Put the reviews on your website.

9. Link Building

Link building is one of the most challenging things when it comes to SEO for plumbers. As a plumbing business owner, you need to get backlinks from relevant, authoritative websites.

The more high-quality backlinks you get, the better your rankings become on the search engines. You can get backlinks through guest blogging on relevant blogs and by reclaiming lost links.

Link building takes time. If you’re looking to enhance your website’s search engine visibility and boost its online authority, consider hiring a link building company. So, we recommend learning about the best ways to build high-value links for your business and then choosing the method that works the best for you. 

How to Get Started with Link Building?

1. Use guest blogging to write on other blogs and have them link to your website.
2. Use HARO (Help a Reporter Out) service for link-building purposes.
3. Replicate the backlink profile of your competitors.
4. Reclaim lost links.

10. Learn and Improvise

SEO for plumbing services is not a one-time thing. You need to establish your KPIs and then monitor the performance of the SEO campaign.

Based on the results, you can figure out what works for your business. If an aspect of your SEO strategy is not working as it should, you can change it to suit your needs better. 

After implementing the strategies mentioned in this guide, you should be able to lift your plumbing business off the ground. Still, remember to stay patient, consistent, and flexible in your approach.  

How to Track the Success of SEO for Plumbers?

Once you have implemented the SEO strategies mentioned in this guide, all you have to do is sit back and monitor the performance of the SEO campaign. Based on how well your plumbing SEO strategy is performing, you can decide on the future course of action.

Here is how you can track the success of your SEO for plumbers:

Setup Google Search Console

Google Search Console helps you see how the search engines see and rank your website. GSC tells you the keywords that are getting the most views and clicks from potential customers.

It helps you keep track of the webpage rankings as well as to see the pages that are getting the greatest number of visitors over a specific period of time. 

Use Google Analytics

Google Analytics shows you how potential customers find and use your website. You can use Google Analytics to see the number of visitors to your website in real time.

You can see the time they spent on your website as well as the number of web pages they viewed. Google Analytics also tells you how your potential customers are finding your business i.e., through organic search, paid ads, and social media.

Frequently Asked Questions

Final Words

SEO for plumbers is essential for business owners who want to expand their plumbing operations and streamline their growth. SEO gives you the edge that you need to get ahead of your competition in your target market.

So, make sure to add SEO to your marketing mix when planning the digital marketing strategy for your plumbing business.

Additional Resources:

• A Complete guide on Plumbing Marketing to Grow Your Business Strategically.
• 11 Proven Methods of Lead Generation for Plumbers
• The Ultimate Guide to Local SEO for Plumbers
• Web Design for Plumbers: A Plumbing Business Essential
• How Social Media Marketing For Plumbers Can Boot Your Business?
• Why PPC for Plumbers is a Game-Changer for Your Business?