Local SEO for Plumbers:
Free Local SEO Guide

The plumbing business is incredibly competitive, especially when it comes to getting your company in front of customers when they are in need of service. These days, it’s common for people who need a plumber immediately to make their first call to the top listing on Google and work their way down from there.

So, how do you ensure that your business occupies the top listing when local customers are looking for a plumber to get to their home or business as quickly as possible?

In this article, we’ll walk through a proven 5-step process of SEO for plumbers that can put your business at the top of Google’s local search rankings. But first, let’s examine the factors that make local SEO a necessity for plumbers.

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If it hasn’t happened already, Yellow Pages books are quickly becoming a relic of the past. Today, the distribution of the bulky books has dwindled to almost nothing as local searches have migrated to the web. There is, however, one similarity between online searches and paper directories; if your business isn’t listed, customers can’t find you. If you’re still having doubts about the importance of local SEO for plumbers, check out these search stats from Google.

• 20% of all search queries are for local businesses
• 40% of all mobile searches are for local businesses
• 50% of mobile searches for local businesses are followed by a visit, a phone call, or another type of contact.
• 97% of consumers search for local businesses online – the remaining 3% may be the last people still using the Yellow Pages

High rankings that result from a successful plumbing SEO campaign will drive people to your website at no charge. Getting hired doesn’t cost anything, either. Free visitors and conversions make local SEO one of the most cost-effective ways to advertise and market your plumbing business.

In a plumber SEO campaign, you’re only competing against the local plumbers in your geographic area. Limited competition means your plumbing business will have an easier time moving higher in local search rankings. A second advantage is that many companies either pay no attention to optimizing their plumbing SEO for local searches or put minimal effort toward it. The result of these factors is that a comprehensive plumber SEO campaign can get first page visibility for your business, often within 30 days, when people search for plumbers in your local area.

Now that you know the importance of local SEO for plumbers, here are the 5 steps to building a campaign that can maximize your business’s visibility for plumbing keywords and put your services in front of people at the very moment they are ready to hire a local plumber.

[ Is your plumbing website struggling to get found in Google? Click here to request a plumbing SEO quote ]

The keywords that will drive the most business for your company are those that are relevant to the plumbing services offered by your business. For example, keywords that describe your services might include “emergency plumbing services,” “drain cleaning,” and “water heater repair.” After developing your list of service-related keywords, sign up for a Google Ads account.

Setting up an account won’t obligate you to pay for any advertising, but it will give you access to the free Keyword Planner tool that is part of the Google Ads platform. The benefit of the Keyword Planner is that you can enter a list of relevant search terms and the tool will provide additional ideas, as well as data on traffic generated by those keywords.

Important: Two keyword categories are used for different types of searches. One type can generate business immediately, while the other may result in a sale later or not at all.

Searchers typically use keywords that signal hiring intent when they intend to take action. When people use these keywords, a search can be followed immediately by a visit to your plumbing company’s website and then a phone call to hire you. The result is a sales cycle that may be completed within 1 or 2 minutes. An example of a keyword search that is likely to be followed directly by an action is “plumber new york city” – because if someone is searching for a plumber in their particular city or town, they’re most likely in the process for shopping for a local plumber to hire.

Using keywords that signal hiring intent is the fastest way to start making money with your plumber SEO campaign. These keywords should be included in the content on your homepage, as well as the descriptions on your “Services” pages.

Keywords that signal research intent are used by people who are trying to learn about or are gathering information on a subject. These keywords generally sit at the long end of the sales cycle, if a sale occurs at all. For example, inquiries like “how to fix a clogged drain” would typically be used by do-it-yourselfers trying to figure out how to fix the problem on their own.

While research intent keywords will be a lower priority in your plumber SEO campaign, they can be used as topics for blogs or for the frequently asked questions section of your website. For example, helpful blog posts like “How to Keep your Drains Clear” and “5 Things That Shouldn’t Go in Your Garbage Disposal” may not result in immediate sales, but they can introduce your business to people who may become customers when they need plumbing services in the future.

[ Help your plumbing business rank higher in Google: Click here to request a plumbing SEO quote ]

The optimization of your keywords starts in 2 key areas; your Google Business Profile page and the pages of your plumbing company’s website. Your Google Business Profile will be optimized to introduce your business to prospective customers when they search for the services you offer. Optimization on your website will focus first on the home page and the services pages, also referred to as your “core pages.” After you have optimized your core pages, you can work on your content pages, which may include a blog, an “About” page, and an FAQ section.

Even if you haven’t set up a Google Business Profile for your plumbing business, you have probably seen these pages when you search for restaurants, stores and service providers in your area. When people search for specific types of local businesses, a handful will be displayed in the “Maps” results, a key element of Google Business.

Being shown in the Maps section when people search for plumbing services in your area will be one of the first goals of optimizing your Google Business Profile. In addition to creating a second location for people to find your business online (the first one is your website), optimizing your Google Business Profile is a fast way to increase your company’s visibility within the Maps section – Getting displayed in Maps can often be done within 30 days.

Here are the steps to optimize your Google Business Profile:

Optimizing your Google Business Profile starts with claiming and verifying your business page. If you have been in business for a while but have yet to claim your page, enter your business name, city, state, and the words “Google Business” into Google’s search box. Google will return a template for your Google Business Profile with basic information, including your business name, address, and a button that says “Manage this page.” After clicking on that button, you’ll be taken through a couple of steps to verify your business.

If your Google Business Profile hasn’t been set up, go to Google Business and start building it there. After claiming and verifying your business page, you can start optimizing it.

Make sure that you are using the official versions of your business name, address, and phone number on your Google Business Profile, as well as on your website and other pages on the web. Additional web pages might include directory listings, a business page on Facebook and the online version of the Yellow Pages. Staying consistent with this information yields 3 positive results:

1. Your business location will be accurate in the Maps section
2. Listings that are consistent across the web will fully optimize your NAP
3. It will be easier for customers to find your business

Important: A local phone number (as opposed to an 800 number) shows Google and your customers that you are a local business.

Google’s guidelines for the Categories section allow you to list the services you provide but not the results of your services. For example, your first category should be “Plumber.” In addition to the Plumber category, include any other relevant services you provide. This list might include:

• Heating Contractor
• Air Conditioning Contractor
• HVAC Repair

The description section can be used to introduce your plumbing company to potential customers as the best solution for their problems. This description should include your services, your length of time in business, qualifications, the benefits of hiring you, and a call to action. To fully optimize your business description, include all the plumber SEO hiring intent keywords for your plumbing services and specialties.

Here’s a sample formula for your Google Business Profile description: {Name of the Business} offers professional {list plumbing services} in {Your City}. {Provide background information about your business and why customers hire you.} Call {Phone Number} now – we’ll be there in an hour or less!

Tip: Keep your description fairly brief, about 100-200 words.

Make sure that the hours of operation posted on your Google Business Profile are the same as on your website, Facebook page, directories, etc. If you offer emergency plumbing services outside of your regular hours, list that information separately.

Images will draw attention to and increase engagement on your Google Business Profile, so take full advantage of this option. Google allows the logo for your business, as well as multiple pictures, to be shown on your page. These images could include on-the-job pictures, the exterior/interior of your business, and a shot of you and your employees. For the best results, use images with a sharp focus, sized between 10KB and 5MB, with a minimum resolution of 720px x 720px.

Tip: You can also replace the basic Google Business Profile background image with a picture of your plumbing company or your logo.

After finishing the work on your Google Business Profile, you can start optimizing the homepage and service pages on your website. These are the core pages of your website where the hiring intent keywords you found in your research will play a major role.

Optimizing your homepage starts with 2 important elements that aren’t actually seen on the page.

Title Tag

The title tag, also known as the “page title,” is shown on the web browser after the domain name of your website. It is also part of the blue headline when pages are listed on Google’s search results.

The title tag for your homepage should include the primary category, location, and the name of your business. Here is a sample format: Plumber in {Your City} | {Business Name}. For example, if your plumbing business is in New York City and the name is “Rapid Plumbing,” your title tag might be: Plumber in NYC | Rapid Plumbing.

Tip: Try to keep your title tags at 50-65 characters.

The Meta Description

The meta description is the text displayed beneath the headline and URL when a web page is shown on Google’s search results. A meta description should provide information that will compel prospective customers to click the link and visit your website. Here is a sample format for a meta description: {Name of Business} offers professional {list of plumbing services} in {Your City}. Call {Phone Number} now, and we’ll get a plumber out to you within 1 hour! Here is what a meta description might look like for Rapid Plumbing: Rapid Plumbing offers professional drain clearing and HVAC repair in New York City. Call 212-XXX-XXXX now, and we’ll get a plumber out to you within 1 hour!

Tip: Keep the meta description to 100-150 characters in length.

Headline

After optimizing the title tag and the meta description, the next steps deal with the content your visitors will see on your home page. The headline on the page, also referred to as the “H1”, should include your primary category as part of the primary keyword for your business. Here is a sample format: {Type of Service Provided} in {City, State}. Using this format, the headline might read “HVAC Repair Services in NYC.”

Content

The content on your homepage should be at least 200 words, but you’ll get more SEO mileage with 500 to 1000 words. Make sure your content is written professionally and does not have mis-spellings or syntax errors. The information on your homepage should include these essential elements:

1. An expanded description of your plumbing company
2. Your professional background/qualifications
3. Brief descriptions of your services
4. At least one mention of your primary plumber SEO keywords
5. A call to action that encourages potential customers to contact you

There are additional optimization steps that you can take on your homepage, but these should be your first priority.

Dedicating a separate page to each service you provide allows for a great deal of focused information to be presented, which will deliver the best SEO results. For example, if you provide drain cleaning, HVAC maintenance, and HVAC repairs, creating a separate page for each will work much better than consolidating your services on a single page. Like the content on your homepage, the text on each service page should be 500 to 1,000 words in length.

The optimization steps for each service page will be the same as those taken on the home page. However, it is vitally important that the elements on each page are unique for the best SEO results. As a reminder, these elements include:

• Service-related plumber SEO keywords with hiring intent
• Title tags that include the specific type of service
• Meta descriptions that provide information on the specific service
• Concise headers that describe the service
• Detailed content about each service

Content pages are basically everything else on your site, with the exception of the homepage and the service pages. Examples of content pages include a blog, an FAQ section, and an “About” page. One difference between these pages and the home/services pages on your website is that the primary purpose of content pages is to provide information rather than generate phone calls or other types of conversions like on the core pages. A second difference is that content pages will feature keywords that signal research intent as opposed to the hiring intent keywords that core pages are built on.

To get the most out of your content pages, you’ll want to find the plumbing SEO keywords that people use when they search for information on topics related to your services. Research plumber SEO intent keywords that will bring visitors to your site can be found with Google’s Keyword Planner Tool, using the same process as when you researched the hiring intent keywords for your core pages.

A good starting point here is to think about the questions people ask you about plumbing. For example, if people have asked you about the kinds of things that jam a garbage disposal, there’s a good chance other people are trying to figure that out as well. If the Planner Tool shows that people are searching for “things that jam a garbage disposal,” you have a topic that you can write about in your content pages.

Where should information-based pages be hosted on your website?

Creating a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) section for your website provides the opportunity to share your knowledge, build credibility, and introduce your business to people who may become customers when they have a plumbing problem. For the best SEO results, create a main page that lists your frequently asked questions and then link each question to the answer, which will reside on a separate page. The rule of thumb here is for your answers to be at least 100 words, but they can go up to 1000 if that’s what it takes for a full explanation.

You can also host information-based content on your website with a blog. Like your FAQ page, a blog provides a platform to showcase your expertise and the consistent posting of new material will give your plumber SEO campaign a boost. Our recommendation for blog posts is a minimum of 300 words, but feel free to write thousands of words if the subject calls for it.

Important: Your content pages should also be optimized with unique title tags, meta descriptions, headers and well-written content that incorporates your research intent keywords.

[ Don’t have time to learn plumbing SEO strategy? Click here to request a plumbing SEO quote ]

With the optimization of your website and Google Business Profile done (at least for now), it’s time to widen your net and start moving up in local search rankings. In this step, you’ll start building your number of citations and links.

Citations are defined as listings of your business’ Name, Address, and Phone number (NAP) on other websites. Before starting this process, make sure that you have included your NAP on the contact page and the footer of each page on your site. Next, confirm that the NAP on your website matches exactly with the NAP on your Google Business Profile.

Once you have confirmed that your NAP is consistent on your website and your local page, you can start applying for listings in various directories. There are 3 main categories of directories:

Examples of major general and national business directories include bizjournals.com, angieslist.com, and citysearch.com. We also recommend that you set up a business page on Facebook.

Examples of industry-specific directories for plumbers include elocalplumbers.com, mapplumber.com, and myzipplumbers.com. There are many plumber-specific directories that offer listings for free – we recommend focusing on these first. If you’re going for citations on paid directories, set up Google Analytics to track your referral traffic and conversions from those sites to make sure that they are cost-effective.

Get your plumbing business listed in local directories in your area. Your local Chamber of Commerce website will list businesses in your area, and the online version of your local newspaper probably has a directory of local businesses as well.

Google pays a lot of attention to links (also known as inbound links) that originate on other websites and point to pages on your site. The importance of each inbound link, as measured by Google’s ranking algorithm, depends on where they originate. Generally speaking, links from legitimate sites like directories will play a key role in your plumbing SEO effort, but links from authority sites like CNN.com or high-profile websites in your industry can really give your rankings a pop.

So, how can you increase the number of links to your website?

The process for getting directories is the same as getting citations—just submit your NAP to national, local, and plumbing industry directories. Directories with links make it easy for potential customers to get in touch with you, so you might be helping your plumbing SEO efforts and attracting new customers at the same time.

There’s a good chance that many of your friends, associates, and colleagues have websites, too. Check whether there are mutually beneficial relationships where websites can be linked for cross-referrals. Your association memberships, local event sponsorships, and participation in charities may also provide link-building opportunities.

Using a tool like Moz Link Explorer, you can discover the websites linking to your competitors and see if you can get the same links for your web pages. These insights can help to expand your linking profiles with new directories or give you ideas for linking opportunities with authority and plumbing industry-related sites.

There are more link-building strategies, but these tips can give you a jumpstart on building a solid portfolio of inbound links.

[ Need help with your plumbing SEO strategy? Click here to request a plumbing SEO quote ]

People often trust reviews from third parties more than what companies say about themselves. This makes getting positive reviews an important factor in attracting customers as well as in your SEO efforts.

Considering that many of your customers will see your Google Business Profile before they see anything related to your plumbing company, it makes sense to gather reviews on this page first. Positive reviews on your Google Business Profile will help in 2 ways: your local page will rank higher for searches, and a bunch of great reviews can provide powerful persuasion that you’re the best plumber in town.

First of all, providing excellent service will make getting great reviews a lot easier. Once you have delivered a great service experience, you need to ask your customers to provide reviews of your business. To make getting great reviews as easy as possible, email a “review request” to happy customers with a link to the review section on your Google Business Profile.

To get that link, enter a search that has the name of your plumbing company followed by “Google Business.” Your Google Business Profile will show at the top of the results. You can check this out by searching for our profile page. Just enter: Main Street ROI Google Business. After running the search for your profile, copy that URL from the search results, and include it in every email that requests a customer’s review. You’ll send people to that page and ask them to click the “Write a Review” button.

Here’s some sample wording for this type of email: “We recently provided plumbing services at your residence on Main St. If you have a minute, we would appreciate your feedback on our services. Many of our customers find us via Google – perhaps you did, too. Would you please take a minute to post a review on Google? Simply click here {Link to Google My Business profile} and click “write a review.” Thanks in advance!”

We recommend that our clients get in the habit of sending request-for-review emails to all of their happy customers. That way, a steady stream of positive reviews will be posted on their Google Business Profile, with results that include a growing number of customers and high rankings in local searches.

[ Learn more about SEO for plumbers: Click here to request a quote ]

Once you have completed your initial SEO work, you’ll want to track your results, which can continually improve your campaigns’ performance. Your campaign should have 3 core metrics:

Tracking your page rankings can reveal a range of insights into your campaign, including keyword performance, impressions, and the number of people who clicked through to your site. To track your page rankings, have your webmaster install the Google Search Console, formerly Google Webmaster Tools. Use the tool to check your page rankings once or twice per month.

For automatic and comprehensive tracking, you can use the paid tracking tool from RankRanger. RankRanger delivers automatically updated ranking reports for your SEO campaigns across multiple keywords and tracks your Google Business Profile and website rankings.

The next aspect of your campaign that needs to be tracked is the traffic being driven to your website and the pages on your site that it’s going to. In addition to the traffic coming in, you’ll want to track where it is coming from.

Google Analytics provides comprehensive tracking and should be installed on every page of your website to monitor your traffic. The platform’s installation is straightforward, but you may prefer that your webmaster does the work, especially if you have a large website.

Our recommendation is that your traffic metrics be reviewed monthly to identify long-term trends, see how your SEO traffic is growing, and determine where improvements can be made.

Conversions are the specific actions you want prospective customers to take while they are on your website. When focusing on SEO for plumbers, one of the most common conversions is a phone call for service, so you’ll definitely want to track the phone calls that are coming in and how many of them result in service calls. Google Analytics can track phone calls and conversions, which can reveal the services that are bringing in the most customers, as well as the pages with the highest and lowest conversion ratios.

Committing to building a solid local SEO campaign can be one of the best investments you can make in your plumbing business. For the best results, follow each step of the process to its completion before moving on.

To review, the 5 steps to successful local SEO for plumbers are:

1. Keyword research – Defining hiring and research intent keywords
2. Keyword optimization – On and off your site
3. Citations and Links – Spreading your net and growing your target market
4. Reviews – Make getting positive reviews a habit
5. Tracking – Stay with what is working and improve areas that are lagging

Following these steps will put your local SEO campaign on solid footing. You can then build on that foundation to get higher rankings for your web pages, more traffic to your website, and more customers for your plumbing business!

At Main Street ROI, we specialize in SEO for plumbers, helping them attract local customers searching for services on Google. If you’d like help with your local SEO campaigns, contact us for a free quote.

Click here to request a quote for plumbing SEO services