Time to read: 8 minutes
With the Right Approach, SEO for Plumbers Can Help You Flush Out the Competition from Your Local Market (for Good!)
We know that traditional methods (billboards, radio, TV, print ads, and flyers) can be completely profitable investments for your business. With that said, the downside of these approaches is that they cannot track return on investment, meaning that you may not truly know how well they are performing, which is why SEO tends to be more successful. Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the process of implementing a variety of strategies and tactics to improve your business’s ranking positions across different search engines. As a result, you can boost search traffic and leads to your website.
For plumbing companies, your SEO approach should include cultivating a mix of tactics that improve your site’s appearance on Google Maps and the Google local pack, which we call local SEO, including crafting local landing pages, optimizing your presence in industry directories, obtaining relevant and quality backlinks, and creating helpful content that drives traffic.
If you’re trying to determine the viability of investing in SEO, just take a look at these recent statistics:
- “Plumbers near me” is a growing mobile search term, with 288% year-over-year growth
- 93% of consumers who search for plumbing are most likely to make a call after the search
- Consumers spend an average of $614 on plumbing after making a search
- 76% of consumers who searched for plumbers did not have a specific company in mind
- On Google Ads, the average cost per click on plumbing keywords is $39.19, which can add up quickly!
- 97% of people will learn about a local business on the internet rather than anywhere else
Tactics That Matter Most for Plumbers Investing in SEO Strategies
Let’s dive into what our plumber SEO agency thinks will truly help move the needle for your business.
1. Selecting Keywords That Help People Looking for Plumbers Find You Online
Potential customers turn to the internet to look for pages, images, videos, or any other information that will answer their search query, generally related to products, services, or questions they have.
Therefore, keywords (which are words and phrases you want to target) are included on web pages to help searchers using specific language find your site. For example, say you offer sewer repair in Indianapolis – keywords for you may include “sewer repair services in Indy” or “Indianapolis sewer companies.”
Researching relevant keywords is highly important when working on your webpages. Some example keywords you can use to target your plumbing website include:
- Plumbing services near me
- Near me plumber
- Plumbing
- Drain cleaning
- Emergency plumber
- Septic repair
- Local plumbers
- Sump pumps
- Drain unclogging
- Drain snaking
- Septic cleaning
- Many others
2. Knowing What Actually Impacts Google Business Profile Rankings
When looking at where you stand in the local pack, there are a couple of factors that affect your rankings, such as
- Having a Google Business Profile (GBP) set up and verified
- A physical location in your city, or SAB (service area business) within range of your target
- Important note: If you are an SAB and hide your address, the address you used to set up your profile acts as the center point of your profile, and you will likely only rank in a limited-mile radius of that address even though you can set your area of service to anything.
- Important note: If you are an SAB and hide your address, the address you used to set up your profile acts as the center point of your profile, and you will likely only rank in a limited-mile radius of that address even though you can set your area of service to anything.
- Reviews available for online users to help you build trust
- Directory listings for your local business that match your GBP and website info
- Location landing pages that are optimized for your different locations
- High-quality inbound links from both local and national sources
Of this list, the most important factor is how optimized your Google Business Profile is. When online users are searching for specific services, the first thing they’ll do is take a look at your Google Business Profile. With the option for users to also take a look at competitors’ profiles, you’ll want to make sure that yours has the most relevant information.
It’s important to also note that Google is always evolving, so factors can change over time. Staying up to date on local rankings is also crucial so you can stay competitive and continue to rank well on Google.
3. Putting in Effort to Boost or Maintain Local Rankings
Taking advantage of categories on Google Business Profiles is highly important because they contribute to local rankings. There are over 4,000 Google categories available that you can add, so it’s crucial to use this aspect of your profile and work to differentiate yourself from your competitors. On Google, you can add a main category, which would most likely be “plumber,” and then you can add up to nine additional business categories. These categories will help potential customers find you and see the specific services you offer.
When choosing additional business categories, you’ll want to assess which categories represent your most profitable services, which categories have a high search volume, and which categories competitors feature.
Categories that you could potentially use include:
- Repair service
- Water treatment supplier
- Water testing service
- Water tank cleaning service
- Water pump supplier
- Water purification company
Additionally, Sterling Sky conducted a study on how custom services affect your rankings and found that local rankings improved for businesses once they added custom services.
Custom services give you the chance to be super specific about what you do. This will help open up a wider range of customers because your profile can match up to more search terms. It also lets online users better understand what you do beyond plumbing. Custom services can include anything you want, so some examples relevant to you might be:
- Emergency plumbing services
- Leak repairs
- Pipe inspection
- Drain cleaning
- Septic tank services
- Commercial plumbing services
4. Adding Helpful Content for Casual Browsers (And AI Answer Engines)
Like we said earlier, a good SEO strategy includes producing helpful content. Such content is highly impactful on the traffic coming to your web pages because users will be able to find information that helps them with specific questions about your services. Not only can this type of content help people who land on your site navigate to find information relevant to them, but it is also a great way to help get more citations from AI platforms such as ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini.
There are a couple of ways that you can include helpful content on your website. Firstly, you can add FAQs to answer common questions and display your expertise in the field. Example questions could include:
- What plumbing services do you offer?
- Do you provide emergency plumbing services?
- How quickly can you respond to emergency calls?
- What types of pipes do you work with?
- Can you help with water heater issues?
- Do you offer drain cleaning services?
- What do I do in case of a burst pipe?
- Are you equipped to handle plumbing for commercial properties?
- Can you assist with plumbing for bathrooms and kitchens?
- What precautions should I take to prevent frozen pipes?
These questions help customers understand your business better, show how you can provide helpful information to people, and highlight your services.
Pro tip: Another way to include helpful content is by starting a blog. This will give you the ability to write about certain topics in the plumbing industry that people may find useful. Plus, consistently updating your blog about industry trends will show Google that you’re a relevant resource to people.
5. Improving Your Conversion Rates So New Traffic Isn’t Wasted
There are several ways to improve your business’s conversion rates, with just some of the key strategies including:
- Incorporate social proof onto key pages (testimonials, customers’ photos, etc.)
- Play around with A/B testing for your CTAs (different colors, wording, etc.)
- Streamline navigation and page hierarchy to make it easy for users to find info
- Simplify your forms to include just the essentials to book an initial call
- Conduct continuous usability testing to see what’s working (Microsoft Clarity is great for this!)
If your plumbing business is looking to improve specific pages on its website, key areas that we recommend prioritizing include:
- The homepage
- Service pages
- Location pages
- Blog posts
- Contact pages
6. Keep an Eye on How Things Play Out by Tracking Your Results
As we mentioned earlier, the reason a lot of traditional marketing efforts fail is that you cannot track the results. SEO is different, as there are many ways you can track how your strategy is working by seeing more traffic in GA4, more leads coming in through your CRM, or more calls coming in via CallRail. And if you are currently unhappy with how your current campaign is performing, it can be due to a variety of factors, including:
- A new competitor has entered the market
- Lack of proper analytics reporting and tracking
- Outdated tactics such as buying mass links
- Utilizing syndicate content on your blog
- Recent algorithm changes altering your positioning
- Lack of lead attribution in your CRM
