4 overlooked mistakes plumbers make in their SEO strategy

Plumbers and their customers are living in a digital age, which means more potential clients are finding a plumber online via Google searches. If more customers are finding plumbers on Google, then it is important that you take the right steps to ensure you are the plumber they find.

The right search engine optimization (SEO) strategy will lead to more people organically finding your plumbing company on Google, which will lead to more calls, which then leads to more sales.

A great SEO strategy is a powerful tool to grow your plumbing company. However, plumbers frequently make the wrong SEO moves when it comes to the construction of their website and the promotion of their brand. Here are some of the most overlooked issues plumbers have when implementing an SEO strategy.

Using only one service page on your website

Most plumbers provide multiple services to their clients and then list every service on one page of their website to keep things simple. Do not use one page to list all your services, instead create separate service pages for the different work you provide.

If your company does drain cleaning and water heater installation, then create service pages specifically for drain cleaning and water heater installation. The problem with using one page to promote all your services is that Google cannot possibly rank that one page for every service you listed. Creating specific service pages allows Google to rank each page separately for the relevant keywords on that page.

Once you have created these new pages, add them to your website menu. Adding these pages to your menu will signal to Google that they are important. Multiple service pages also make you look more like an expert to your customers since you are displaying a variety of services.

Every service page you create should have detailed descriptions of the service you are providing and make sure to describe your plumbing company’s expertise in completing this type of work. When writing a service page, stay on topic and remember, the more detail you provide, the better. Creating multiple well-written service pages will allow your plumbing company to rank for more services and bring in more work.

Neglecting brand promotion

Plumbing contractors are so busy that oftentimes, they just put up a website and take a “Field of Dreams” approach. They built the website so they think people will come. The reality is you need to do more than just build a website; you have to brand and promote that website. At minimum, this means adding your plumbing company to your local directories such as Yelp.

For better results, go one step further than that and reach out to your local papers or plumbing contractor publications and pitch them a column for publication. If your plumbing company is published online in an authoritative newspaper or trade publication, then Google will track that and think of you as more of an expert. If you pitch a publication, it is important to come up with a few ideas that are beneficial to the readers of that publication.

Too many plumbing contractors neglect to promote their website or they focus promotion in the wrong areas. Promoting a website is more than just posting about it on social media since more often than not, your plumbing company does not have the established following to gain any traction. What you want to do is promote your brand to relevant and authoritative websites.

Your website runs too slowly

Google cares about the speed of your website and many plumbing companies have a slow website. Google cares about website speed because they want to direct its customers to high-quality content. A customer sitting around waiting for a website to load is not a good user experience. Make sure your website loads fast enough, ideally you want it to load in under three seconds. A helpful tool to track your website’s speed is Google’s PageSpeed Insights. It will also tell you what improvements you can make to your website to speed it up.

Realistically, most steps to improve the speed of your website require the skills of a web developer; however, one simple fix you can make is to shrink your image file sizes. Large image files are one of the biggest reasons websites run slowly. Paid tools such as PhotoShop allow you to use the “save for web” feature which makes your photos the ideal size for your website. There are also websites such as tinyjpeg.com that allow you to compress an image for free.

Using bland and copied images

Do not rely on stock photos or repeat photos to populate your website. Google is paying more attention to the images that are on a page and they want those images to be unique.

Taking original photos and posting them in different areas of your website shows Google that you are creating a unique experience. Uniqueness matters, and if you are using the same stock photos as everyone else or copying content from another website, then Google will rank a more established plumbing company higher than you.

You don’t need to create professional high-quality images, all you need is a few well-shot iPhone photos. Just don’t forget to the previously mentioned tools to ensure your photo files are the right size.

If customers are searching for plumbers on Google, then you should make an effort to ensure your plumbing company is one of the first ones they see. Implementing an SEO strategy can benefit your business, but it is important to avoid the little mistakes that will hurt you.

If you create multiple service pages, promote your brand to relevant publications, use unique images and have a quick website, then your plumbing company is well on its way to moving up in Google rankings.