12 Things Plumbing Websites are Doing Wrong with Their Local SEO

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So, a homeowner wakes up to find a clogged tap or a leaking pipe. What’s the first thing he is likely to do?

Yes, you guessed it right; He would switch to his smartphone to search for a plumber in his area. 

And the plumbers who appear in the top search results have high chances of gaining a customer. 

If you don’t wish to lose potential customers to your competitors, you need to polish your local SEO. 

So, if you are trying hard to win the local SEO game without any gains, here are some mistakes you must fix: 

12 Things Plumbing Websites are Doing Wrong with Their Local SEO

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1. Failing to Optimize for the Right Service Areas in GMB

Unlike the brick-and-mortar stores, plumbing businesses serve at the client’s location.

And if you fail to optimize for your preferred service areas, you lose out on relevant searches. 

Google uses location proximity and preferred service location factors while catering to local searches. 

So, you must add the right service areas to your GMB profile. 

Here is how you do it: 

• Open your plumbing business GMB profile (https://business.google.com/locations)

• Click on the “Info” tab and select the Edit icon next to the Address option. 

• Next, if you are still displaying your physical location, you can “Clear address.”

• You can add your preferred service areas (area, town, state) here.

• Finally, check your changes in Google Maps. 

Further, you must ensure that you mention these service areas clearly on your site. 

You can use location-specific keyword combinations for your site. Also, add these service areas clearly in your site footer and contact page. 

List the same service areas across your various business listings. Google must notice your service area preferences. And it helps you appear for plumbing service queries in these areas. 

Read: Step-by-step Setup Guide for Google My Business Set up

2. Targeting Unlocalized Keywords for your Plumbing Business

Many plumbing businesses tend to optimize for broad keywords. These can include “best plumbing services,” “professional plumbers,” etc. 

And they limit their keywords around service-specific keywords. These can include “emergency plumbing services,” “drainage fixing services,” etc. 

However, they miss out on creating crucial localized keyword combinations. And this fades the location relevancy of your business. 

Some tips to find and include your localized keywords include: 

Use Google Keyword Planner and KeywordTool.io to find crucial plumbing service keywords for your location. 

Create location-specific keyword combinations like: 

• Austin plumbing services
• Fast drainage fixing services in Austin
• Hire plumbers in Austin
• Austin Industrial plumbing fixation services 

Use Ahrefs or SEMrush to check the localized keyword combinations used by your competitors. And you can even optimize for these combinations. 

Add these localized keywords in your site content, sprinkle them in your GMB description, Meta Tags, etc. 

Here’s a screenshot of Google Keyword Planner showing localized keywords:

3. Google My Business Listing Is Not Optimized 

You have listed your plumbing business on GMB, but have you optimized the GMB listing? 

Google considers Google My Business information highly reliable and crucial for local SEO. 

Moreover, Moz states that GMB signals factor significantly (25.4%) in constituting local 3-pack results. 

So, unless you ensure that the quality of your GMB listing is optimized, you might not win good local rankings. 

So, here is how you can enhance the quality of the GMB listing for your plumbing business:

• NAP Consistency: Use your authentic brand name, phone number, and address on GMB, your site, and other listings. 

• Category: Add ‘Plumbing services’ as your primary category. And grow relevancy with secondary categories like ‘industrial plumbing contractors,’ ‘emergency plumbing services,’ ‘home care services,’ etc.

• Services: List your plumbing services & sub-services. 

• E.g., Pipeline Installation & Restoration, Faucet Leak Fix, Industrial Plumbing Fixation, Drainage Fixing, Residential Plumbing Services, etc. 

• Description: Make the most of your GMB description by talking about your USPs and experience within 750 characters. Also, use localized and long-tail keywords in it.

• Service Area Business: Mark all your preferable service areas to rank for relevant searches.

• Hours: Ensure to update your service hours every week. 

• GMB Reviews: GMB reviews are crucial for your rankings as a plumbing business. So, devise a reliable feedback generation strategy and grow your GMB reviews.

• Images: Show plumbing before & after images, show your staff, add client’s installation site images, etc.

• Posts: Use this feature to showcase offers and CTAs on your GMB listing. 

• FAQs: You can rank for featured snippets and long-tail queries by adding highly relevant FAQs to GMB. 

Here’s the result of adding ‘plumbing services’ as the primary category in your GMB profile:

4. Lacking Enough Google Reviews 

Google doesn’t leave any stone unturned when sourcing the most valuable results for local queries. 

Google understands the search intent and compares a brand’s location authority for compiling local search results. 

Your GMB reviews factor significantly in your business’s location authority. So, if your plumbing business lacks enough positive reviews, it fails to win good search ranks.

Here are some steps to earn abundant reviews for your plumbing business:

• Request reviews through feedback emails. And add your GMB profile link to these emails. 

• Leverage platforms like SurveyMonkey and GetFeedback to strengthen your feedback generation strategy.

• Build customer relationships and even attach discounts with feedback requests. (E.g. “Rate our plumbing services on Google and expect a 10% discount for any future projects.” 

• Appreciate every positive review on GMB, your site, other listings, or social media. 

• Respond to the negative reviews to show your concern. 89% of consumers are delighted to see prompt concern from a business. 

• Request local influencers to review your services and recommend your business.

• Use Mention or Google Alerts to stay aware of your brand's new positive/negative reviews. This allows you to manage negative feedback promptly.

Here’s an example of a plumbing service appreciating a positive review on its GMB profile:

Read: 10 Tips to Get Local Reviews for Your Business

5. Your Plumbing Website isn’t Optimized for the Mobile Platform 

So, you have an optimized GMB page, a good-looking site, and decent positive reviews. But, your plumbing site still doesn’t make it to the first page for local search queries. 

Here, you must check the mobile platform performance of your site. 

Over 50% of consumers directly switch to their smartphones when searching for a plumbing contractor. 

Moreover, Google considers mobile optimization a significant user experience factor. 

So, you need to optimize the mobile compatibility of your plumbing website. 

• Start with analyzing your site’s current mobile compatibility using the Mobile-Friendly Test tool. 

•  Take a developer’s assistance to fix the errors displayed by this tool.

•  Structure your site’s content elements to offer impressive readability over the mobile platform

Here’s a screenshot of Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test tool:

6. You are Not Listed on Crucial Plumbing Business Directories 

Local citations undoubtedly influence your location authority. Moreover, they are crucial to establishing a prominent presence online. 

Some local directories dominate the top organic searches for plumbers. 

For example, 

When you search “best plumbing services in San Antonio,” Expertise and Angi directories rank below the local 3-pack. 

So, if you list in such local directories, you have better chances to earn enquires and leads. 

Here are some popular directories to list your plumbing business: 

• GMB 
• Angi
• Expertise
• Yelp
• Home Advisor
• Porch
• Thumbtack
• Best Plumbers
• Build Zoom
• Networx
• Facebook
• Bing Places

Ensure to add consistent and authentic business name, location, and phone number across these listings. And enrich these listings with service details, descriptions, USPs, etc. 

Also, use this list from BrightLocal to find some useful listing sites for your plumbing business.

Express Update, Neustar Localeze are the main data aggregators in the US. These can help you gain valuable citations for your plumbing site. 

Also, check Yext’s Business Scan tool for any missed listing platforms, and list there. 

7. Failing to Build Crucial Backlinks and Unstructured Citations

So, you have built a decent amount of structured citations, but do you attract natural brand mentions? 

Google considers unstructured citations, natural brand mentions, and backlinks crucial for SEO. These factors represent the authority of your business and website. 

So, if your plumbing business lacks valuable mentions and backlinks, you will have a hard time with local SEO. 

Here is how to win valuable mentions and backlinks: 

• Use HARO to find out PR professionals writing on topics related to your niche (plumbing). Next, pitch your contribution to their PR stories. They might mention your brand and even offer a backlink in their story. 

• Use Ahrefs or SEMrush to find the referring domains that offer authoritative backlinks to your competitors. Pitch with valuable content or link exchange ideas to these web admins.

• Google Alerts or Mention are valuable tools to check your competitor’s brand mentions. You can also earn mentions from here. 

• Contact local bloggers & influencers with collaboration requests for gaining links and mentions.

Here’s a screenshot of creating an alert to track competitor brand mentions using Google Alerts:

8. Lacking Quality Content on Your Site

You are likely to struggle to rank for crucial queries due to daunting local competition. 

Here, many plumbing businesses lack adequate quality content on their site. And so, they fail to build relevancy for the crucial search queries. 

So, you must invest significant effort in building relevant localized content. 

Here are some tips: 

1. Produce content around most common FAQs like: 

• What to do if my toilet keeps clogging?
• DIY tips to ensure your garbage disposal doesn’t leak again
• What’s an ideal plumbing maintenance schedule for your industry? 
• How to locate a water leak in the pipeline? 

2. Check SEMrush and Ahrefs for the content topics that work the best for your competitors. And build superior quality content around these topics. 

3. Add crisp question-answer style content and also add it to the FAQs section in GMB.

4. Add location-specific keyword combinations to your content to boost relevancy. 

5. Build crisp content to meet natural queries like: 

• How to find the most trusted plumbing services in {your service area}?

• Which is an affordable pipeline installment company in {your service area}?

• Factors to check before you hire industrial plumbing services in {your city}? 

Also, ensure that you share your content on social media to attract referral traffic and links. 

You can use a blog topic generator to find ideas to write about:

9. Your GMB Profile Doesn’t Rank in Google Maps Search Results

So, you have created the GMB profile for your plumbing business, but it does not show up for relevant searches on Google Maps. 

In this case, there can be several reasons that restrict your profile from ranking in Google Maps results. 

Some reasons that you must check and fix: 

• Your GMB profile is still under the 14-day verification process. 
• Your profile is suspended due to a reason like:

• Keyword stuffing, or 
• Multiple listing for the same business, or
• Inconsistent NAP, or
• Forwarding website URL

• You are using your business location instead of service areas. 
• Your GMB profile lacks optimization, or you have a low location authority.

In this case, find the exact reason for the account suspension, fix it, offer proof, and request reinstatement. 

Once you fix these reasons, your listing will likely rank for relevant queries in the Google Maps results. 

Here’s an example of keyword stuffing:

10. Your Plumbing Site Lacks Proper On-page Optimization

On-page optimization remains one of the most integral parts of your local SEO effort. 

It has a crucial stance in building your location authority.

Meanwhile, some plumbing businesses fall back when investing efforts in on-page SEO. And this directly impacts their search rankings for relevant local queries. 

So, here are some crucial on-page optimization tips for plumbing businesses: 

• Ensure to build individual content pages for your services and sub-services. These can include residential pipeline installation, industrial plumbing services, emergency drainage fixing, etc. 

• Update your sitemap for the newest pages and submit it to Google and Bing webmasters
• Add location schema markup to your plumbing website.
• Add an intriguing and keyword-focused Meta Title (Maximum 55 characters) to each page. 
• Add your localized keywords along with focus keywords to the Meta Description. 
• Ensure your site load time doesn’t exceed 3 seconds. 
• Check your website’s performance errors by leveraging the PageSpeed Insights tool. And fix the highlighted errors with the help of your web developer.
• Some other speed optimization tactics include: 

• Compressing the image files
• Enabling Gzip compression 
• Using asynchronous loading of JS
• Combining and minifying HTML, JS files, and CSS

Here’s a screenshot of Google’s PageSpeed Insights:

11. Failing to Gauge Local SEO Progress

Many plumbing website owners fail to devise a well-planned local SEO strategy. And their SEO efforts look like a randomly grouped set of SEO activities. 

These efforts are daunting to measure and may fail to earn you a prominent local presence. 

So, unless you do not gauge the results from your SEO efforts, you fail to optimize your strategies. 

Here is how you can gauge and optimize your local SEO strategies: 

• Track the number of new reviews you earn on your GMB page and website.
• Use Google Alerts or Mention to set alerts for every new mention or review on listings.
• Leverage tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console to measure crucial site metrics. These include organic traffic, ranking keywords, bounce rate, new links, etc. 
• Also, measure your on-call inquiries and direct conversions through your site.

These metrics enable you to compute the effectiveness of your local SEO efforts. And you can optimize your strategies accordingly. 

Here’s a screenshot of Google Analytics showing crucial site metrics:

Read: Local SEO Tips for Plumbers

12. Ignoring Social Media Platforms 

Another common mistake that plumbing businesses make is ignoring their social media presence. 

Social media might not offer you a direct SEO advantage, but it acts as a catalyst in building your local presence. 

So, if you are missing out on the capabilities of social media marketing, here is how to leverage it:

• Share your localized content on social media with relevant tags to reach more audiences. This will earn good referral traffic and backlinks to your site. 
• Social media opens another channel to request feedback from your customers.
• Build engagement on social media profiles by sharing images, your service banners, etc., to attract inquiries.
• Build customer relationships through social media and forge your presence in your customer’s minds. 
• Collaborate with local social media influencers to boost your plumbing business awareness

Here’s an example of an influencer boosting business awareness on Instagram:

Key Takeaways

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Here are some tips to yield faster results from your local SEO efforts for your plumbing website:

• Highlight your important service areas in your GMB page, site, and other listings
• Add localized keywords to your content along with the focus keywords. Also, use Ahrefs to learn important keyword trends from your competitors.
• Enrich the GMB profile with consistent NAP, categories, plumbing services & sub-services, images, USPs, etc. 
• Add localized & popular FAQs to the site and the GMB listing.
• Use feedback generation tools and email requests to gain positive GMB reviews.
• Optimize your plumbing website and content for an amazing mobile experience
• Build local business listings in Angi, Expertise, Yelp, Porch, Home Advisor, etc. 
• Attract PR mentions through HARO, and build backlinks through a link exchange and guest posting approach
• Check if your profile suffers from Google suspension and rectify it.
• Submit sitemap, add location schema, optimize Meta Data, and increase the site speed
• Measure metrics like new mentions, backlinks, referral traffic, and new reviews to optimize your strategy
• Use social media sharing, engagement building, and social media influencer marketing.