Ben Madilynn
A plumbing company needs new clients to grow, and running a company during the Internet age means plumbers simultaneously have more access to potential customers than ever before while facing more competition for those clients.
The opportunity and challenge the Internet creates means plumbers should take their search engine marketing seriously. According to a 2024 survey by Marketing Charts, “Eight out of ten consumers search for businesses online at least once per week, and one-third of consumers check once per day or multiple times a day.” The survey also stated that over 72 percent of respondents use Google search to find companies.
Potential clients are looking for plumbers online. Optimizing your search engine marketing strategy will help those clients find you. Improving your standing with search engines can seem like a challenging task, but there are a few underutilized strategies you can use to help you get ahead. Here are a few tips plumbers can use themselves to improve their search engine optimization (SEO).
Links and Mentions
SEO is about getting links to your plumbing company’s website from other reputable sites. Your rankings in search engines improve when other sites local to your area or associated with plumbing link to your website. Links are the primary driver of search engine marketing, but there is still value in getting your brand mentioned on relevant websites. Many reputable publications do not link, yet we have seen companies we work with increase rankings after being mentioned in articles from these publications.
Getting links and mentions in plumbing articles will help improve your brand’s search engine standing. Getting quoted as the owner of your plumbing company or authoring a column mentioning your brand are two great ways to get a mention. Pitching columns for local media or plumbing publications is an excellent strategy for receiving links and mentions.
The stories you pitch should be relevant to the plumbing industry and give readers solutions to issues that customers or other industry professionals face.
Local media outreach is an underutilized search marketing strategy because it takes work. You have to contact local news editors and editors of plumbing magazines. Writing columns takes time, and you must keep doing it. You can’t just get one article published. You need stories to appear throughout the year.
Getting published takes time, but it is a powerful thing you can do for your SEO. Search engines consider these publications authority hubs, and links and mentions from these hubs will help your brand.
All of these articles should be published organically. “Advertorial” content will not move the needle. Search engines know the difference between ads and organic content, and organic content is king for SEO.
Social Media Campaigns
Most of the talk by social media experts about social media’s effect on SEO is wrong. Search engines do not care about the number of likes or mentions you get on social media. These metrics do not improve rankings.
Social media can indirectly impact your SEO by increasing the number of people searching for your company by name. These searches are brand signals to search engines telling them your brand is legitimate. You will rank higher if people search for your brand name organically.
Run a small social media campaign to get people to search your brand name for company reviews. Local media provides a similar benefit, but a small social media campaign is more consistent. Media increases brand searches on a short-term basis, while social media improves as long as you run your campaign. A small social media campaign could cost you only a few hundred dollars and effectively move the needle.
Original Images on Your Website
Search engines love to see original photos. Use only original photos on your plumbing website. They are a great brand signal to search engines.
This means taking headshots of you and your staff, pictures of the building you work in, and posting job site photos. Take pictures of your team working a job and provide a few before and after photos to show the quality of your work. Search engines crawl the web constantly, and if they see your website uses those same stock photos seen on 20 other plumbing company websites, it could impact rankings.
In Conclusion
Search engine marketing is a boon to your plumbing company. Customers use search engines to find plumbing services, and good SEO will ensure more people see your brand when they search for a plumber online.
Pitch column ideas to local media and plumbing magazines to get links and mentions, run a small social media campaign, and use original photos on your website. If you already have done the basics of SEO, doing these three under-utilized tactics will improve your plumbing company’s standing on search engines.
Hernan Charry is the Director of Marketing at Split One Technologies, a search engine marketing firm in Phoenix, Arizona. For over a decade, Split One Technologies has created unique SEO and digital ad campaigns for contractors.
