If your air-conditioner needs repairing, it doesn’t make sense to look for a heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) company from another state. You’d hire someone within your locality and probably the closest to your home, especially during HVAC emergencies.
That said, if you are an HVAC business owner, your most ideal customers are the local homes and business owners within your geographical location. And to snag all those local customers, you want to become visible online and become the first thing they see when they search for an HVAC service.
You can do that through search engine optimization (SEO), focusing on local SEO.
Understanding Local SEO
Local SEO is a sub-category of SEO that directs more on helping your business to become visible in localized search.
It’s a strategy that helps HVAC businesses within a specific locality promote their services to local customers searching for them online.
Search engines consider a user’s location when looking for a service business like HVAC as a ranking factor. It does this automatically, or you can add extra words such as your location or ‘nearby’ or ‘near me’ in the search box. Then, search engines will pull up a list of HVAC services near you. This way, users will see more of your pages and lead them to your website or even your physical location.
Related: Top Local SEO Stats
HVAC businesses should aim to top local search rankings as local service providers. This way, you can gain more clients, thus ensuring business growth and success.
A Comprehensive Local SEO Strategy Checklist
So, now that you understand how important local SEO is, you now need to master the art of optimizing for local searches. Here is a comprehensive strategic SEO checklist for HVAC and plumbing companies to improve your local SEO ranking.
1- Claim Your GMB Listing
Google dominates the search engine market, taking a whopping 92.47% slice on the market share pie as of June 2021.
That said, you want to claim and optimize your Google My Business (GMB) listing to attract visitors to your website and business, particularly to your physical business premises. And if you do it correctly, your HVAC business might be one of the first featured websites or locations in a local Google search.
Claiming your GMB listing is easy. First, you need to verify if you don’t have a listing yet. If your HVAC business has been operating for years, there’s a chance that a listing has been made. You can simply click on the ‘claim your listing’ to claim and verify the listing.
Related: Google My Business Listing Optimization Guide
For non-existent listings, simply go to the GMB page to add your business to Google. Then, you’ll fill up a form and verify your GMB listing. This authenticates that you are the legitimate owner.
After successful verification, a postcard with a verification code will be mailed to you in a week or two. Sign in to your GMB account and submit the code for verification. After that, your listing should be live. Then, further, optimize your listing by adding operating hours and descriptions and uploading business photos.
2- Claim And Optimize Other Listings
GMB is a significant listing directory; however, you shouldn’t stop there. It’s also important to claim and fully optimize your listings on other directories and platforms, including Bing, Yelp, and Apple Maps. In addition, there are industry- and location-specific directories that can be claimed and optimized.
To assess your credibility, search engines periodically scan these business citations to measure the visibility of your HVAC business and critical business information.
Related: Local SEO Ranking Factors Used By Google
3- Ensure A Consistent Citation
Speaking of critical business information, it is also vital that you have consistent citation information—name, address, and phone number or NAP—throughout online directories, social media, and websites. This may seem a no-brainer. However, most businesses fail to create a consistent NAP citation.
Related: Top Directory Submission Sites
A consistent NAP is rewarded with a higher ranking due to the accurate information provided. So, make sure to always double-check your NAP before submitting it to the business directory listing and your social media accounts.
If you need to change some information, update every citation listing you have.
4- Ask For Reviews
Besides critical information about your HVAC business, you also want to add local reviews to entice new visitors.
Reviews validate how good your services are and back up your business’s claims. Moreover, Google agrees with this and thus, recommends HVAC businesses with a higher rating.
Online reviews don’t just influence your rankings. It also urges potential clients and users to choose your HVAC services over your competitors once they see even a single raving review about you.
So, go out of your way and spend time obtaining these reviews from your previous clients. You can encourage them to leave reviews on your GMB listing or send them a survey via email.
Take note that this doesn’t just apply to the GMB listing. It also extends to all listing directories you have. You can even add some reviews to your website.
5- High-Quality Images
Images do more than just add visual appeal to your website. Doing this correctly means uploading photos on your website, and listing directories which can also benefit your local SEO effort.
Search engines don’t understand what your image is about. When uploading, adding descriptive alt text can help search engines understand your picture, its relevancy to your content, and who will be interested in seeing them.
For instance, if you recently installed an HVAC system on a business premise, you want to upload a snapshot of your before and after service and include all the relevant details in your alt text, including your location and what kinds of techniques you used during installation.
Related: Ways To Edit Images To Increase Your Business Credibility
However, you have to note and make sure that the images are not slowing down your website loading. In addition, consider using the correct image formats.
6- A Web Page For Each Location
Local SEO isn’t limited to business with a single location. If your HVAC business has multiple branches, you need to dedicate a web page to each. This allows search engines to promote your local branch to the local people it serves.
When creating a webpage for other business locations, it would be best to include the NAP information of each location.
Moreover, optimize the title tags and header tags for a specific webpage by including relevant information to that specific branch or its particular location. This is important since title pages are the first thing users see when they browse search results.
For instance, if your Indiana-based HVAC business has a branch in multiple cities and you’re making a webpage for your branch in Lafayette, then your title tag for that page could be ‘HVAC services in Lafayette.’
You want to make sure that your location pages aren’t just copies of each other with minor changes. It would be best to make them unique by uploading actual images of the location, map information, and more for search engines to pay attention to these location pages.
7- Create Content
In the digital world of marketing, content is king. Creating unique, relevant, and useful content for your audience allows you to gain authority in your industry or niche.
It also helps build trust with your clients and provides them with answers to their burning questions while increasing the chance of getting a new client.
You can establish your HVAC brand by creating content while pushing visitors through the buyer’s journey without them noticing.
For instance, a user is searching on ‘how to clean my air-conditioner,’ you can provide valuable insight into how to do so. They may follow your instructions, or best, call your services to do it instead.
Related: How to Write the Best SEO Content That Will Rank
That said, there are some tips you need to follow:
For one, you need to create localized content. Writing about a general topic can help you attract a wide audience. However, it would be best to focus on local news and issues to attract a local audience.
You can create content that revolves around specific events in your locality. Or, if there are particular HVAC problems more common in the area you’re servicing, you can also write about those. Doing so gives your content more focus and attracts your target audience.
Other than that, you can also prioritize long-tail and local keywords. For instance, instead of using short, generic keywords like ‘aircon repair,’ you want to use ‘best aircon repair company in Colorado.’ Such keyword is location-specific or properly targeted and has a higher chance of attracting qualified leads.
Conclusion
There’s no denying that the internet has become a critical channel for your HVAC business’s growth and success in the modern era.
That said, you want to follow the above checklist in order to optimize your digital assets for local search and become the go-to HVAC company service of homeowners and business owners in your locality.
It’s okay to feel a bit overwhelmed when starting out with your local SEO. Although tedious and time-consuming, optimizing your HVAC business for local searches, you’ll soon dominate the rankings, resulting in increased lead generation and conversion and ultimately boosting profit and business growth.
