SEO For Plumbers: 10 Ways to Rank at the Top

Outranking
by Outranking
Updated On: April 4, 2024
SEO For Plumbers: 10 Ways to Rank at the Top

53.3% of website traffic is composed of organic search. That means that, in order for your plumbing website to get the maximum organic traffic, you need to focus on implementing search engine optimization (SEO) techniques that bring in more online visibility and conversions. For that, you need an SEO content strategy that identifies current content gaps, tells you what type of content is suitable for your plumbing services website, and guides you toward creating quality content that will set you up for success by helping your website rank higher. 

SEO is a complex undertaking that requires a multitude of steps and tactics. To help you get started, we’ve compiled the ultimate SEO guide for your plumbing company website, so that you can jump right into implementing the basic SEO practices that will effectively and efficiently sky-rocket your business!

Why Is SEO Important for Plumbers or Plumbing Services?

Let’s consider for a moment that two marketers (Jake and Joe) are each working to promote a plumbing website. They both received a reasonable marketing budget to work with and have been granted full authority. Jake spends his entire budget on sponsored posts on Google, while Joe decides to invest his budget in building an SEO strategy. After one year, Joe’s website still attracts new organic traffic because his website started ranking at the top of search engine results pages (SERPs). Unfortunately, Jake’s plumbing website doesn’t garner the same attention as his budget was spent entirely on PPCs.

Simply put, SEO is the art of improving a website’s visibility and rankings by optimizing its technical, on-page, and off-page aspects. It’s a cost-effective way of marketing and with SEO, you’ll see measurable results that allow you to prioritize your marketing tasks for your plumbing business.

10 Ways to Implement SEO for Your Plumbing Service’s Website

Step 1: Create Website Architecture for Your Plumbing Service’s Website

Creating a website architecture that shows the services your plumbing business offers is the first step in implementing better SEO strategies. By identifying the main areas of services, you can more easily conduct keyword research and develop a plan that targets the right audience.

Start by identifying the main services your business provides. For example, your plumbing business may offer services such as drain cleaning, water heater repair, and bathroom remodeling. These services can be broken down into core offering areas, which will form the basis of your keyword research and content plan.

Here’s an example of how your plumbing business may break down its website architecture into core offering areas and their sub-areas:

Core Offering AreasExtended List of Sub-Areas
Drain cleaningClogged drains, drain repair, hydro jetting, sewer line cleaning
Water heater repairTankless water heaters, gas water heaters, electric water heaters, water heater installation
Bathroom remodelingShower installation, bathtub installation, toilet installation, sink installation

In this example, the plumbing business has identified three core offering areas: drain cleaning, water heater repair, and bathroom remodeling. Each of these core offering areas has an extended list of sub-areas, which includes specific services that the plumbing business provides.

By breaking down the website architecture into core offering areas and their sub-areas, you can develop a content plan that targets specific keywords and topics. This approach will improve SEO performance, help your plumbing business rank higher in SERPs, and attract more relevant traffic to the website.

Identify your core offerings and their sub-areas
A tree showing three core offerings, with three sub-areas each, for a plumbing business

Step 2: Perform Keyword Research And Keyword Analysis

Keyword Research

When conducting keyword research, you’ll need to gather a list of keywords for each core area of your plumbing website, and each of their sub-areas. 

To conduct keyword research for your plumbing business website, you can use a keyword research tool like Semrush or Outranking. Here are the steps to follow:

  1. Identify the core areas of your plumbing business website, such as “residential plumbing”, “commercial plumbing”, and “emergency plumbing services”.
  1. Use a keyword research tool like Semrush or Outranking to search for keywords related to each core area. If you’re researching keywords for “residential plumbing”, you might search for keywords like “plumbing repair”, “toilet installation”, “pipe repair”, and “water heater replacement”.
Use a keyword research tool to generate an initial list
A screenshot of a keyword research tool, showing terms related to residential plumbing

3. Exclude keywords with outdated or irrelevant phrases to save time and money.

You can immediately rule out irrelevant keywords
A screenshot of a keyword research tool, calling attention to results that are not relevant to residential plumbing

4. Download the CSV file of relevant keywords for each core area and combine them into one file for easier management.

Keep track of all your keywords by combining them into one file
A table of keywords related to plumbing repair, toilet installation, and water heater replacement

5. Repeat the process for each sub-area within each core offering area, such as “toilet installation” or “water heater replacement” within “residential plumbing”.

By following these steps, you can gather a comprehensive list of keywords related to your plumbing business. Once you have collected keywords for each sub-group in a core service area, you can move to the next step of keyword analysis.

Keyword Analysis

As a plumber, you may wonder how to improve your website’s visibility and attract more customers. One effective way to achieve this is through keyword clustering. Keyword clustering is the process of grouping similar keywords into clusters. By doing so, you can identify the most relevant and valuable keywords for your business and create an SEO content strategy that targets them.

For example, let’s say you’re a plumber in New York City. Your keyword list may include terms like “emergency plumbing services”, “clogged drain repair”, “water heater installation”, and so on. By using a tool like Outranking’s keyword clustering tool, you can upload your keyword list and group them into clusters such as “emergency plumbing”, “drain cleaning”, and “water heater services”. This helps you understand which keywords are most relevant to your business and which ones you should focus on in your content strategy.

Guide your content strategy by clustering your keywords.
A demonstration of how to semantically group plumbing-related keywords

Once you have your clusters, it’s important to pick a primary keyword for each group. This primary keyword should be the one that has the highest search volume and the lowest competition. However, keyword clustering and SEO can be complex and time-consuming, especially if you don’t have an in-house SEO/marketing team. So using tools like Outranking can assist you in doing keyword research and analysis as well as on-page SEO optimization.

Step 3: Create a Content Calendar and Prioritize Your Plumbing Service’s SEO Efforts

To prioritize keywords for creating and optimizing content for your plumbing business website, start by creating a list of primary keywords and groups. Next, devise a keyword strategy: map out a plan and determine a schedule for creating and publishing content that uses your keywords. Outranking’s content planner can help by showing the entire list of topics that your content calendar needs to include.

To prioritize the keywords, Outranking suggests setting three priorities – High, Medium, and Low. 

For your plumbing business website, the following table can be used to prioritize keywords:

PriorityKeywords ContainingWhy
HighEmergency Plumbing, Plumbing Repair, Plumbing ServicesThese keywords are related to plumbing services that customers may urgently require, and can define the plumbing business as a thought leader in the industry.
MediumPlumbing Installation, Plumbing Maintenance, Water Heater RepairThese keywords can position the plumbing business among its competitors.
LowHow-to Guides, DIY Plumbing, Plumbing TipsThese keywords can define the plumbing business as a thought leader and support important plumbing-related web pages for the flow of information.

Outranking’s priority-setting feature can be used to easily assign priorities to the keywords in the list. By prioritizing the keywords, the plumbing business can create content that is more focused and targeted toward its audience, ultimately leading to better engagement and conversions.

Step 4: Establish a Content Production Process, SOPs, and Content Briefs

As a plumber looking to implement SEO on your website, you need to implement a well-defined content production process to ensure the success of your strategy. Here are two expert tips to ensure you have a thorough content creation and optimization process:

Screenshot of Outranking's "on-page local SEO" widget
Tools like Outranking can help you stay organized.

1. Create Solid Content Briefs

Before creating any content, it’s crucial to set clear goals regarding your content pieces. Creating solid SEO content briefs will help you to create content that resonates with your audience and is optimized for search engines.

2. Set up Workflows for Your Tasks

Setting up workflows for the tasks helps in reducing errors, and improving productivity, connectivity, and work culture. Using Outranking’s workflow will help you streamline your content creation process and ensure that your content is optimized for search engines.

Using Outranking’s content planner can help you ensure the success of your plan. Additionally, Outranking’s Kanban view allows you to see what stage your documents are in at a glance, making it easier to stay on track and meet your deadlines. Outranking also offers an integrated tool to create content briefs or create content directly in your SEO content strategy, making it easier to create high-quality content that is optimized for Google and other search engines.

Outranking's Kanban tool can help you stay organized
Screenshot of Outranking’s Kanban board interface

Step 5: Perform On-Page SEO Optimization

Creating SEO-optimized content for each service page, as well as your homepage and blog is crucial for making sure your plumbing business is investing in content that will yield results. By optimizing your content, you can improve your website’s Google rankings and attract more organic traffic. This means that potential customers searching for plumbing services in your area are more likely to find your website and choose your business over the competition.

On-page SEO optimization consists of the following features:

  • Header Tags: H1 should contain the most important keywords while H2s and H3s should contain NLPs or keywords with less value.
  • Title Tags: Title tags should contain the keyword and should be less than 60 characters.
  • Meta Descriptions: Meta descriptions should be less than 160 characters and should contain the keyword.
  • Keyword Placement and Density: The primary keyword should be placed in the introduction and conclusion of the topic while you should avoid keyword stuffing.
  • URL Structure: The URL should be simple and should contain the primary keyword only.

If you’re a busy plumber, you probably have limited time for creating and publishing a whole website’s worth of SEO-optimized pages, Outranking’s SEO content optimization and writing platform can help you write and optimize these pages to ensure the highest possible organic exposure. Outranking real-time optimization benchmarks against 20 competing pages from SERPs to provide real-time optimization of the most important on-page SEO factors. It also offers features such as title and description, outline, word count, unique entities, and media optimizations. With Outranking, busy plumbers like yourself can save time and effort while still ensuring their content is optimized for maximum organic exposure.

Outranking's writing platform will save you time and effort
A screenshot of Outranking’s writing interface

Step 6: Perform Off-Page SEO optimization

Search engines’ algorithms favor local citations and backlinks since these are crucial for local SEO. Local citations and inbound links help search engines verify the existence, legitimacy, credibility, and trustworthiness of your plumbing business’s website. They also help people discover your business online, and boost referral traffic, which is traffic from users who arrived at your plumbing business website via other websites or links, rather than directly entering your domain name. According to a survey by Moz, local citations are the fifth most important local search rankings factor.
Acquiring local citations can help with local SEO for plumbing businesses in two ways. First, citations can help the business rank higher for local search queries. Second, citations can help people discover the business online. Business directories often dominate search results for local queries, and getting listed on these sites can help prospective customers find the business.

Websites like Yelp can drive traffic to your plumbing business website
A plumbing business’s Yelp profile

There are two types of citations: structured and unstructured. Structured citations list the name, address, and phone number (NAP) of a business, while unstructured citations are contextual mentions of a business. It’s important to have both types of citations, but quality trumps quantity.

To build citations, businesses should follow these steps:

  1. Get listed with the ‘big three’ data aggregators: Acxiom, Data Axle, and Localeze. These companies distribute business data to a wide range of directories and websites.
  2. Submit to other core sites: Submit your NAP information to other core sites such as Google Business Profile, Bing Places for Business, and Yelp.
  3. Submit to popular industry and local citation sites: Submit your NAP information to popular industry and local sites such as HomeAdvisor, Angi, and the Yellow Pages.
  4. Pursue unstructured citations: Pursue unstructured citations by doing guest blogging and getting mentioned in blog posts, forum posts, or press mentions.

According to a survey by BrightLocal, 98% of consumers used the internet to find a local business in 2022, and 46% trusted online reviews as much as personal recommendations. This highlights the importance of having a strong online presence for local businesses, including acquiring local citations and backlinks.

A Yellow Pages listing can bring you more customers
The Yellow Pages listing for a plumbing business

Data aggregators and websites for plumbing businesses:

Data AggregatorWebsites to Get Citations From
AcxiomYellow Pages, CitySearch, SuperPages
Data AxelYelp, Bing Places for Business
LocalezeGoogle Business Profile, Facebook, Foursquare

Step 7: Perform Technical SEO

It’s vital for your plumbing business website to optimize page speed and website experience for better Google rankings in 2024, as this will directly affect user experience, bounce rate, and ultimately, conversions. A faster website with better user experience will lead to higher search engine rankings and increased visibility for your plumbing business. Here are three goals to achieve on your plumbing services’ website:

  1. Use optimization plugins and plumbing-related themes from services like Codecanyon, Nitropack, or WordPress to quickly improve page speed and website experience.
  2. Optimize your website for mobile devices.
  3. Keep the website design as simple as possible.

Step 8: Optimize Your Plumbing Service’s Local Google Business Profile Account

Google Business Profile is a free service that allows businesses to provide more information, including photos, videos, business hours, and links to reservation services, in search results. To optimize your plumbing business’s local search listings, take the following steps:

  1. Claim and verify your Google Business Profile listing with accurate and up-to-date information, including your business name, email address, address on Google Maps, phone number, and website. For example, you can include your plumbing business’s hours of operation, service area, and contact information.
  1. Add photos and videos of your work to showcase your services and build trust with potential customers. For example, you can include photos of your plumbing business’s team and equipment and before-and-after photos of your work.
  1. Encourage customers to leave reviews on your Google Business Profile listing to improve your online reputation. Ensure your customers have a positive experience so that they’ll give you positive feedback and increase your plumbing business’s visibility in search results. For example, you can ask satisfied customers to leave a review after you complete a job for them.
  1. Use relevant keywords in your business description and category to improve your SEO and help potential customers find your plumbing business more easily. But avoid keyword stuffing, so that users won’t think that your content is spam. For example, you can include keywords like “emergency plumbing services” and “water heater repair” in your plumbing business’s description and category.
Fill out your business description so that potential customers can find you
The Google Business Profile services tab for a plumbing business

5. Regularly update your Google Business Profile listing with new information, such as special promotions, seasonal hours, or changes in services offered. For example, you can update your plumbing business’s listing to promote a discount on drain cleaning services or to announce that you now offer water filtration installations.

Screenshot of Google search results for "plumbing services boston".
You can update your plumbing business listing to announce that you now offer Backflow Services.

Overall, optimizing your plumbing business’s Google Business Profile listing can help you stand out in local search results and attract more customers. However, it’s important to regularly monitor and update your Google Business Profile listing to ensure accuracy and effectiveness. For best results, you may want to consider hiring a digital marketing agency that specializes in local SEO to manage your plumbing business’s Google Business Profile listing and other online marketing efforts.

Step 9: Track Rankings Using Google Search Console

Webmaster tools such as Google Search Console can perform a site audit, which will analyze and identify your website’s current shortcomings, as well as track rankings. As a plumbing business owner, it’s crucial to connect to Google Search Console and track your website’s ranking to increase your organic traffic. By using the data provided by the search console, you can optimize your existing content, find new opportunities to create fresh content and expose underperforming pages to improve or redirect them. 

You should also use Google Analytics, a service by Google that tracks and reports website traffic as well as mobile app traffic. When both are used, you will get valuable stats and insights related to your SEO strategy that will help you focus on the important SEO elements.

Use this table to interpret your website ranking data and take action accordingly:

GoalActionRanking Data
Optimize internal linkingImprove page rank by finding pages that need better internal linking structurePages with keywords in the top 4-14 positions
Find new opportunities to build topical authorityCreate fresh content that can easily rankPages with no ranking keywords in the top 20 positions that don’t align with the user’s search intent
Find underperforming pagesImprove or redirect underperforming pagesPages with no ranking keywords in the top 20 positions that don’t align with the user’s search intent

By following these actions and using the ranking data provided by Google Search Console, you can improve your plumbing business’s SEO content strategy and attract more organic traffic to your website.

Step 10: Optimize Your Internal Links to Improve Website Traffic

Optimizing existing pages with better internal linking can help improve your website’s overall traffic by borrowing the authority of pages that are already ranking and transferring some of it to lower-performing pages. By analyzing the positions of existing pages, you can find pages that rank between 1 and 10 and have some authority. These are the pages you should be looking to optimize for your plumbing business website.

Outranking can connect to Google Search Console and identify these pages by analyzing the keyword positions and suggesting internal linking opportunities. Just click on the internal linking icon next to URLs with a lot of light and dark green, allow the suggestions for internal linking to load, pick the URL you want to get a link from and select Rewrite with an internal link. This tactic has an extremely high success rate for improving SEO rankings.

How to Evaluate an Agency to Help With SEO for Your Plumbing Service

Expertise, Reviews, and Results

When evaluating an agency to help with SEO for your plumbing service’s website, it’s important to look for expertise, reviews, and results. Here are some tips to help you make the right choice:

1. Look For Real-World SEO Experience

Experience matters when it comes to SEO. Look for an agency with a minimum of 5 to 10 years of real-world experience, preferably including specific experience implementing SEO for plumbing businesses. An agency with hands-on experience in your niche will have a better understanding of the competitive landscape and be more creative and innovative in its approach to strategy design. When evaluating experience, beware of the “salesman” and ask to speak directly with the SEO manager or specialist who will be performing the work.

2. Check for Reviews and Results

Look for an agency with positive reviews and a track record of delivering results. Ask for case studies or examples of past clients they have helped in the plumbing industry. For example, Outranking helped a plumbing client increase their organic traffic by 200% in just six months by implementing a comprehensive SEO strategy that included keyword research, on-page optimization, email marketing campaigns, and link building.

In conclusion, when evaluating an agency to help with SEO for your plumbing service’s website, look for expertise, reviews, and results. The right SEO agency will have a proven process and customized approach, be creative and innovative, and have real-world SEO experience and a track record of delivering results.

Contract Duration and Flexibility

You should also consider contract duration and flexibility. Here are some tips to help you evaluate SEO agencies:

1. Look for Agencies That Offer Flexible Contract Durations

You don’t want to be locked into a long-term contract if you’re not seeing results. A good agency will offer shorter contract durations, such as three or six months, with the option to renew if you’re happy with the services you’re receiving.

2. Consider the Agency’s Communication and Reporting

You want an agency that will communicate with you regularly and provide detailed reports on their progress. Look for agencies that offer regular check-ins and monthly or quarterly reports, are transparent about their process, and will keep you informed throughout the SEO campaign. They should be able to explain their strategies and tactics in a way that you can understand.

Other Considerations

Here are a few more considerations that should factor into your decision about which SEO agency to hire for your plumbing service’s website:

1. Proven Process and Customized Approach

Look for an SEO agency that has a proven process and principles that can be applied universally when performing website audits and search engine optimization. They should also be prepared to customize their approach to the unique competitive position of your plumbing service. Ask about their process and how they will tailor it to your specific needs.

2. Creativity and Innovation

The best SEO agencies are highly creative and innovative. Ask the agency what creative strategies they have implemented to help their clients stand out in the plumbing industry. Being creative is difficult, and commands a high price, but can lead to more effective results.

In summary, when you’re evaluating an agency for SEO services for your plumbing service’s website, look for a proven process and customized approach, creativity and innovation, real-world SEO experience, case studies and testimonials, and communication and transparency. By considering these factors, you can find an agency that will help your plumbing service’s website rank higher in search engine results and attract more customers.

Need an SEO Strategist To Set up the Plan for Your Plumbing Service Website?

If you need SEO services for your plumbing website, it’s important to make sure that you have a solid SEO plan in place before hiring a provider. This will help ensure that you get the best results possible and that you’re able to find the right SEO agency for your needs. One way to do this is by hiring an expert, like the SEO consultants and strategists at Outranking. 

These professionals can help you with strategy, planning, and execution, ensuring that prospective customers will be able to find your plumbing business online. With their help, you’ll be able to optimize your website for search engines, focus on relevant plumbing keywords, and attract more clients. 
Contact Outranking now and watch your small business thrive to its fullest!