Have your competitors moved ahead of you? Are you starting a plumbing business and want to get your piece of the action? Marketing for plumbers can be tough to navigate. The days of newspaper advertisements or yellow pages are long gone, but digital advertising for plumbers is expensive, leaving you feeling like your wallet is leaking and little else.
In 2020 you need to not only be where your customers are looking. For long term profitability you need your own digital marketing machine, that doesn’t disappear when the ads stop, turning leads off like a tap.
To find a plumber 95% of the time people simply pull out their phone and search for a local plumber on Google. To be the one they find you’ll need to put plumber SEO or search engine optimisation at the core of your plumber marketing plan, boosting your website to the first page results.
We’ve spent years refining our proven SEO marketing strategies to grow website traffic and calls for plumbing businesses. That’s good news for you! I’m going to share the key SEO strategies we use to consistently grow the number of leads and drive down the cost per lead, boosting profit for our clients.
Before we get into revealing how digital marketing for plumbers really works, let me share some client results with you. This plumber marketing case study is proof (not marketing jargon and shady guarantees, proof!) a conversion optimised website design and experienced local SEO experts produce incredible results driving hundreds of plumbing leads every month and millions in revenue!
Click the link above to jump straight to the plumber marketing case study or read on for insight into marketing strategies for plumbers that really work.
In this digital marketing guide we’ll give you a rundown of marketing for plumbers and how you can use these tips to help grow your business (with examples). We’ll cover:
Ready to take action & grow your business?
Digital marketing for plumbers. Does it work?
The days of flipping through the Yellow pages are well behind us. If you still use these kinds of marketing services you’re probably here because it’s no longer working for your business. In fact, there is an entire generation that has grown up with the internet, and probably wouldn’t know what the yellow pages are!
The fact is 4 in 5 consumers conduct local searches from blocked drains to bathroom renovations. And in Australia 93% of people use Google as the search engine of choice to find the products, information and plumbing services they need.
How do I get on the first page of Google?
There are three ways your plumbing company can appear on the first page of Google.
Paid listings. The paid section of the search results is based on a bidding system called Google Ads (formerly Google Adwords). The order in which the advertisers are displayed is based on how much they are prepared to ‘pay per click’ (PPC) when the keyword they bid on is searched. So there is no monthly fee for appearing (other than agency management fees), you pay when someone clicks on your link.
PPC is a good way to market your business, but it should be thought of as a short term solution, as some plumbing keywords can cost over $33.00 per click which gets expensive quickly.
Google maps. The three map listings are very important for plumbers and local businesses, as they appear anytime Google thinks local results are most relevant. Google knows someone searching for ‘plumbers + your city’ are looking for local plumbing companies in their area, and shows the map listings accordingly.
You must submit your plumbing business information on “Google My Business” to be able to appear in Google maps. Unlike paid ads the map listings are ‘organic’ meaning websites are placed according to Google’s search algorithm.
Organic listings. The websites you see in the organic listings (and maps) are there because Google believes they are the best quality and most relevant to the search intent. The process of earning your place in Google’s organic and map listings is called Search Engine Optimisation, or SEO.
Plumbing SEO is a medium – long term investment, once you earn a place in Google’s search results there is no cost per click to stay there.
Where do people click? Paid listings attract around 30% of the clicks with the other 70% going to map and organic listings. So the next question for plumber marketing is…
What are the top plumbing keywords?
Understanding what potential clients are searching for is a key part of digital marketing plumbers. Below is a list of the most important keywords that you need to be targeting in a plumbing SEO campaign (from highest to lowest search volume).
To rank for these keywords you need to use them naturally in all areas of digital marketing & local SEO for plumbers.
Where do you rank right now?
Go to Google now and search, “plumbers (your city)” or, “blocked drains (your city)”. In fact, your website browser will remember the websites you visit most frequently and show them higher in search results, so to see what other people might see use an online tool to find your real ranking. If you don’t see your website listed on the first page, you’re losing business to other companies who have realised the value of digital marketing for plumbers.
Why let your competitors get all the action! The plumber marketing strategies I’m about to share with you next achieve up to 10x traffic value vs paid advertising with Adwords.
Ready to take action & grow your business?
Unlike Adwords, a top spot on Google’s map and organic listings can’t be bought. It needs to be earned through search engine optimisation, or SEO. Our plumber marketing company has a local SEO focus, to maximise exposure in your service area. The key parts of our plumbing SEO strategy are:
Let’s look in more detail and give you some actionable plumber SEO marketing tips.
Website SEO for plumbers
Optimising your website for Google can help then find, understand and better rank your website. It’s a good idea to do an free SEO audit tool of your website, but a few simple optimisations will have an impact.
Copywriting for plumbing websites
Most average plumbing websites consist of just a handful of pages, home, services, gallery, contact, and maybe an about us page. Show Google you deserve to be ranked ahead of your competition by creating pages with the information people are looking for. Here’s the three types of website copywriting that will help you do just that.
Create individual plumbing services pages for each of the types of plumbing you offer. With a targeted webpage, you are more relevant and likely to appear in search when someone is looking for these specific services. For example:
Having a visually appealing gallery to showcase your work is essential, but you need more than images to convince visitors and Google of your expertise. Regularly creating how to articles and bathroom design ideas in a blog builds your authority in the plumbing niche, and has other benefits (which I’ll get to).
If people in your area are researching “electric vs gas hot water systems” or “how to stop water hammer” they are only going to find you if you’ve written about it. And guess what? If they decide to get some professional help who are they going to call?
Build local landing pages for your most important suburbs. Once they are ranking each page will generate leads that can really add up. Start with the suburbs near you and work out from there. Don’t go overboard here, stick to the more populated suburbs for best effect and customise each page with testimonials from jobs in each suburb.
Linkbuilding for plumbers
Links to your website an important signal Google uses to judge how to place you in search results. When another website links to yours it’s kind of like a vote for you and your business. Quality comes before quantity, so when you see those spammy emails promising hundreds or thousands of links, don’t be sucked in. That kind of low quality high scale linkbuilding will only harm your website.
If your website content is awesome enough people will naturally link to it, but it pays to be pro-active. The best place to start is with the these Australian local directories. Look for opportunities from other plumbing and trade websites as well, such as home improvement blogs, plumbing suppliers, and plumbing industry associations.
People look for and trust online reviews, so make sure you ask your clients to leave reviews on your Google map listing, and other directories. Proactively building a 5 star online reputation will mean more clicks from search results. So get more Google reviews than your competitors!
Social media for plumbers
With 14 million Australians on Facebook for an average 50mins every day, using a Facebook business page is a great way to stay ‘top of mind’.
Remember we talked about starting a blog? This sort of informative, entertaining or inspiring content is perfect for building your social media following! Mix it in with photos from current jobs, client testimonials, and sharing content from other plumbing and home improvement websites.
The quickest way to turn people off your posts is to overdo the sales pitch. Keep your posts 90% informative and 10% sales to be well received. A solid social media marketing strategy doesn’t stop at Facebook though, feeding your content to other popular sites multiplies it’s reach and exposure.
Marketing for plumbers: Case Study
Can digital marketing and SEO for plumbers grow a business? Absolutely! It’s working for your competitors and our clients right now. Following our proven plumbing SEO strategies we were able to achieve the following results, growing the Gold Coast Plumbing Company from a one man startup to four vans on the road and the phone ringing off the hook.
Applying best practice local SEO for plumbers and drawing on the different strengths of our experienced team, this marketing campaign achieved over 300 first page keyword rankings. driving a massive 8,266% increase in website traffic.
What did that mean in terms of leads, jobs and turnover? Annual revenue over $1,000,000 from SEO and growing.
A new, first class plumbing website design boosted conversions and now generates 100’s of leads a month.
Google Ads can deliver clicks within 24hrs, but with a high cost per click, let alone cost per lead, it can be hard to justify as a sole marketing channel. From hot water systems to drains and gas fitting, the SEO campaign now delivers leads 5x cheaper than Google Ads.
Here’s what our client had to say…
Plumber SEO Reviews
We are a rapidly expanding maintenance Plumbing business that relies on visibility in Google searches to drive customers to our website. We are now positioned at the top of many plumbing related keywords searches and the search friendliness of our keywords has also been a major improvement.
From a cost perspective, SEO is our must cost friendly form of marketing investment. The results from SEO Copilot are excellent. I’m thankful to SEO Copilot for the results so much so, that this is my second review of the business. Well done SEO Copilot, keep us on top.
Google review
Google review
Google review
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