SEO for a plumber?
-
Hello,
How does a small, local business win at SEO (without abusing directories, articles, and paid links)? It seems that everyone is saying "create unique content", but that just doesn't seem realistic for a small plumber in a big metro area. One might suggest coming up with helpful articles about plumbing tips, etc., but there are thousands of spun articles on article directories already.
On page optimization is in place, we are listed in the main directories, we've asked the people we know to link to us, and we are engaged in social media.
What would you recommend next?
Thanks,
Will
-
Also, I suggest you read this article about what to do with Google Places: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/why-you-may-need-to-hide-your-google-places-address-asap
The essence is that if you want to expand your local reach, you might have to hide the address in Google local results (as plumbers usually visit their customers and not the other way round).
-
When it comes to small business that have more to do with services in a particular area, I always recommed 2 things as most important!
- Get Local! This dosent mean only Google but all business listing websites, not only that but optimize the listings properly and get reviews on it… Once you will have more reviews people who are finding you will more likely to convert in to sales.
- Content! This never means writing 450 words of content every day and put it on Ezine articles… but content can be in any shape Videos, Images, Articles or anything… if you can make tips and suggestion videos in a formate like DIY tips or something that will have a great impact on conversions…
My Recommendations for a small business website that offer services within the limited area!
-
Are there any local publications (on-line/off-line/both) that would appreciate guest articles? Remember direct traffic is also good!
Are their options for seasonal content? Frost, students going into their first rented accommodation at the start of the academic year...
Another way you can stand apart from the spun content is by carefully defining your target audience and then writing content that specifically addresses the needs of that audience.
Are there any trends/patterns in the types of customers/types of problems they have?
Where do each of these customer types congregate? Can you create awareness of your offering in this place?
As James mentions, capturing content (video/testimonies,pictures etc) as part of they day job makes it a lot less of a burden.
What are your competition doing? Remember you don't have to build the most awesome plumbing information portal - you just need to be better than the competition! What are they doing right? What could you do better.
Are there any news worthy stories? We regularly get stories about the left of copper pipes etc in the local press - are there any way you can help out local journalists?
Good luck!
-
Did some consulting for a plumber a while ago.
It is a very competitive area that is for sure.
- Some advice from what has worked:
1. Get people in the office to make a blog, take photos of jobs, document things online, write blog posts online.
2. Take photos of jobs - Upload them to flickr and other websites, drive traffic back to the website.
3. Take videos of testimonials/jobs and put them on Facebook/ YouTube (link back to the site)
4. Find associations and build badges back to your website, suppliers anything.
5. Do some community work if you have time and get links back from community websites.
- Make sure you pick jobs which look good I know plumbing is a dirty job
I mean all this stuff is not easy but even with a budget of under $1,000 you can do it you just have to be wise with the money.
Kind Regards,
James Norquay
-
The same old crap spun articles that are posted on crap directories are of no value to your customers because they are not from YOU!!!
YOUR customers/friends/colleagues/mom/ WILL take the cool stuff you write & post to your site and they will pass it around, that is the true value. Not just to be posted on someone else's blog to have your client base engage with your site through your writings...
Other ideas are to become involved with chamber of commerce, local co-ops, parent organizations...
If you are a small local business become involved in small local business events, and venues.
Almost every metro area has several "buy local" charters go find them and join up, not only is it good SEO but it is great person to person networking too...If I meet YOU at my local business networking event & I like you, YOU are the plumber I'm going to call when I need one...
Another thing, I have notice the small businesses might not be as computer/SEO/net savvy as the larger ones, so by learning good SEO that you are doing now it automatically puts you in league with the big boys...How many other small plumbers have hCard microformat? It takes some study but it puts you ahead of the pack.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
CDN for SEO (or not)?
Does CDN impact on SEO or not? There seems conflicting ideas as to whether they impact positively or negatively, I realise that if the page loads quicker this is a good thing for SEO and usability of course. Does Google see CDN as just cheating and a get-around for not doing the work from the ground up and using good hosting etc? Do you have any direct experience? All constructive input much appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoman101 -
Yoast or Premium SEO Pack?
Which one is better Yoast or premium SEO pack excluding that one is paid & other is free. Because when we are doing SEO $39 doesn't make a huge difference as compared to the work we do right? Which one will you suggest out of the two?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | welcomecure0 -
How good or bad is this for SEO?
I will try to make this as clear as possible. We represent the yellow pages - www.visalietuva.lt
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FCRMediaLietuva
For every single company that is listed we have Creditworthiness - that helps to find information about their payment history and their business status. It's pretty useful. An example could be found here: http://www.visalietuva.lt/en/company/dizrega-uab/creditworthiness Some companies that are proud of their result started putting Iframe on their pages:
http://dizrega.lt/lt/kontaktai/firmos-rodikliai We noticed this on Google Webmasters, when new links started to appear.
So we are not sure if this is good for SEO? Of course this is good for our Google Analytics:))
If this is good, maybe we should send offer for our clients, that we can help to put iframe like this for free, for people who are not able to do it themselves. Your opinions please!0 -
Hosting and SEO
Hi all, Does the hosting of an website affect your SEO? We have a dynamic hosting currently, taking in account your knowledge and expertise, do you believe that this can affect SEO in any way? Thank you for your time. Good day. Monica
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | monicapopa2 -
Negative SEO + Disavow
My site is very new (~1 years old), but due to good PR we have gotten some decent links and are already ranking for a key term. This may be why someone decided to start a negative SEO attack on us. We've had less than 200 linking domains up until 2 weeks ago, but since then we have been getting 100+ new domains /day with anchor texts that are either targeted to that key term or are from porn websites. I've gone through the links to get ready and submit a disavow... but should I do it? My rankings/site traffic has not been affected yet. Reasons for my hesitations: 1. Google always warns against using the disavow, and says "you shouldn't have to use it if you are a normal website." (sensing 'guilty-until-proven') 2. Some say Google is only trying to get the data to see if there are any patterns within the linking sites. I don't want the site owners to get hurt, since the villain is someone else using xrumer to put spammy comments on their site. What would you do?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ALLee0 -
Where to begin (SEO-wise) with my Website?
Hello, We hired a company to design an e-commerce website for us. Along the way they did some initial SEO design, but we are clearly a long way from where we need to be. I'm not a web-designer or a knowledgeable SEO person. I have the website linked to webtools, google analytics and obviously this site as well. I've been toying with the idea of just trying to accomplish some SEO myself, but the more I read about SEO, the more daunting it seems. I'm a full-time military pilot, so this seems like it involves more time than I have to give. Where do I begin? My Website www.phoenixprintingsolutions.com Thanks in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JRodBeMe0 -
SEO Consultant for site audit
Can someone recommend an excellent SEO who can perform a full site audit of my fairly large Wordpress site? The site receives about 14,000 visits per month but traffic is waining one month after a recent change. Need analysis of some funky stuff in my Webmaster tools and overall site review.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JSOC0 -
Slooooow motion SEO impact
I could do with some help if anyone's got a minute. We've got this one client, no matter what we did (and we worked very hard on this site), nothing would really move. You'd get the usual fluctuations, and maybe some very small progress at times. This went on for an age... much, much longer than usual (and it wasn't even that competitive for keywords). Then suddenly, "Bam!" it shot up like a rocket for all it's main keywords and has stayed there since... more or less (and this was over a year ago). It was as if all the work we'd been doing was building up behind a door and then the door flew open so it could take affect. Anyway... it seems to be happening again, just to a different client with a different website (at least I hope that's what's happening or it might just stay non-affected by anything we do forever). We've checked everything. There's no crawling problems, again it's not all that competitive, the site already has some pretty good trust and authority, and it already ranks well for a bunch of stuff. The site and pages have plenty of age behind them too. Any ideas?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SteveOllington0