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
-
SEO Value of Google+?
Hi Mozers, Does having a Google+ page really impact SEO? Thanks, Yael
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | yaelslater1 -
New Website SEO Implications
Hi Moz Community, A client of mine has launched a new website. The new website is well designed, mobile friendly, fast loading and offers a far better UX than the old site. It has similar content but 'less wordy'. The old website was tired, slow, not mobile responsive etc but still ranked well. The domain has marketing leading authority and link metrics. Since the launch, the rankings for virtually every word has plummeted. Even previously ranked #1 words have disappeared to page 3 or 4. New pages have different URLs (301s from the old urls are working fine) and still score the same 98% (using the Moz page optimiser tool). Is it usual to experience some short term pain, or are these rankings drop an indication that something else is missing? My theory is that the new URLs are being treated like new pages, and that those new pages don't have the engagement data which is used for ranking. Thus, despite having the same authority of the old pages, as far as user data is concerned, they are new pages and therefor, not ranking well - yet. That theory would make logical sense but I'm hoping some experts here can help. Any suggestions welcome. Here's a quick checklist of things I have already done: complete 301 redirect list
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | I.AM.Strategist
New sitemap
Submitted to console
Created internal links from within their large blog
Optimised all the new pages (img alts, H1s etc) Extra info: Platform changed from Wordpress to Expression engine
Target pages now on level 3 not level 2 (extra subfolder used)
Less words used (average word count per page from 400+ to 250) Thanks in advance 🙂0 -
Unique content for international SEO?
Hi Guys, We have a e-commerce store on generic top-level domain which has 1000s of products in US. We are looking to expand to aus, uk and canda using subfolders. We are going to implement hreflang tags. I was told by our SEO agency we need to make all the content between each page unique. This should be fine for cateogry/product listing pages. But they said we need to make content unique on product pages. If we have 1000 products, thats 4000 pages, which is a big job in terms of creating content. Is this necessary? What is the correct way to approach this, won't the hreflang tag be sufficent to prevent any duplicate content issues with product pages? Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | geekyseotools0 -
Merging Pages and SEO
Hi, We are redesigning our website the following way: Before: Page A with Content A, Page B with Content B, Page C with Content C, etc
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | viatrading1
e.g. one page for each Customer Returns, Overstocks, Master Case, etc
Now: Page D with content A + B + C etc.
e.g. one long page containing all Product Conditions, one after the other So we are merging multiples pages into one.
What is the best way to do so, so we don't lose traffic? (or we lose the minimum possible) e.g. should we 301 Redirect A/B/C to D...?
Is it likely that we lose significant traffic with this change? Thank you,0 -
SEO page descriptions on mobile - how to hide while preserving the juice for SEO?
Hi everybody, On our pages we have crafted good text paragraphs for SEO purposes. On desktop everything is fine but on mobile the paragraph of text pushes the main content really low on the page. Is there a way of hiding the text while preserving the SEO juices and not getting penalised by Google for spamming techniques? I'd appreciate any recommendations on how to deal with this. Thanks very much!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Firebox0 -
Few question about SEO
HI guys, I have few questions and I always find good answer here. I tried many SEO companies some very expensive and well known some with medium prices and some from India. I’m not an SEO expert but I always get the same things from SEO companies. They're saying you have to stay with us for few months before you’ll see any results. I completely understand however I don’t see the result on the end.1. What exactly Do I need SEO company for, after I do on page optimisation if they don’t work on proper backlinks. Just letting you know I’m getting content from other people.2. Is there something else which is really important after your page is optimised than backlinks? Or we should fully focus on get backlinks from customers, guest post, sharing on social media etc. to increase our DA and PA?3. Any advice about some individual or company who is good in backlink services?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Lukas-ST
Thank youLukasThanks a lot.Lukas0 -
Pixel tags impact on SEO?
I was asked by our IT if switching to a tag management company that removes the pixels from our site and is replaced by a javascript would have a negative impact on SEO. I have not been able to find anything that discusses this: Does anyone have experience with this? Has it caused any issues? Has it caused any issues? How do crawlers see pixel data, and what do they do with it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Shawn_Huber0 -
Ecommerce SEO URL Structure Questions
| I am in the process of developing a new Magento ecommerce store. Take for instance this website is in the apparel industry and i have the following main categories. Clothing Shoes Accessories Beauty Sub categories for clothing would be: Dresses Pants jeans Tops Products would be: Kelly Maxi dresses What is the best SEO Structure for this? Main categories obviously: www.example.com/clothing Sub Categories:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WayneRooney
www.example.com/clothing/dresses Or www.example.com/dresses (Zappos seem to pursue the second type) Products:
www.example.com/clothing/dresses/kelly-maxi-dresses/ Or www.example.com/kelly-maxi-dresses ? Which one would be the best way to structure your site? Also what about filters that available in category pages? Say if i were to filter by color. what would be the best URL? I am sure canonical tag is needed here. New to Ecommerce SEO so i need some guidance! |0