Do you know where your customers are coming from? As a plumber, you are most likely relying on referrals from past projects to grow your business. That’s an important part of growing your company, but the data shows that your competitors are doing the same thing. How do you stand out?
How can you put more into your marketing without taking money away from hiring the team you need? What if you don’t have the budget for paid ads? Even social media reach can be reliant upon how much money you put behind it. How do you compete with the bigger plumbing companies when so much of marketing is pay-to-play? How can you help your ideal customers find your business?
The simple answer to all these questions? SEO.
SEO, or search engine optimization, is a technique that helps your website rank higher on search engines. Unlike paid ads, you can’t pay to rank higher with SEO; it’s all about optimizing your website to help your customers find you organically.
Ranking is a long-term strategy that helps build trust, establish your brand as an expert source, and, of course, drive traffic. Despite these benefits, only 36% of small businesses have an SEO strategy.
How Search Has Changed
How people are searching for plumbing services has changed. As more and more people use their mobile devices and voice assistants to search for services, search itself has evolved. How businesses react to this with their SEO strategies must shift, too.
Rather than searching for “Salt Lake City plumbers,” your customers are more likely asking Google for “plumbers near me.”
In fact, in recent years, “near me” searches have grown by over 350%. What does that mean? Your customers are starting to use not only “near me” but also “now” or “open now,” bringing time as well as location into the conversation.
Now more than ever, people want to know what is available right here, right now.
How Do You Optimize for “Near Me” Search?
Many plumbing companies have tried to take advantage of the opportunities the growth in “near me” searches has presented by optimizing for search terms that include “near me” or even changing their business name to include “near me.” But “near me” isn’t just another keyword. In fact, using it makes the content less readable – and believable. Consider how jarring it would be to be reading a blog post that suddenly includes the text “plumbers near me” without context. There are better, more natural ways to optimize for “near me” searches.
You can optimize your site for “near me” searches by:
- Making your website mobile-friendly
- Adding as much information as possible to your Google Business Profile
- Making sure your business information is correct and consistent throughout your site
- Getting positive reviews from your customers
- Adding localized content and links
The results that Google might show a searcher using “near me” will vary based on their physical location. This means that the technology relies on the information you share about your business to know if you’re the most relevant for their needs. You can use this to optimize for “near me” searches the right way.
As a result, you’ll be able to better optimize your website to draw new visitors and build more revenue over time.
