Category Archives: SEO

Health and fitness are essential to most people. So it seems like it would be a given that people would naturally flock to your gym or health center, right? But, unfortunately, as anyone who owns or manages one of these facilities will tell you, that is often not the case. That’s because plenty of healthy competition exists (no pun intended). 

So how do you make your fitness center stand out from the competition? With fitness center SEO. SEO is a form of digital marketing concerned with getting your website to rank as high on search engine results pages as possible. The higher you rank, the more people will see your website. Unfortunately, very few people click through to the second search engine results page. 

Don’t believe us? Take the following statistic into consideration: the top 3 search engine results garner more than 75% of all clicks, which means that most people aren’t even bothering to scroll down on the first page.

Fitness center SEO is crucial in 2023 because search engines are how people find businesses and services with buyer intent. For example, if someone is ready to join a gym, they have already decided to spend money.

So the only question to ask yourself is: what is the state of my fitness center’s SEO? If you don’t know the answer to that question or don’t like the answer, there’s no need to fret. 

In the following post, Nolen Walker walks you through some of the most critical steps to improve your SEO, get more leads and land more members.

What is Fitness Center SEO?

Fitness Center SEO ranks a gym or health club on search engine results for various keywords and branded searches. The nitty-gritty of SEO involves refining website data, including HTML tags, producing content, and building relevant links.

Getting Started With SEO for Fitness Centers

SEO can overwhelm business owners as it seems like so much to learn. However, when you break down SEO into the essentials, it becomes manageable. The following guide outlines how to get started on SEO for gyms and the best ways to achieve desirable results in 2023 quickly.

Focus on Local SEO for Health Clubs

There is a sub-classification of general SEO called local SEO. As the name suggests, local SEO concentrates on increasing your website’s visibility to the consumers in your specific geographic market. For example, as a local fitness center, yoga studio, gym, or health club, yours is very much a local business. 

The good news is that local SEO is a bit easier to tackle than general SEO. Think about it like this: it’s much easier to rank for a keyword like “MMA gym in Brandon, Florida” than for a keyword like “MMA gym.”

You will only see the country’s biggest and most prominent MMA gyms with the latter keyword. But you aren’t trying to attract people from St. Louis if your gym or fitness center is in Bozeman, Montana.

So it would be best to focus on local SEO first and foremost. So here are some tips on how you can start using local SEO tactics to attract more consumers in your market:

• Sign Up for Google Business Profile: The Google Business Profile is free and will help your website rank immediately higher on relevant Google searches. That’s because Google prioritizes its own services on searches, so Google Business Profile company listings get placed near the top on relevant searches. 
• Use Online Directories: If you operate in a medium to a large market, there are probably business directory resources you can take advantage of. Try to get listed with local chambers of commerce, professional directories, or local industry directories to garner local links to your site. 
• Add Location Pages: This one takes some time, but if you have more than one gym, studio or fitness center, you must add specific location pages to your website for each one. This will boost your web crawler signals and make it more likely that people will find your location pages when they perform a local search. 

Name Address, and Phone Listings for Fitness Centers

NAP consistency is one of the easiest ways to boost your fitness center SEO, but it is often overlooked. Think about all the places where the name, phone number, and address of your fitness center are listed on the internet. Now go through and ensure that all the information is consistent and uniform in all these online locations. 

Various services and tools can update your listings in bulk, so you don’t have to update every single directory painstakingly. However, you should quickly update your most important business listings like Google Business Profile, Yelp, and Facebook if they have inaccurate information.

Why is it important that your NAP appears the same everywhere? Because if it doesn’t, search engine web crawlers are much less likely to index your listings on relevant searches. Search engines don’t like to show confusing or inconsistent information to their users – so they usually won’t. That’s why you must ensure your NAP is consistent.

Fitness Center Blog Content

For the fitness industry, posting regular, unique blog content centered around strategic keywords is extremely important. In addition, blogs are critical to fitness center SEO because they answer common questions.

And there are always people looking for answers to their burning fitness questions. But it’s not enough to write about what you know. You have to do keyword research to find out what questions people are asking the most and what words they are using to ask those questions. 

You can use an online keyword research tool to gather a list of the most relevant keywords for the fitness industry. Then, start building blog content based on those keywords. 

On-Site SEO for Health Clubs

You can make some tweaks to your website that will help increase organic traffic. These tweaks are on-site optimizations because they involve altering your website to increase clicks. Take a look:

• Submit A Sitemap: Create a sitemap of your website and submit it to Google. Sitemaps help web crawlers scan your site and make it much more likely that they will index it on relevant searches. 
• Use Keywords in Written Content: Keywords aren’t just for blog content; they should also appear on your website’s landing pages. From services pages to your “contact us” page, you should strategically include a relevant keyword on all your pages. 
• Optimize for Mobile: Did you know that if someone finds your gym or fitness center with their phone or mobile device, they are 88% more likely to call or visit? It’s true and why optimizing your site for mobile users is essential. You can start by compressing images, but you may need the help of a web designer to make your site mobile-friendly. 
• Use Reviews: If you have great reviews, why not use them on your website for increased organic traffic? It’s even better when you have reviews mentioning some of your target keywords. If you have trouble embedding testimonials from 3rd party platforms, check out Datapins, as it provides a handy and easy-to-use tool for displaying reviews on your website. 

Invest in Gym SEO With Nolen Walker

Fitness center SEO is much more effective when you listen to the right professionals. So if you are serious about blowing up your gym, studio, or fitness center, contact Nolen Walker to enhance your SEO process. With over 15 years of experience in the digital marketing industry, Nolen can help you dominate.

As a small business owner, you may wonder why SEO is so expensive.

SEO has become vastly critical to growing your business online – and online growth translates to company growth. 

The higher you rank, the more people will click on your site. The more clicks you get, the more chances you will close a customer. The general concept behind SEO is pretty simple, but the execution is complex. 

That’s part of the reason SEO services are so expensive in 2022. Another reason is that SEO is in very high demand because, quite frankly, it works. 

If you don’t think Search Engine Optimization is essential, consider the following statistic: consumers will begin their interaction with a business or service via a search engine query 68% of the time. Consumer behavior demonstrates clear evidence that people use search engines to find products and services. 

In the following post, Nolen Walker Academy sheds light on the question, ‘why is SEO so expensive?’ 

Time, Expertise, and Resources

SEO takes time, requires expertise, and demands resources. Finding a single person to meet all three of these criteria is nearly impossible. Therefore, for the most part, professional-level SEO campaigns come from an agency. A company can employ experts in each facet of SEO while driving results efficiently through human resources.

Time

SEO involves several stages, each of which takes a significant amount of time. Of course, if you have multiple people handling the tasks, it will go by much faster. Depending on your online presence, budget, and goals, you may need to spend more time on SEO than other companies nearby.

Expertise

Expertise rightly costs more money because it drives better results. So while you may think you are paying more for SEO services, you are also lowering the chances of wasting money on your digital marketing campaign. Mitigating the risk of lousy SEO is worth spending more.

Resources

The smartest SEO professional can’t implement their recommendations without resources. If you hire an SEO consultant, you probably have in-house resources who can execute their plan. However, many things can get lost in translation. SEO agencies with resources for content, link building, and website design typically drive the best results quickly.

How Much Does SEO Service Cost in 2022?

In general, you can expect to pay between $100 and $300 an hour for SEO services. Lump-sum single project deals usually run the gamut from $2,500 and $30,000. Monthly SEO services typically range from $750 to $2,000 per month. 

The truth is that there is no universal answer to the question. It will depend on several factors, including:

• Whether you choose to pay for hourly SEO service or one lump sum for a single, long-term project.
• The level of expertise of the consultant or agency that you hire
• Your level of need (SEO services that you opt for)

It’s certainly not the cheapest service out there, which speaks to the high demand. So what are the specific costs associated with SEO services?

Multi-Faceted Work

SEO is so expensive because it is highly involved, multi-faceted work that requires several different areas of expertise. So many various aspects of marketing and web design go into a complete SEO strategy. Here are just a few of them:

• SEO Auditing: Before launching a strategy, the company must audit your existing web presence. An initial audit involves tracking your current rankings, identifying target keywords, measuring monthly traffic, and researching your competitors’ traffic and ranking stats. 
• Web Design: Web design is a huge part of SEO because alterations always need to be made to your website to optimize it for search engine queries. 
• User Experience: UX is also an essential part of SEO. Optimizing your website means making sure that it runs quickly and smoothly. The user needs to easily find the information they need so that they will be more likely to complete a purchase. 
• Copywriting: Effective and clear writing with knowledge of SEO structure is essential to any SEO strategy. 
• Content Marketing: Like any good digital marketing strategy, a great deal of creativity goes into the content you publish. Content marketing is a massive part of a complete SEO strategy, whether written or video. 

An SEO consultant needs to wear many hats to drive tangible results. That’s why SEO agencies are so prevalent. With an agency, you get a team instead of a single consultant. The group usually has various skills and experience backgrounds to develop comprehensive SEO strategies. 

Level of Expertise

You can undoubtedly find monthly SEO services on the (relative) cheap. You may find a solo consultant willing to provide monthly SEO services for around $80 a month. Their level of expertise is likely to be minimal, though. 

Often, these cheaper services come from consultants who are still cutting their teeth. They probably have a limited track record which is why they’re willing to offer such intensive service for so cheap. 

The problem with SEO services and training is that it is not regulated. Therefore, there is no regulated training needed to start offering their SEO services. In general, though, it takes about 18 months to learn everything you need to know about SEO. 

However, using it in the real world is a much different story. It’s generally agreed that it takes eight years of experience to yield results for clients. Like with many other kinds of services, level of experience and expertise will drive up the cost. 

SEO Takes Time

We don’t just mean time to learn; but time to execute. Very rarely will you hear about someone hiring an SEO agency or consultant for a one-off service. Typically, people pay for monthly SEO service or “by the project,” which is usually a long-term deal. 

That’s because it takes time to see actual results from SEO. 4-6 months at least – and that’s on the moderate end. So while you may start to see results after just four months, such results won’t necessarily translate to a fatter bottom line. 

Upping your rankings and getting more sales takes time with SEO, so you will have to hire someone for long-term work, which, of course, also drives up the cost. SEO is very rarely a “one and done” service. It requires constant maintenance, adjustments, testing, and refinement to increase sales. 

What to Look for in SEO Services

Whether you are a business owner or someone interested in learning SEO as a career, it’s essential to know what to look for and what you should be learning. Unfortunately, there is plenty of misinformation online regarding SEO.

As someone looking to hire an SEO service, you should ensure that the plan they are offering you fits your business needs. The agency or consultant should also be very clear about the pricing structure. 

Ask them to explain all the costs in detail and tell you each service. Then, as someone looking to learn SEO, make sure you understand white hat tactics and offer them to clients. 

It would help if you stayed away from any agency or consultant who practices keyword stuffing, link farming, an ad-centric strategy, and other Black Hat SEO tactics, even as a consumer. 

House cleaning SEO comes into play because the fact is that there are most certainly people who are willing to pay for house cleaning. And those people are using the internet to find local house cleaning services they can trust. 

House cleaning SEO is, therefore, not only about getting seen by the people who want to hire house cleaners; it’s also about making your business as reputable and attractive as possible in the eyes of consumers.

So in the following post, Nolen Walker Academy offers essential tips on increasing your online visibility and helping your business stand out in the crowd. In addition, we are available for new student enrollments at Nolen Walker Academy if you are ready to utilize SEO to expand your house cleaning business.

What is House Cleaning SEO?

Before we get into the details, we know that many people don’t even know what SEO is. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is a form of digital marketing that focuses on getting your website to appear on the first page and as high up on the first page of search engine results as possible. 

For example, let’s say you are hungry and want to find a good pizza place near your house. You are likely to pop open your laptop or use your phone to go to a search engine like Google and type in something like “pizza restaurants near me.” Now how likely are you to click through to the second page of results? Not very likely, right?

Only 4.8% of people click on the second search engine results page. That means the businesses showing up on the second page aren’t getting any web traffic and losing out on much business. So it’s clear that the first page is where you want to generate the most leads and give yourself the best chance to convert. 

Get Listed on Google Business Profile

Did you know that nearly half of all Google searches come from people looking for information on local businesses and services? It makes sense too. After all, no one in Los Angeles will be looking for a house cleaning service based in San Diego. One way to appear on more local searches is to get listed on Google Business Profile. 

Business Google Profile listings appear on the Google Local Map Pack. The Google Local Map Pack appears near the top of the first page on nearly all local searches. So one of the simplest ways to ensure your website appears on the first search engine results page is to sign up for Google Business Profile. 

You can get started here, and the best thing about it is that it’s an entirely free service. 

All you have to do is submit documentation, so Google can verify you as a real business, but after that, you’re in!

Manage Your Reviews

In the intro to this post, we told you we would also provide tips for making your cleaning business stand out. One of the best ways to make your business appear professional and reputable in consumers’ eyes is by ensuring you have an excellent online reputation. It starts with being present on as many review websites as possible. 

Make it easy for people to find your business and leave a review for it. Of course, it would help if you also asked your customers to leave reviews for your business, so you get a healthy stream of new reviews every month. Once you start getting a good amount of reviews, here are some tips to keep in mind for managing them successfully:

• Respond to Them: Respond to as many reviews as possible. It shows past and potential customers that you care about their experience with your business. It’s imperative to respond to negative reviews. Acknowledge the complaint, thank them for their input and explain how you will do better in the future. 
• Use Reputation Management Software: As you start getting more reviews, you will find that managing them becomes a job in and of itself. That’s why reputation management software is beneficial. It allows you to see your reviews in one place instead of tracking them down on different sites. It also automates the review request process. DataPins makes a great reputation management software suite ideal for small businesses. 
• Try to Keep A Good Balance: Oddly enough, you don’t want a perfect 5-star rating on any review platform. It tends to arouse suspicion in the minds of consumers. Instead, you want to be somewhere between 4.4 and 4.8 stars. 

Choose Good Keywords

Your on-site optimization strategy should include a healthy dose of keyword usage. For example, specific keywords are used by consumers looking for house cleaning services. You can use an online keyword research tool to find out what those keywords are. Then you should:

• Include Them in Page Copy: Your service pages should include these keywords in the written copy. 
• Use Yoast to Help: If you use WordPress for your site, you should also use the free SEO tool. Yoast will make it easier for you to insert your keywords into the page descriptions and headings of the pages of your website without having to be familiar with coding.
• Create Blog Posts Around Your Keywords: You should use your keyword lists to inform your blog topics, helping generate more traffic to your site from people interested in your services. 

Be Present on Social Media

Last but not least, social media outlets like Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and even TikTok are invaluable marketing tools in 2022. Your business should be present on all of them. Try to post interesting, funny, or informative content as often as possible but don’t spam your followers’ feeds. 

You may also find it helpful to start a Facebook group for consumers who have questions or are interested in a house cleaning service. 

Learn House Cleaning SEO at Nolen Walker Academy

House cleaning SEO is easy to start with; but more difficult to master. So, once you have conquered all the above tips, get in touch with us here at Nolen Walker Academy to take your house cleaning SEO efforts to the next level! Our SEO training program takes you through hours of course materials with SEO professionals.

There’s a saying in the SEO industry: the riches are in the niches.

But what are the best SEO niches in 2022? In the following post, Nolen Walker outlines the top 4 SEO niches to earn money and gain clients. Then, of course, you can learn how to start your own digital marketing agency by rolling in Nolen Walker Academy, LLC. But for now, get familiar with which industries you will cater your agency to in 2022.

Best SEO Niches for New Agencies

In 2022, there are specific niches that you should be targeting that will have the highest need for your SEO services. Furthermore, these are the niches you should focus on most of our sales and outreach efforts. 

Consumers are generally more comfortable partnering with a firm that intimately understands their industry.

1) The Home Services Industry

The home service industry is one of the best niches for SEO in 2022 because of the high service and sales turnaround and the typically high price-point for the services. Believe it or not, increased competition is also a pretty good sign for SEO niches because people will be looking for ways to stand out in a saturated market. That’s where you come in.

Today, there are over 200,000 active roofers in the United States. Numbers are similar across the board for other home service businesses like plumbers, electricians, handymen, finish carpenters, general contractors, carpet cleaners, window washers, and more. 

And while a densely saturated market may mean you will have to work extra hard, it also means that there is fertile ground for SEO sales. Plus, home services aren’t going anywhere any time soon. 

As the lawyers say, people always need work done on their homes, so the industry is safe for you to plant your flag or hang your shingle. 

Optimization Tip

Home services like roofing, sheetrock, masonry work, and finish carpentry are all about visual representations of what the contractor can do. In plain English: pictures! High-quality images are always a good idea for SEO, especially in an industry like home services. 

Compare the usefulness of images to home services to that of, say, legal services, and you will begin to see what we mean. 

2) The Legal Industry

Legal services are a great point of emphasis if you are trying to boost your SEO service sales. Legal services are one of the best niches for SEO in 2022 because of the high price-point of the services rendered. In addition, lawyers tend to have a lot of dough to spend and are always looking for ways to get more clients. 

However, you have to be shrewd when targeting law firms and private practitioners. You may want to omit big law firms altogether. That’s because they will likely already have a marketing or advertising team in-house. Instead, take a look at the local practices in your area. 

Consider family law, divorce, personal injury, and patent practitioners in your area, for starters. The ones you will want to avoid (even though they are likely to have small practices) are public defenders. The reason is that it’s thankless (and nearly payless) work.

Optimization Tip

People aren’t typically willing to cheap out on a lawyer – especially when jail time or lawsuits are involved. So it helps to lend your client an air of professionalism. High-quality blog content and striking website design will be your best allies when optimizing for your lawyer clients. 

3) Transportation and Moving

The “near me” search term has seen a staggering boom over the last couple of years. Transportation and moving services are ripe territories to cash in on this boom. Why? Because who is looking for a ride or a moving service two towns over? No one, that’s who. 

Moving and transportation services need a high local SEO emphasis, and you could be just the person to actuate it for them. Nearly half of all Google searches are local searches. The “near me” search term has seen a 200% increase in usage over the last two years and a 900% overall increase over the previous three years.

As you can imagine, this boom doesn’t apply to just transportation and moving services. Still, they represent one of the business groups with the most substantial ties to local searches. As a result, they stand to benefit mightily from the regional search trend. 

Optimization Tip

This one should be a no-brainer if you have read this far. First, of course, you’ll want to emphasize and present your prospective clients with a solid local SEO strategy that includes schema markup, locally oriented keyword profiles, and the like. 

Now is the time to put your local SEO training to good use – you do have local SEO training, don’t you?

4) The Healthcare Industry

Last but not least, the service that everyone will need at some point in their life or another, healthcare. One of the reasons healthcare is one of the best SEO niches in 2022 is because it has a built-in workforce to respond to leads. 

Yes, we are talking about receptionists – people paid to answer phones and respond to appointment calls. But, of course, the healthcare industry isn’t going anywhere any time soon. It’s a high price-point which means it will pay you a good amount for your services. 

The competition is relatively low compared to some of the other niches we have mentioned so far. The only downside with this niche is your pitch. It may be hard to convince practitioners in your area with an established patient base that they need your services. 

That’s why it will pay to do a bit of market research. Try to target relatively new practices in your area or ones close together. The competition works in your favor in this situation because the little guy will want to gain the edge over the more established practice in any way. 

And don’t fall into the trap of just targeting medical doctors. Instead, it would be best to look at orthodontists, podiatrists, plastic surgeons, physical therapists, chiropractors, cardiologists, urologists, and radiologists. 

Optimization Tip

Patients flock to trustworthy doctors. As a result, reputation management will be massive for your clients in the medical industry. Start by getting them active on all relevant review websites, spiffing up their Google My Business pages, and creating Google review links for their patients. 

Irrigation SEO helps contractors rank on Google for terms like sprinkler repair near me. If you can rank within Google’s Local Map 3-Pack along with traditional organic results, you can pick up roughly 60% of all search users (for this topic).

What is Irrigation SEO?

Irrigation SEO is the refinement of a sprinkler repair website and Google Business Profile for the purpose of ranking on search results for topical keywords. Increasing your ranking position through SEO strategies allows your company to accumulate more frequent irrigation leads and book more sprinkler repair jobs in 2022.

Why Irrigation Contractors Need SEO

Calling all landscapers: are you doing things the old-fashioned way? There’s nothing wrong with word-of-mouth referrals, local newspaper ads, and truck wraps, but there is much more opportunity. 

It would help if you compliment your grassroots marketing campaigns with SEO or Search Engine Optimization. SEO allows your business to be seen by more people who use search engines to find local businesses and services. 

And the numbers don’t lie. At least one market study has revealed that 4 in every five people use a search engine to find local businesses and home services. And the great thing about SEO is that you can use it to boost sales for specific services or specialties.

For landscapers, irrigation SEO can be instrumental in particular. Everyone needs irrigation services at one point or another, so will your company be the one they hire when the time comes? Find out how to boost your irrigation SEO rankings in the following guide we’ve composed just for landscapers. 

Local SEO for Sprinkler Repair

Your landscaping business may be many things. But at the end of the day, it is, at its core, a local business. You most likely run a very personal, face-to-face business that caters to the residents and business owners’ needs. 

People in your town probably know you and your crew on a first-name basis. So your foray into SEO should have a very local bent. Start by registering your business with Google My Business. GMB will help you break into the local three map pack and let people know that you offer their area services. 

You will also want to register on Houzz and Angie’s List. Both sites offer excellent opportunities to customize your profile based on the areas you service. And they are specifically for home service contractors like you. 

On the more technical side, you should also utilize schema markup on your company’s website. Local schema markup will make it easier for search engines to index your site based on searches with local intent. 

For example, if someone searches “irrigation landscapers near me,” local schema markup will signal to search engines that you do offer irrigation services in the area of the person that performed that search (if you are actually in that area, of course).

Content Marketing for Irrigation Contractors

These days, people get their information through blog content, videos, and social media posts (for better or worse). Information about local services and businesses shows up on each vertical. So let’s say someone wants to know the benefits of installing a new sprinkler system for their garden. 

They might search what we in the industry call a “research intention” search. In other words, they may not be ready to spend money on new sprinklers just yet, but they want to know more about them. 

On the other hand, we have buyer intent searches representing people conducting a search engine query to find a product to buy or a business to work with/hire. An example of a buying intent search may be “affordable landscapers near me.”

But whether a person is ready to buy or wants more info, you should have content on your website, YouTube, or social media pages prepared to inform or convert them. 

Irrigation Company Reputation Management

These days, online reviews are an essential commodity for any business. People rely on online reviews as much as they do word of mouth referrals. So be sure your company is listed with Yelp, the Better Business Bureau, and other public review websites, so people have the opportunity to tell other consumers about your business. 

Be sure you and your staff are requesting reviews. And make it easy for them to leave reviews. Consider having QR codes printed on your business cards that lead to a review page. Include a link in any emails you send out that also leads to your review pages. 

Link Building for Irrigation Business Websites

Websites with a strong backlink profile can more easily rank for relevant keywords. Of course, you’ll still need to implement on-page SEO and publish high-quality content in order to rank. However, powerful link authority makes those techniques work much faster. You can acquire links by joining your local chamber of commerce and networking with other local businesses.

Other ways to earn links include guest posting on other relevant and trustworthy websites and submitting pitches to reporters via HARO. While acquiring links is a powerful SEO strategy for irrigation companies, it also comes with risks. For example, certain llink-building strategies (like buying links) violate Google’s quality guidelines and can result in a manual penalty and de-indexation of your website.

The most natural way to acquire backlinks (aside from business networking) is to publish high-quality blog posts targeting informational keywords or data-driven queries. For example, several websites will naturally cite your blog post if it contains original statistics. You can expect to earn natural and organic links if you publish a data-driven post about the most common sprinkler types in a specific region.

Learn About Sprinkler Repair SEO

Of course, there is a lot more to SEO than what’s listed here. Still, this would be a good start whether you already have an SEO strategy in place or not. And for irrigation SEO ranking dominance, be sure to enroll in Nolen Walker Academy. We can teach your landscaping business how to earn new customers through tried and true digital marketing strategies, so get in touch with our team today.

What is Plumber SEO?

Plumber SEO is the practice of optimizing web assets to rank on Google search. Ultimately, the goal of SEO is to generate qualified plumbing leads within your service area. Compared to other marketing tactics like paid advertising and email blasts, SEO provides the best ROI by almost any measure. 

Plumber SEO in 2021

Very shortly, we are going to be rounding the corner of a challenging and unprecedented year. 2020 brought unheard-of challenges to many industries, and businesses had to find ways to adapt. The home service industry is one such industry. 

As a plumber operating in 2020, you probably had to implement new safety policies to keep your head above water in these trying times and hang on to customers. The good thing for plumbers is that plumbing is an essential service. 

People can’t simply sit idly by while their kitchen sinks spew like Old Faithful. But it has still been tough. And if you operate a small plumbing business, you probably felt the squeeze of 2020 pretty strongly. 

That’s because the plumbing space is already plenty competitive. Whether you are in a large or small market, you are probably competing with at least a handful of contractors offering similar services to the same clientele. 

So how do you stand out in rugged terrain? The answer is plumber SEO. In 2020, SEO showed that it was still a relevant form of digital marketing. Because in 2020, search engines were still the go-to for online consumers, with 68% of them beginning their purchasing journey on a search engine. 

The bottom line is that as long as search engines are still relevant, search engine optimization (SEO) will always be appropriate. And the simple truth is that less than 1% of searchers will even venture onto the second page of a search engine results page when looking for goods and services. 

In 2021, you will still need to show up near the top of the first page to have any hope of success. So to start the new year off on the right foot and give your business the best chance to do better than it did in 2020, take a look at these plumber SEO tips.

Mobile SEO for Plumbers

A relevant plumber SEO tip for the new year is making sure that voice search commands can index your site. That’s because voice searches were prevalent in 2020, and they project to become more common in the coming year. As of now, 40% of all adults use the voice feature on their smartphone, smart speaker, virtual assistant device, or mobile device to search for things online at least once a day. 

So how do you make sure that your plumbing website is showing up on these voice searches? For starters, you have to make your keywords more conversational. That’s because people don’t talk the way they type. They tend to include more words when conducting a voice search because speaking is more manageable than typing. Voice searches are more conversational, so the keywords in your on-page content should reflect this shift. 

And since most voice searches occur on a mobile device, you also have to make sure that your website is mobile-friendly. A mobile-friendly site means fast loading times, easily navigable menus, and compressed image files. 

SEO-Targeted Blogs for Plumbing

If you haven’t already included a blog on your plumbing website, drop everything now, and start one. Content marketing was one of the highest priorities of top marketers across the country in 2020. Why? Because it is convenient. People are trending away from advertisements as sources for information about a business, product, or service. Instead, they are looking to blog content that is fun, engaging, informative, or all of the above. 

A recent study showed that 70% of surveyed consumers report that they would instead get information about a business, product, or service by reading a blog or other form of non-ad content than a traditional ad. Blogging can be compelling if you are a plumber because everyone is looking for answers to their plumbing problems. Your blog content should focus on answering these questions. 

Think about the most common questions you have heard from your customers in your time as a plumber. Form these questions into informative and insightful blogs that people will want to read. It’s important not to avoid being too sales-oriented in your blog content. That’s not what it’s for, and doing so can drive away potential leads. 

Track Success (Or Failure) With Google Analytics

Measurement is something we often recommend to plumbing contractors who may be handling their SEO campaign on their own or operating on a shoestring marketing budget. Google Analytics is free to use (for the basic version) but more importantly, its user friendly. If you have never run any site data analytics before, this is a great place to start. Google Analytics can show you how much traffic your site is getting, how much time people are spending on your site, and even suggest ways to make it more visible. 

Knowing the basics of how your website performs is an essential step no matter what year it is, so it will still be necessary for plumber SEO in 2021. The dashboard is easy to navigate, and setting up your site on Google Analytics is easy. And, if you start to get the hang of it and feel like you are ready for a more robust analysis of your site, you can always upgrade to the premium version for a moderate fee. 

Target Consumers With Your Headlines

Google recently dropped some fresh advice for developers and content creators that correlate with new Google core updates. In the update, they emphasize the importance of concise and informative headlines and page titles. They advise developers and content creators to assess their existing content and ask whether their page titles are descriptive of the visitor’s needs and intent.

Google does not like misleading, sensational, or vague page titles and headlines. They have to be indicative of what the person will read and true to what the content contains. Now is an excellent time to look at your service pages and make sure that the headlines give an accurate description of the page’s content. 

So, for example, as a plumber, you may have a service page about drain cleaning. If the page title reads “Drain Cleaning Perfection,” the on-page content should focus on how your company achieves thorough drain cleaning results. And the on-page content of your “Drain Cleaning Perfection” page can briefly mention other services you offer; make sure you are not dedicating entire sections to any other service. 

Optimize Local Listings (NAP Citations, GMB, ETC)

Plumbing is very much a local business. And chances are you aren’t the only plumber in your town. Ensuring that the website for your plumbing business in Mesa, AZ, doesn’t get lost in the mix with plumbing sites from Tulsa, Mobile, Milwaukee, or other corners of the country you have nothing to do with is very important. 

To make sure that your website searches up for people who need a plumber in your area, you have to utilize local SEO tactics. Local optimization will also let search engines locate and pin your business and index them on location-oriented searches. 

The first place you should start with local SEO is Google My Business. Google My Business is imperative for ranking in the local three-pack. Making sure all location information reads correctly will help Google pull up your site. For example, having a GMB listing that makes it straightforward that you operate in and around Plano, TX will help Google pull index your site when someone searches for “plumbers in Plano.”

Embed Structured Data for Google’s Sake

Structuring the data on your website rather than having pieces of information spread worldwide will make it easier for search engines to understand the content you are offering and index it to interested parties. Structured data also looks neater and can catch the eye of the searcher. When you have structured content that displays your company name, how long you’ve been in business, the type of business, and a brief description, search engines will rank it higher. That’s because it is more visually appealing and provides essential information in a neat and organized manner. 

Of course, you will have to familiarize yourself with Schema markup to code your structured data correctly, but it’s essential because Google places a priority on sites with structured data. 

Work With a Plumbing SEO Pro Like Nolen Walker

2020 was a rough year, but if you’re reading this, then you made it through. With everything that has gone on in 2020, it may be hard to devote the time it will take to implement all SEO strategies. But here at Nolen Walker, we have an all-inclusive solution for plumbers looking to dominate the rankings in 2021. 

The Nolen Walker advantage is that we provide all digital marketing services under one roof. From PPC ads to web design to content marketing and beyond, we will give your plumbing company the digital edge it needs. Contact us today, and let us tell you how we can help you dominate the rankings in 2021.