HVAC SEO: An 8 Step Plan to Get Started Now

Are you an HVAC company or contractor trying to rank in Google search engine results? Do you want to get more exposure, boost your website’s traffic, and generate more leads from potential customers? If yes, then effective search engine optimization is important for your HVAC business. The HVAC industry is ultra-competitive. And paying for leads with Google ads can get expensive. The survival of your company depends on getting more leads and exposure. But at the same time search engine optimization can be intimidating and mysterious. What exactly is it, and how do you get started? That’s why we made this HVAC SEO guide. We will explain what SEO is, and then provide some areas you can focus on to get started

You may also benefit from our article: 5 Marketing Tips to Boost Your HVAC Business

The basics of SEO

SEO can sometimes seem mysterious, especially if you are not familiar with it. It is complex and wide-reaching, but it is extremely effective if done right. But in order to practice it you need to know what it is. So before we dive in we start off by giving an introduction to SEO below.

What is SEO (search engine optimization)?

At a high level search engine optimization is a specific type of digital marketing. It is a set of activities aimed at improving the ranking of your website on search engines, such as Google, Bing, and others.

SEO can be broken up into three main buckets of digital marketing activities, which include:

Organic vs Local SEO

These two types of SEO are sometimes mistaken as being the same thing, but they are not. In fact, they are very different animals.

At a high-level, organic SEO is aimed at ranking in the organic search results of a search engine.

Local search engine optimization, on the other hand, is aimed at ranking for two sets of search engine results:

1. Local map results
2. Organic rankings for searches with a local search intent, such as HVAC Miami or a “HVAC near me” search queries

This differentiation will be important when creating your SEO strategy. In other words, you or your HVAC SEO company should create a strategy and plan to achieve the specific results that will get your business the most leads.

Some HVAC service providers are national, such as corporations and franchises. But most HVAC businesses are either local or regional. Thats why local SEO and local search results will most likely be more important for your HVAC company.

How to Get Started Doing HVAC SEO For Your Business

It should be noted that SEO is an ongoing process that involves a substantial amount of work. So while we can’t cover everything in this guide, we do try to include the foundational work/basics that will get you started.

You can follow the steps below to get going.

1. Create an SEO strategy and tactical plan for your business

While planning may seem difficult and a waste of time it does help you succeed.

Benjamin Franklin once said “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”

And we couldn’t agree more.

You don’t have to create anything ultra fancy or ultra-complex. And it does not have to be set in stone. But you do need to have a strategy for what you want to achieve, targets (goals), and a plan of action for how you will achieve it.

If you want to focus on local seo you should create a local SEO strategy. If you intent to do both organic and local then you should have a plan for each. This is because the two will have unique activities for each. As we mentioned above, local and organic SEO are different animals.

If you do not have the time or desire to create one it may be money well spent to pay an SEO expert or SEO agency to create one for you. If you are impressed with plan then you can always work with them. Or if you prefer you can execute their tactical plan yourself. Either way, it is important to have one to work from.

Contact us for a free 30-minute consultations where we can give you some recommendations and action steps.

2. Create or recreate your HVAC company website and continuously optimize it

Unless you are a large, established business you probably don’t have a huge website budget. But the good news is you don’t have to build an expensive website for your business for it to work. But you should design and develop a professional, website that presents your business well and is SEO optimized.

Some tactics to help your website perform better in local seo include:

1. Perform topic, topic cluster, and keyword research for your site in order to target and optimize your pages and posts for the appropriate topics and keywords
2. Create and optimize your foundational pages, including as your home page, about us page, location pages and contact page
3. Create and optimize pages for your key services, products and offerings. Each web page should be optimized.
4. Use your own images (vs stock images) and include proper Alt tags
5. Create blog posts to target specific keywords and build authority on specific topics
6. Create local content that helps build proximity for search engines
7. Implement proper structured data on each page

If you don’t have a site you can hire a website designer that specializes in seo optimized web site design. If you have a site that needs to be optimized you can hire an HVAC SEO company to optimize it.

3. Submit your site to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools

In order for your website to show up on search engines they have to know it exists. That’s why these two tools are critically important. Verifying your site with these tools allows you to submit your sitemap, see which pages are indexed in Google and request indexing. But it is also an amazing analytics tool that allows you to see how your site is performing, where your clicks are coming from and how and what you are ranking for, uncover technical SEO issues, and more.

Start by creating an account with Google Search Console. Once you do, you will need to verify your property. This can be a bit complex if you aren’t familiar with the back end of your website and host. You may need to hire a web development firm to help with this.

Once you get your site verified on Google Search Console you can sign up for Bing Webmaster Tools. This will allow you to sync your Bing Webmaster Tools account with the Search Console property you already verified. In other words, you can import your Google property into Bing.

4. Claim your Google Business Profile and Bing Places Listing

Your Google My Business profile (now called Google Business Profile) is critical to local SEO performance. You want to make sure you claim your business listing for each location you own. And if you don’t have a physical location that is okay. You can classify yourself as a service area business.

Google uses the information in your profile to understand who your business is, what services you provide, and what locations you serve.

You will need to verify your business. This usually involves a postcard with a code on it.

Once you verify your business your listing will go live. And then all of the information, edits and photos you added will be visible.

All of the information will be visible on your company business listing. Your listing should appear in your brand search engine results. It will also appear when someone clicks on your listing on Google Maps.

Setting up and optimizing your Google My Business Profile is a project in itself. So while we don’t go into it in painstaking detail in this guide we do give a few tips below. If you need help you can always hire a Google My Business Optimization Service.

1. Select the category that best describes what your business is
2. Only add additional categories that are relevant and accurate
3. Complete every available field and section available to you
4. Add high quality images that you own and took of your location, team, products, customers, and other relevant images
5. Add your services and products to your GBP
6. Add relevant posts to gain additional search engine exposure and “catch potential customers’ eyes”

Once you set up and verify your Google listing you can sign up for Bing Places. The reason for doing Bing second is that they allow you to import your Google listing to Bing Places. You will have to fill in certain pieces of information, but a lot of it does import automatically.

5. Claim and complete your free listings on Yelp, Angi and other review and listing sites

Potential customers use sites like Yelp, Angi, Nextdoor, and others to find and see reviews on businesses.

Your business can claim and complete your profile for free on all of these sites. This will help you to show up and look credible when folks are looking for your business or your services.

6. Get Reviews

According to Moz and other authority sites, reviews are “considered to be a key local ranking factor.” They also help build credibility and convert potential customers.

7. Invest in content marketing

Content marketing is critical for SEO. The practice of content marketing as a whole is broad. In simple terms it involves creating strategic content aimed at helping you achieve your marketing goals.

For SEO marketing purposes, optimized, high quality content can help you rank for target keywords. And ranking in search results will help drive organic traffic to your site. You should always create helpful, people-first inspired content vs content written for search engines.

One of the most effective forms of content for SEO is consistently creating high quality content via blog posts. Blog posts are a powerful way to rank for keywords, build authority, and capture leads.

Each blog post should work to build your site’s authority and relevance for a larger topic that you want to rank for. Researching and developing topic clusters is a strategic way to achieve this goal. Each topic cluster will have a set of relevant blog posts correctly tied to it (through internal linking). Topic clusters and their individual blog posts build your site’s authority on the larger topic you are trying to rank for.

You should also produce local blog post content if you are trying to rank for local search results.

There are also other forms of content that are helpful. While they are not direct ranking factors they do work harmoniously to help you improve your SEO. These include things like social media content, which we discuss below.

8. Get Social

Social media marketing gives you several platforms to promote your on-site content. Promotion is important for getting traction for your content and getting backlinks. In other words, promoting your quality content helps drive traffic to your site. It also helps you build backlinks and gain more exposure for your content.

Social media isn’t a direct ranking factor. But it does produce results that are beneficial for improving your site’s SEO performance.

HVAC SEO Services vs Doing it In-House

So what do you think? Is SEO right for you as a HVAC contractor or business owner?

That is a decision you will need to make. But if you are ready to get going you really have two options to get your HVAC SEO going. You can either hire an SEO company that offers hvac SEO services. Or you can do the work by yourself (in-house).

As you know, running the day-to-day operations of a business is time consuming. And HVAC marketing is also time consuming. So while it is important, not everyone has the time, capability or desire to do their own SEO. The time you spend trying to learn, set-up and master digital marketing could be used on more productive tasks.

A firm specializing in hvac seo services(especially local SEO) has the expertise to step right in and get you started without wasting a lot of time and money. From a holistic marketing view, an agency can also customize a package of digital marketing services. This means they can include other critical activities that will meet your needs and budget.