When you’re a service-based business like an HVAC company, you tend to rely on word-of-mouth more than most.
It’s not just enough that you offer HVAC repair services. People want to be confident in the quality of your work. They want to hear from others who have enlisted your help and been satisfied in the past. They want to be completely confident that yours is an organization worth inviting into their home and spending their hard-earned money on.
In the modern era, that likely means they’ll turn to the same basic source to meet this need:
A search engine like Google.
According to one recent study, over 90% of all online experiences begin with a search engine. When you consider that Google currently has a 91% market share of the search engine market worldwide, for the sake of discussion, let’s just say that experience starts with Google.
If people go to Google and search “HVAC repair services near me,” 99% of them are only going to look at the first page of Google results. This means that if you want to turn these prospects into customers, you need to make sure that A) yours is the business they find on Google, and B) you quickly establish yourself as a high-quality service provider that can be trusted with something they hold so important.
Search engine optimization, or SEO, is how you will accomplish both of these things at the same time.
What is SEO, and How Does It Work?
To understand why SEO is important, you first need to understand a bit about how search engines like Google operate.
Despite being known primarily as a technology services company, Google still makes the majority of its revenue through its search engine. In 2020 alone, there were an estimated 4.9 million searches taking place every single minute.
Google is a free service, but that doesn’t mean it can’t generate revenue. It actually generates a tremendous amount of money through advertisements. The more people use Google, the more ads they see, the more money Google makes.
But the only way people will continue to use Google is if it always returns high quality results that answer their questions or address their needs. When they search for “HVAC repair near me,” they need to immediately find a trustworthy HVAC company like yours that they can call.
To make sure that always happens, Google uses an estimated 200 different factors in their algorithm for ranking websites. They look at how much traffic you have, what the online sentiment is about your business, how regularly you post content on your blog, how active you are on social media, which keywords you use, and more.
Again: Google needs to return satisfying results as close to 100% of the time as possible. If they don’t, people use other search engines and Google’s ad revenue drops dramatically.
Most of the 200 factors are kept a closely guarded secret to prevent businesses from gaming the system, artificially inflating their rankings and attracting all the attention from searchers. Optimizing your HVAC website to take advantage of what we do know is called search engine optimization, and it’s one of the most important set of best practices that you can use to get found on Google in existence.
SEO Best Practices for HVAC Services Businesses: Breaking Things Down
Maybe the most important thing to understand about all this is that getting noticed on Google as an HVAC services business won’t be about accomplishing any one particular move. It’ll be about a series of smaller best practices, all working together to create the lasting impact you need.
“Lasting” is also the operative word in that sentence. None of this is something that you “do once and forget about.” You need to be proactive about maintaining that online presence to not only get found on Google today, but to make sure you’re still getting found on Google six months (or six years) from now.
Having said all that, getting found on Google as an HVAC repair organization is something you can do through tactics like the following.
The Power of Local SEO
HVAC services businesses in particular need to remember that their audiences are inherently local. It doesn’t matter if customers six states away can find you on Google. You need to attract the attention of the people who live and work right in your own backyard.
This means taking steps like claiming and optimizing your Google Business profile, for example. Make sure that your profile is fully updated with accurate business hours, contact info, and a compelling description of your services.
You’ll also want to naturally include as many local keywords as possible. Create dedicated pages for each individual city that you provide service to, even if there are many of them. Include geographically relevant keywords in your website content. For example, instead of just “HVAC repair,” use “HVAC repair in [City Name].” Incorporate local terms into your page titles, headers, and meta descriptions.
It’s a Mobile World
Especially when performing “near me” searches, remember that the vast majority of people are going to be executing them on a smartphone, tablet, or other mobile device. This means that you need to be extra certain that your HVAC website functions well on something like an iPhone or you’re potentially leaving a lot of money on the table.
Make sure that your website is mobile-friendly with a responsive design that adapts to all screen sizes. Test your site on different mobile devices to make sure everything from navigation to forms works seamlessly.
You also need to make sure that your site loads as quickly as possible. All computer users are impatient, but mobile users are especially so.
This may seem like an exaggeration, but it isn’t. A delay of even a second can cause a drop in conversions. Optimize images, use a content delivery network, and streamline JavaScript and CSS to improve load times as much as you can.
Content is King
Finally, don’t underestimate the importance of content marketing. You need to provide valuable, informative content for people to find when they have important questions that need to be answered or concerns that need to be addressed. They may not even realize they need an HVAC services business yet – they are simply doing their research to see what they can learn. You still want to make sure that yours is the business they find during this time, however.
Create blog content that answers common HVAC questions, explains services, and educates your audience about system maintenance. For example, topics like “How Often Should You Replace Your Air Conditioner?” or “How to Save Energy with HVAC Maintenance” are great.
Google’s algorithm favors comprehensive, in-depth content. Consider writing detailed guides like “The Ultimate HVAC Maintenance Checklist for Homeowners.” This could position you as an authoritative source in your field and attract more organic traffic.
The point is that you’re trying to be as helpful as possible without expressly asking for anything in return. Don’t disguise a blog post as an advertisement. You don’t always have to come right out and “ask for the sale.”
Use content marketing as an opportunity to establish yourself as a voice of authority. You want to come across like a business that can be trusted. That way, when someone does determine that they need HVAC repair services, you’ve exponentially increased the chances that yours is the business they call.
Again – search engine optimization and best practices like those outlined above are maybe the most important opportunity your HVAC business has to get found on Google. But you still need to actually meet the needs and exceed the expectations of those customers that you are able to generate – never let yourself forget that.
You could have what is objectively the best-looking website in the world. You could post on every social media network every day. You could have the number one ranking site for all your local keywords. None of this would mean a thing if you show up to someone’s house and fail to perform the service you were contracted to.
All this is to say, at a certain point, “getting found on Google” is only one small part of a much larger story. You still need to optimize your business itself to be better than that of your competitors.
The best practices like those outlined above will take you to the point where you will essentially live or day based on the quality of your HVAC solutions.
If all this sounds like a full-time job, that’s largely because it is. It also underlines the importance of having an all-in-one marketing platform like Surefire Local by your side.
Even something as seemingly simple as posting on social networks can eat up a huge amount of time in the average day. That’s time that you need to focus on providing exceptional services and nurturing relationships with customers.
By bringing together directory management, local SEO optimization, content marketing, and other features all under one roof, tools like Surefire Local can save a tremendous amount of your time. You can then focus all your attention on your customers, which in and of itself is the most important goal of all.
If you’d like to find out more information about how you can get found on Google and keep a steady stream of new leads coming right through your door, please don’t hesitate to contact the Surefire Local team today. You can also click here to attend a Surefire Local demo to see the benefits that an all-in-one marketing platform can bring to your HVAC business in the new year and beyond.