In today’s competitive market, you need something that can set you apart from thousands of other businesses who offer similar or the same services as you in your industry. This is especially true when you run a plumbing company.
When you do a quick search on Google, or any other search engine for that matter, with the keywords “plumber” + the city or state where you operate, you’d be surprised at the number of results Google generates. We’re talking about hundreds and hundreds of business pages offering plumbing services in your area. And if you’re not seeing any digital traces of your business within the first 5 pages of the search results, then you are leaving a lot of opportunities on the table.
No matter how good a business is, without visibility, it would be very hard to make a name for yourself in the market, as you can read here: https://marketbusinessnews.com/online-visibility-why-its-important-for-businesses/302701/.
Today, we are going to introduce you to one of the most innovative marketing methods in the digital age: SEO.
What Is SEO?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It’s a type of marketing that utilizes search engine functions to drive more traffic to a business which consequently leads to higher sales and better branding.
Search Engine Optimization, as a marketing method, has many facets. You can almost say that it’s an umbrella term for over a dozen of digital marketing campaigns that all purport to make businesses stand out online. Although it involves the application of many methodologies and marketing theories, they are all laser-focused on achieving one thing – and that is to give businesses market advantage by making them more visible in search engines.
What Common Strategies Are Applied In SEO?
As mentioned above, SEO for plumbers consists of many methods but all of them have a similar purpose which is to boost brand visibility online. Apart from having an incredible product, the next most important thing you need to have in your business is an audience. After all, it doesn’t matter how good a product or service is if there is no one to try it. SEO helps businesses get people through the door and let their products and services shine through from that point onwards.
Here are some of the most notable strategies applied in SEO:
Keyword Optimization
This specific strategy is one of the foundations of Search Engine Optimization. It refers to the strategic use and placement of keywords in a business’s website. When people use search engines like Google, they often use a set of keywords to define their search. Every industry would have respective high ranking keywords that a majority of their target market use to conduct a search.
For the plumbing industry, one of the most high-ranking keywords could be:
“Plumbers in (City)”
“Plumbers near me”
“Plumbing in my area”
“Cheap plumbing services”
And so and forth. In fact, there are tools that can help you generate the most commonly searched keywords in your city/state. By strategically placing these high-ranking keywords in your website, you are guiding search engines on how they should categorize your business. Moreover, this optimizing technique can help push your website up the search engine results if Google and other search engines find it relevant to the searching party. The higher you rank in the search engine results pages (SERPs), the better chances you have of letting potential customers find your business.
Link Building
Another important foundation of SEO is Link Building. What you have to understand with this marketing strategy is that you have to pay closer attention to what happens behind the scenes rather than how your business looks upfront. Sure, website and graphic design are equally important to catch the eye of your market (read more), however, SEO is what will bring fresh new eyes to your business in the first place. Link building is one strategy that you don’t immediately recognize the advantages of as most of its “effects” happen on the backend.
This strategy involves incorporating internal and external links in content posted on your website or other people’s websites. This is generally why people or businesses create a blog section or submit free content to online publications. The intention is to produce a bunch of relevant content which incorporates backlinks that can redirect traffic to the main website and distribute them across the internet. This creates almost like a web of links that associates your website with other reputable websites online.
This strategy mainly does three things:
- Push immediate traffic to your website.
- Increase brand authority due to affiliation with other reputable brands
- Improves indexing and online categorization – especially when you create guest posts in same industry websites
Through link building, you can establish your business faster in the plumbing industry and get ahead of neighboring competition by pushing your website up the SERPs.
Content Building
In the digital age, if you want people to pay attention to your brand, you need to be able to give them value. That’s the trade off if you want to create success for your business online. The strategies mentioned above would not be able to exist or cannot be executed properly if not for this next thing: content.
Another foundational strategy in SEO is building content that is relevant to your brand, industry, and audience. This means producing intention, high-quality, and value-driven content instead of posting random, keyword-dense paragraphs that hardly provide any real value to readers. Writing good quality content will not only boost your rankings in the search engines, it will also help you build trust with your market and establish your brand as a reliable service provider.
As a plumbing business, you will have a lot of competition online. Each one outdoing the other’s offer. However, if you’ve noticed, it’s not the business that can offer the cheapest, most affordable services that consumers tend to gravitate to. They do business with companies they can trust and rely on. Establishing your brand in a way that allows consumers to feel this about your business is your fastest way to the top and there’s no better way to achieve this than by utilizing an SEO strategy.
