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Guide to Local SEO for Plumbers: 5 Steps to Rank #1 in Google

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How plumbers can do SEO and get to the top Google rankings

The fastest way to consistently get to the top of Google for your plumbing contractor name, or emergency leak your city name.

This is for you. It means more calls, more jobs for your business. We are going to beat out the cut–rate competition so the bottom-feeding plumbing companies can work with the bottom-feeding customers. If you’re a high-end plumber and you want things right, you’re looking to build a business and this one is for you.

You do not need to be a tech wizard to understand the stuff I’m teaching you.

Anybody can understand and implement these kind of things. This is low tech to no tech. You are going to see what I’m talking about shortly.

SEO was my personal solution for my business, that’s what saved my family and  my life, but the reason I am telling you this, is that I want you to know I’m no different from any other business owner out there, I just came across something that worked, and spend hours and hours every day testing, learning and figuring this stuff out.

So I’m like an explorer of finding these golden nuggets and now I am going to share these gold nuggets with you.

In a moment, I’m going to break down what Google really wants. Is a lot of BS out there, we need to talk about what Google really wants. Before we do that we are going to talk about foundations. So, everything I will teach you is built on foundations.

SEO is like a house, if you don’t have a good foundation and you start redoing the windows and the plumbing, put a new roof on the house, painter and all that stuff. None of that stuff it really matters that much, if the foundation is cracked, if your house is saggy. So that’s how you need to look at SEO.

We are going to build that foundation first, and then we can start listening to all this noise out there on the Internet, but they don’t tell you in what order needs to be done. That’s what we are going to do today. We’re gonna keep it simple, so I went to a Tony Robbins conference not too long ago, he said some things that really stuck with me: complexity is the enemy of execution. We are going to keep this simple so that you actually execute and take action on this stuff. Not just learning some stuff and then forget about it tomorrow. We want to take action as soon as possible.

I will show it to you in 5 simple things:

Mobile-first website

Maps and Organic

Keywords / Search Terms

Citations/ Online Directories

Backlinks

Now, some of this might sound like tech or marketing jargon, whatever, don’t worry as I said, I’m on a break it down to simplify this so that everybody can understand it.

Number 1: You need to have a mobile 1st website. I talk to a lot of people that say my Web designer said my website mobile-ready, I don’t need to worry about that Vin. Or it looks great on my smartphone so I’m good. Don’t assume, you want to get that from Google, not from your web designer or not from your eyeballs.

You’re going to run this in google test. All you do is go to google.com, search for google mobile test, and run your website in this free tool that Google offers.

If you get a red X, go straight to your Web designer, get that fixed. If you do your own website with Wix or Squarespace, whichever program you used to do your website, you gotta get that figured out. It’s foundational.

Number 2: There are 2 different types of SEO. There are the maps up in the search and then there’s the organic down. The maps are going to get 90% of clicks, 90% of your money is going to be made at the map section. So that’s where we are going to focus on.

Now I know you probably said what about these ads. The move top above the map section. That’s for a whole another post that I made for plumbers. If called, how to do Adwords for plumbers, so check that out after you read this one.

Number 3. We’re gonna talk about keywords. Now don’t over complicate this. All the keyword is its something that people type in Google to find your business. Let’s give you a couple of examples. Plumbing Contractors in your City. That’s an example of a keyword. Leak repair Montana. That’s an example of a keyword. In case you get the idea, it’s just something that somebody types in Google, and that’s all you needed to know. We’re gonna talk about how to find the best keywords that make you the most money. The best search terms and we’re going to talk about where to put them on your website.

So how do we find them? All you do is you go to google.com, and you type something into Google, and Google notices you with this little Box drops down, with all these different suggestions. These suggestions are based on real-life humans typing stuff on Google. That where Google gets these suggestions, and that’s what you want.

You want something that real people are searching for, not something that you think that they’re searching for. Or that some marketing pepople tell you, they’re searching for. You want to figure it out yourself, you want to see what actual people are doing and that’s how you do it.

Then you go to your Google ad words account. Open a free Google ad words account if you don’t have one. It’s a tool inside called the keyword planner. With the keyword planner tool, you just take the list of keywords that you made. And start popping them into this little Box here. Google starts giving you some really interesting information. For example, the average monthly searches made. The average number of people that are typing that in Google and searching for plumbers in Dallas, Texas. Or emergency plumbers in Dallas, Texas. Whatever list you have, you need to get some date on that.

 

You can take it a step further and get all kind of keywords with this tool: semrush.com.

You can use it 10 times a day for free, or you can get a paid version. Most of the small businesses get the free version and yet all kinds of that extra data, extra keywords that hitting and how deep you want to go with this.  We’re going to put the keywords in 2 places on the website. 2 main places, the title tags and the content.

When you hover your mouse above this tab, a little box will pop up. That’s your title tag. That’s the first thing that Google looks at. You need to find out where it is on your website, to enter the keywords into these title tags.

You know what keyword you want to go for. The ones that most people were searching for in your city. Where you gonna make the most money and then you want to place into the title tags that were seen on Google. Every website platform has a different way to enter the title tag but they all offer 100% of them.

So if you are using Wix as your website or Squarespace and you can’t find it. Contact their support. If you have your own Web designer, ask him to put these keywords in your title tag.

The second-place you wanna put these keywords is: in your content or text, on the pages of your website. So if you write all the words of your website these keywords need to be there to show google this is my web pages all about.

If you’re hiring somebody to write them for you. Make sure they’re sprinkling keywords in there. Just keep it natural. Don’t make a big list, don’t script, don’t make it weird to read by putting too many. Just keep it natural. Google can tell that’s natural enough.

Here is a very important tip that people get wrong all the time including some marketing experts or SEO experts. You want a separate page for every service that you offer. The reason is that you can put a unique keyword into your title tag on each page. Each page has a unique title.

So if you have 10 keywords that you want to rank for. You need 10 different pages on each page you can put the unique keyword in the title tag. Once again, contact your Web designer to have that take care if you can’t do-it-yourself.

Number 4: Here we’re gonna talk about what it called about citations or online directories. There are top 3 and there’s 50 more you need to get into. I want to talk about the top 3. You need to take care of that like today. Google my business account, your Facebook business account, and then Yelp your business account.

Those are the top 3 citations that Google looks at when they ranki your website on the maps section. Before we get into the other 50 that you can get into. I want to talk about the information you need to have correctly in these directories. We gonna use Google my Business at the beginning because it is the most important.

Number 1: Correct business name. I see people put weird variations of the business name all the time. Big mistake. You want to get your business license registered with the city. To get the licensed look and see the exact spelling in words of your business name and match in, very important.

2nd thing is you want to put the correct category. If you don’t put the correct category then Google in not going to know what business you’re in. Or put you into a secondary category on top of some smaller service that you offer. Then it’s not gonna match up with your website keywords, I see people get this one, wrong all the time as well. Next, put your address in there.

If you working from your home that’s ok, a lot of peoples do. You have a home address in that, you can hide it but still need to have the correct address in there. Next, phone number. People change phone numbers all the time and for whatever reason have multiple phone numbers. But your main number 1 phone number that’s on the top of your website, put there as well. Make sure you have it on your current website.

I know people have multiple websites out there for whatever reasons. You need one main website, which is your business website, that needs to go there.

There are 50 other directories or citations the Google looks at, and the way you find them is: You go to google.com, and you type in this, write this down: “top local directories for SEO”. You gonna do a search for that, and you gonna find all kinds of websites that have a big long list. From top 50 maybe top 60 to get into. They’re essential, you gotta have those to rank on the maps. Way more important than just getting them submitted in there is that all the information I showed you, needs to be corrected in every single of these. So if you have duplicate information, old information, if you had just a bunch of junk out there because hired an SEO guy in the past that didn’t know what he was doing. You tried to do it yourself but you didn’t know any better. All that stuff needs to be cleaned up. More is not better when it comes to maps rankings. Clean is better, clean consistent information across the Internet, it all needs to match you Google my business page.

Number 5: Now that we’ve built a solid foundation in order of importance, we’re going to talk about backlinks. A lot of people will jump in backlinks first and wonder why it doesn’t work. Or even can hurt your website if you don’t do right. You don’t wanna do all these backlinks, until all the stuff that I already talked about, the foundations’ stuff is taken care of. Let’s jump in right now, what you don’t want to do is hire some company that has like a link building service, they Spam stuff out through India. That stuff used to work 5 years ago, not any more guys. Links need to be created by real connections, with real people. Let me show you an example. Hey here’s an example of a backlink. If you don’t know what it is. If you don’t understand what I’m talking about. Back when I started my business in 2018 and went straight down to a local newspaper and made an article for my business, and publish it on their website. These blue words in the article are a link. You click on that and it links over to my website. Google sees that link as a Turbo boost. As is saying that this guy has something going on.

 

I saw my website go from the bottom of page one to the top of page day by day as I made backlinks. That was a very powerful. Other things I did with my business to get links, that we do for our clients as well, we sponsor local charities. By sponsoring local charities they put the amount you donated into the website with the link back to your website. Very powerful link. Exchange something of value. Do some work for somebody, in exchange for a link, rather than money. This link would be worth way more in the long run, then you’re gonna get paid on that job. Trade stuff out for links, do works for people.

Write testimonials for your vendor, so you have materials, you have the equipment, manufacturers, all these people the ones that you love, write awesome testimonials form, send them over to. Post this on your website but please put a link back to mine. I did that for 3 different vendors for my business. It’s a win-win for everybody. It’s easy once you get used to doing it.

Next, you got friends or you are BMI groups in your local town, whatever. The owner businesses trade links on these local websites with other local businesses. Google loves that stuff. And it’s not hard, we all have friends that we do business within town, link to each other’s websites.

The next thing is getting an article published. So if there are local blogs that are popular in your town, write something of value, write an interesting article. And you’re going to say but how Vin, I’m not a writer. You know neither am I. I hire someone to do that. I get on craigslist, find a hungry college student that wants to build up, having to write an article for you. Maybe even getting those blogs or whatever he gets to publish. Get links back to your website. All this is super powerful stuff.

Now let’s review the 5 simple things checklist that we’re going to start executing today.

We’re going to understand the stuff, so we can hire somebody that knows how to execute on this stuff because you want this stuff done right.

If you don’t do this stuff right for the first time, you can blow thousands of dollars with incompetent SEO companies, marketing companies, or whatever.

So these were the 5 simple things on the checklist. Remember we got a mobile-first website. Don’t assume, run it through the tool.

Next, focus on getting your Website rank on the maps, and you do that by getting good keywords using the tools that I showed you. And then getting your business cleaning consistently across the Internet on citations or online directories.

Then start working locally in your local community. Start networking and get those backlinks.

To do these 5 things you’re going to dominate your competition.

I guarantee it, you’re going to dominate it.

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