What does the online marketing landscape look like as we advance towards 2020? What sort of HVAC SEO strategies can your company use to climb the ranks even higher this year? Nolen and Jason of HVAC Webmasters discuss some helpful tips to increase local search visibility and earn more leads. So if you’ve struggled to make page 1 rankings in Google Search, be sure to listen in.

Helpful Points for HVAC Companies:

Original content is still essential, but it’s a baseline now.
Collecting reviews is more vital than ever.
Make sure your Google My Business account remains active.

A New Baseline for Marketing

Original content is a concept businesses live and die by and a practice that’s become the norm for those looking to perform well in local search. While everyone can and should pursue original content that provides real value for consumers in their target market, it is more of a requirement than a bonus.

In other words, quality content is the new baseline.

To win front page rankings and develop a consistent pool of website traffic, roofing contractors have to go above and beyond that baseline. Thankfully, there are plenty of tools at your disposal to rise above the competition and let your brand stand out. Some of them are free tools from Google, while others may require a little investment from your company.

Google My Business Activity

It’s one of the most accessible resources, yet many businesses fail to claim their free Google My Business (GMB) account. If you haven’t claimed your business listing, you’re liking missing out on hundreds of potential customer impressions. Fill out as many boxes as possible, as Google will be more likely to present your business during a local consumer search.

GMB accounts come with several fun tools to showcase your company. The portal allows businesses to upload original company photos, videos, and infographics. You can also create updates and promotions that show up whenever someone searches for your company name. So it takes only a few minutes to upload a photo, write some catchy insights about standard heating and cooling challenges, then send out the post for viewing in local search!

Be sure to post regularly, as GMB posts disappear a week after crafting them. You can view historic Google posts from your archives, but Google only shows recent releases in search engine results pages (SERPs).

Showing Off Office Life for SEO Strategies — Posts are Also a Great Means of Showing Internal Company Life.

You can upload images to serve as your company cover and exterior office shots. Just be careful that the photos you post represent your company well. Unfortunately, there’s currently no way to ensure that your favorite photos are the ones showing up in local SERPs.

Review Management and Collection

Apart from your company website and content optimization strategy, nothing impacts local search like customer reviews. As such, all great SEO strategies work to incorporate a steady influx of client feedback. For example, Google used to favor reviews from its own portal (Google Reviews), but now it prefers them from various sources.

You’ll notice that many top industry performers work hard to gather reviews from their customers consistently. As a result, you’ll find these companies standing out in local service packs, earning premium leads for some of the most popular services. As you can see, even a little effort goes a long way when it comes to reviews.

Where should you ask for reviews?

Google Reviews
Facebook
Instagram
Better Business Bureau
Yelp
Angie’s List
Your Website

Most SEO Strategies Incorporate Client Reviews — Reviews, in Google and Your Website, Create Trust With Consumers.

Of course, the easiest way to collect client feedback is to ask for it. Then, send your customers (especially the happy ones) a short invitation via text or email. It doesn’t have to be complicated; provide the link(s), so they can do it quickly.

Showcasing Reviews on Your Website

For the most significant impact, incorporate those reviews into the company website. You’ll likely need a professional to do this for you, but watch out! Most HVAC SEO companies aren’t very good at infusing these reviews into the site effectively. Our team at HVAC Webmasters took years to develop our tool (DataPins) to do so, but the impact on our clients’ local search results is nothing short of incredible.

Team Up With HVAC Webmasters.

If your business sometimes struggles to earn that oh-so-important front-page listing, our team would love to talk with you! At HVAC Webmasters, we enable HVAC companies around the country to achieve higher ranks, better traffic, and outstanding leads.

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The HVAC industry is fiercely competitive. However, there’s no silver bullet to make your company succeed online. However, after decades of experience as HVAC SEO specialists, HVAC Webmasters knows that it takes many little things done well to help improve Google rankings and get your phone ringing daily. One of those “little things” is online review sites.

We’ll talk about how to get HVAC reviews another time, but in the following post, let’s focus on which sites will drive leads to your company and how you should manage the content on those listings to stand out from the crowd.

1) Google My Business (AKA Google My Business Profile)

Hands down, the most critical citation listing for your HVAC company is Google My Business. GMB is a rich listing that you can claim and manage, allowing you to create a strong profile directly tied to Google. Because Google is still the search engine king, it’s only logical that you would do anything you can to appeal to this resource, with top rankings as the goal of a well-played organic SEO strategy.

One of the pleasant aspects of Google My Business is managing your company listing from a user-friendly dashboard. The information you enter updates instantly across Search and Google Maps. Because local searches for heating and cooling repairs are vital when service areas are fixed, this is the absolute best way to keep your NAP accurate in the most visible listing you’ll have.

Optimizing Your GMB Listing

Putting myself in the customer’s shoes, one of my favorite things about using Google to search for HVAC repairs near me is how much information I have at my fingertips when those results come back. I can click on a business name from the map results- a familiar spot to launch research when proximity matters, especially true for emergent repairs- and see an excellent overview of data about that company.

I may go ahead and place a call for service from this view alone without ever having visited the HVAC company website. (And that’s not to say that your primary website isn’t essential. It’s a vital tool for ranking well on Google and ensuring that your company is toward the top of the Map results to get that click!)

But here’s the thing, even if you do everything right, if you haven’t claimed and updated your GMB listing, you may never get that call due to incorrect information. A simple typo could cost you tons of calls, and a poor user experience could result in your business tanking in the rankings.

However, with a substantial listing that incorporates keywords throughout the quality content and a linked listing that connects viewers to your website for more info (like service pages with excellent on-page SEO), you’re far more likely to earn their business.

Google Business Tools for HVAC Pros

A new Google Ad feature worth mentioning here is the Google Guarantee badge. These are paid listings (versus organic results, which are still typically seen as most valuable), but they add an extra layer of comfort for customers who want the backing of a third party.

This feature ties to your GMB account and lets you manage communication via Local Services booking. Because Google is recognized as an authority and trusted by billions of users, this paid listing could help a newly launched domain see some action before it has put in the years to rank organically.

2) Yelp

Millions of users continue to favor the Yelp app and website for finding everything from restaurants to air conditioning specialists in their area. (In fact, there is even a quick-select icon for Heating & Air Conditioning on the app’s landing page!) Because the app is closely tied to mobile use, the local search aspect is clutch and provides a good user experience.

The other benefit to users is review-rich pages tied to an identified reviewer (versus anonymous posts). Sure, you’ll still find some absurd nonsense, but it’s not nearly as rampant as sites that allow unidentified reviews.

Yelp reviews tend to be more detailed than other online review sources, so having an excellent listing for your HVAC business on Yelp is a fantastic offering for potential customers to find you…and be impressed.

Pro Tip: Respond To Yelp Reviews From HVAC Customers

While this might not seem like the SEO tips you’d expect from us, it’s essential to realize that engaging with customers is vital for the life of your company. Of course, this is true of almost any industry, but because you have a tremendous opportunity to earn business from personal referrals, thinking about how you engage with the customer is an excellent investment of time and energy.

Social media marketing, for example, hinges on good engagement to get your posts seen and allow your business to thrive online.

Replying to reviews on sites such as Google and Yelp is a great way to show that you appreciate your customers and tune in to what they need. Even if a review was mediocre, when a business owner responds respectfully and professionally, that still leaves me with a positive impression of the company. The response can be more valuable than the review or star rating itself.

3) Facebook

You may not think of this as a review site, but it’s not uncommon for Facebook reviews to appear on a Google homepage for a company listing. As we covered earlier when discussing the power of Google rankings, a potential customer may not even make it to your website, but they will likely check out a few ratings before clicking the phone number from the SERP.

So while a user would have to be logged in to leave a comment or dive deep into Facebook content, reviews are visible to everyone (with or without an account) and should be considered necessary for your online reputation.

When potential customers vet your company for their HVAC repair business, they may start with a Google search of your company name and then check out serval online review sites to get a sense of the service you offer. Because of the incredible traffic that Facebook receives, this listing usually shows up fairly high in the rankings and should therefore be given plenty of love.

Screenshot of Facebook Business Page for Local HVAC Company

If you’re all reviews and no content, the viewer may be less inclined to pull the trigger. So don’t forsake developing a great secondary website with your social media business pages, starting with Facebook for Business.

Getting Good Reviews For HVAC Services

While we’ve spent most of this article talking about how to best claim and manage these various online review sites for your HVAC company, they won’t do you (or your customers) much good if there are no reviews to view.

While there are some tools for making review requests more streamlined, the fact remains that you have to ask for them. It’s assumed that only a tiny percentage of customers are likely to follow through to leave a review — good or bad — after their heating and cooling repairs, so you’ve got to be diligent about asking everyone to improve the odds of getting a decent turn-out.

We know that consumer behavior shows that folks are likelier to call a service provider with lots of reviews, but a mid-to-high star rating, versus a company with just a handful of reviews, even if they’re all five stars. So the quantity weighs Google rankings, too, whether the reviews are made on your GMB listing or elsewhere.

For Facebook specifically, you have the benefit of a more engaged user than you’d find on Google, for example. The billions of Facebook users spend a lot of time on the social network every day, so don’t hesitate to post every so often a request for existing customers to post a review.

And if you’re trying to build up reviews on Yelp versus Facebook, tell them! It’s perfectly acceptable to make it known that you’re trying to bolster your brand reputation on a given site, but the key is to provide a link to make it as easy as possible for an existing customer to help you out. Please don’t make them search, or you’ll likely lose that willing participant.

Other Citation Sites for Heating and Cooling Repairs

Here are a few other online review sites/directories that help connect HVAC pros to new customers:

Angi
HomeAdvisor
Porch
Thumbtack

While quantity helps search engines recognize your business as reputable, it’s also worth investing some time into each listing. You can ensure a vital entry point for new HVAC customers to find your business and get those online review sites; working for you.

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HVAC SEO Strategies for 2020 (Podcast)