SEO is the highest quality source of leads for 60% of marketers. This can also apply to HVAC contractors! You too can up your SEO game using an HVAC SEO content strategy to boost your revenue.
For HVAC contractors, we’ve compiled a list of HVAC SEO best practices so your content ranks at the top!
Table of Contents
Why Is SEO Important for HVAC Contractor Companies?
HVAC contractors aren’t exempt from the evolution of digital marketing. HVAC contractor companies can also benefit from search engine optimization (SEO) to attract and retain customers.
Here are four ways HVAC companies can benefit from SEO:
1. SEO Improves Your Rankings
Firstly, SEO can help HVAC contractors to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs) when potential clients search for relevant keywords. So when someone searches “HVAC services near me” or “heating repair in [city]”, you have a chance to appear at the top of the search results IF you’ve optimized your website and content for SEO. This can increase the chances of potential clients clicking on your website and ultimately contacting you for services.
2. SEO Helps in Prioritizing Tasks
Secondly, having an SEO content strategy can help HVAC contractors to prioritize tasks and see measurable results. By identifying keywords and topics that potential clients are searching for, contractors can create content that is more likely to be found and valued by their target audience. This can lead to increased website traffic, engagement, and ultimately, conversions. Additionally, by tracking your website’s performance and analyzing your SEO efforts, you can allocate your time and resources more efficiently, which can improve your bottom line.
3. SEO Keeps You Focused
Thirdly, SEO can help HVAC contractors to stay focused and avoid distractions. A clear SEO strategy can tell contractors exactly what they need to work on. This means you can know which things can contribute to the plan, and which ones will only sidetrack you from it. As a result, all your efforts will align perfectly with your business objectives.
4. SEO Increases the Number of Leads
Finally, SEO can increase the number of leads for HVAC contractors. By creating helpful, informative content that is optimized for relevant keywords, contractors can attract more website visitors who are interested in what they have to offer. These visitors are more likely to convert into customers or clients because they have already shown an interest in HVAC services and are actively seeking solutions to their needs.
How to Implement SEO for an HVAC Contractor’s Website
This guide walks you through each step of building a successful SEO strategy for your website. But first, here’s a quick overview:
Step 1: State And Define The Core Service Areas
The first step to implementing better SEO for an HVAC contracting business is understanding your core service areas. This will be key to helping you decide which keywords connect most with the core offerings of your HVAC business.
At the end of this step, you’ll have a website architecture based on your core service areas (or offerings) and sub-areas for each of these offerings. Simply start by identifying the main services you provide, then extend those services into related services. Here’s a table as an example:
Air duct cleaning, air duct repair , air duct installation, ventilation system repair, ventilation system installation, attic fan installation, attic fan repair
Air Conditioning
Air Conditioner repair, AC installation, AC maintenance, ductless mini-split system repair, ductless mini-split system installation, central air conditioning repair, central air conditioning installation, evaporative cooler repair, evaporative cooler installation
Indoor Air Quality
Air purifier installation, air purifier repair, humidifier installation, humidifier repair, dehumidifier installation, dehumidifier repair, UV air purifier installation, UV air purifier repair, Air filter sizes
By breaking down the website architecture into core service areas and an extended list of sub-areas, you’ll better understand your HVAC contracting business offerings, which will be a great help when you’re creating your SEO content strategy. This will help your business to target the right keywords and improve its search engine rankings, ultimately leading to more traffic and more customers.
Step 2: Perform Keyword Research That Aligns with Your HVAC Business
For this step, you should keep three things in mind:
Gather the list of keywords in each of the core areas of your website and think about the buyer personas
Eliminate irrelevant and outdated keywords to focus on analyzing the most important ones
Stay organized with one combined file for easier management
You can then use Semrush or Outranking to dive into your keyword research.
Method 1: Use Semrush
Plug in each core service area as a keyword to generate a list of potential keywords. For example, plugging in “heating” as a keyword can get you “furnace repair”, “boiler installation”, and “heat pump maintenance”
2. Eliminate any irrelevant or unrelated keyword, manually or using filters
3. Download the CSV file containing all these keywords
4. Organize the file by core service area and sub-group
5. Combine all files into one central location for easier management
Method 2: Outranking
Enter your defined core service area into Outranking’s available keyword generator
Refine the list of keywords using Outranking’s streamlined cluster analysis
Download the refined list of keywords for each core area and combine them into one file for easier management
Repeat this process for each sub-group in each core area, such as “air duct cleaning” or “air purifier installation”
Step 3: Determine Topic Ideas Based On Keyword Clustering
Keyword clustering is the process of grouping similar keywords into semantic terms and intent groups. It helps you identify the most relevant keywords for your HVAC website and create a content strategy that targets those keywords.
For HVAC companies, keyword clustering can be beneficial in improving your online visibility and attracting potential customers. By grouping the keywords into clusters, you can focus on creating content that targets specific clusters, making it easier for search engines to understand the website’s relevance to the user’s search query.
For example, a sample HVAC services keyword list can include keywords like “air conditioning repair,” “heating installation,” “duct cleaning,” “thermostat installation,” and “emergency HVAC services.”
These keywords can be grouped into clusters like “air conditioning services,” “heating services,” “duct services,” “thermostat services,” and “emergency services.” By doing so, the HVAC website can create content that targets each cluster, making it easier for search engines to understand the website’s relevance to the user’s search query.
You also have to pick a primary keyword for each cluster. To do so, you should think about:
Your ability to create better content than your HVAC competitors
The number of backlinks your competitors in the HVAC industry have
The knowledge gap or underserved area in the intent
One important thing to remember is that hiring an SEO team can be very useful if your HVAC business doesn’t have one already. Alternatively, you can use Outranking’s keyword clustering tool if working with an SEO team is not possible.
Step 4: Establish A Content Calendar And Prioritize Your Keywords
The first thing to do here is to make a list of primary keywords and groups related to your HVAC business. Once you have your list, you can use Outranking to help prioritize your keywords.
Outranking’s priority-setting feature allows you to set priorities from high to low. For an HVAC contracting website, you can prioritize your keywords as follows:
Can define you as a thought leader and support your important HVAC web pages for the flow of information
Low
HVAC energy efficiency, HVAC tips, HVAC DIY
Can define you as a thought leader and support your important HVAC web pages for the flow of information
Step 5: Build a Content Production Process, and Create SEO Content Briefs
For an HVAC contracting business looking to implement SEO, it’s important to have a well-defined process in place to ensure the success of the strategy. Here are two tips to help you:
1. Create Solid Content Briefs
Before you even start writing, you should know what you’re writing, and who you’re writing for. You should also know what keywords you’re targeting. A solid SEO content brief will usually have those details. And when you have them, everyone in the content creation process will be on the same page, to ensure your content meets the desired objectives.
2. Set up a Workflow for Tasks
A well-defined and optimal workflow helps to ensure that all tasks are completed on time and that the content is optimized for SEO. By setting up a workflow, the navigation of responsibilities becomes easy and you can ensure that all stakeholders are aware of their roles.
Using Outranking’s content planner can help HVAC contracting businesses ensure the success of their SEO plan. Outranking’s planner has a predefined workflow status that can be customized to fit your HVAC business’s specific needs.
The planner also has a Kanban view that allows you to see the stage of your documents at a glance. Additionally, Outranking’s integrated tool can be used to build content briefs or create content directly in the SEO content strategy.
If you don’t have much time on your hands, we recommend you work with Outranking or an SEO agency. The experts can help you set up a plan for your business and optimize your content to meet your audience’s needs and achieve your objectives. This way, you can focus your efforts on actual HVAC work, while the SEO pros handle, well, the SEO.
Step 6: Create SEO-Optimized Content for Your HVAC Website
Creating SEO-optimized content for each service page and blog is crucial to ensure your HVAC contracting business is spending money on content that will yield results. By optimizing your content, you can increase your website’s visibility and attract more organic traffic, which can lead to more leads and sales.
Outranking’s SEO content optimization and writing platform can help busy contractors with limited time to write and optimize these pages. With its advanced features, including real-time on-page SEO optimization, Outranking benchmarks your content against 20 competing pages from SERPs. This means you can optimize your metadata, outlines, word count, common and unique entities, lists, tables, statistics, media, links, etc.
Outranking can help you in your HVAC marketing strategy by creating content that ranks each and every time.
Step 7: Take Internal Links Optimization Seriously
Optimizing existing pages with better internal linking can help improve the website’s overall traffic by borrowing the authority of pages that are already ranking and transferring some of it to the page you want to rank for more keywords.
By analyzing the positions of existing HVAC web pages, you can find pages ranking between 1 and 10, which are the pages you should be looking to optimize. But these pages should have keywords in the top 4-14 positions to increase traffic.
Outranking can connect to Google Search Console and identify the page with internal linking opportunities by analyzing the positions of existing pages and providing suggestions for internal linking. With a little bit of patience, this effective strategy can improve your website’s performance and increase traffic.
Step 8: Acquire Backlinks and Local References for Your HVAC Business Website
Acquiring local citations and backlinks is crucial for the local SEO of your HVAC contracting website. Local citations are mentions of a business’s name, address, and phone number (NAP) on other websites, while backlinks are links from other websites to your website. These signals help search engines verify the existence, legitimacy, and trustworthiness of your HVAC business.
Local citations can help HVAC contractors with local SEO in several ways. First, they can help HVAC businesses rank higher for local search queries, as citations are the fifth most important ranking signal for local queries.
Second, they can help people discover your HVAC business online. Business directories often dominate search results for local queries, so being cited on these sites is essential for searchers to find your business.
Citations have two types: structured and unstructured. Structured citations list a business’s NAP information and are found on directory listings, HVAC listings, and social media profiles. Unstructured citations are contextual mentions of a business and are found in HVAC blog posts, forum posts, or as a result of press mentions.
To build local citations, one should follow these four steps:
Get listed with the ‘big three’ data aggregators: Acxiom, Data Axle, and Localeze. These aggregators distribute business information to thousands of websites, so getting listed with them is crucial for ensuring that your HVAC business information is accurate and consistent across the web
Submit to other core sites: These include Google My Business, Bing Places, and Yelp
Submit to popular industry and local sites: Submit your information to popular directories and local sites specific to the HVAC industry, like HomeAdvisor, Angie’s List, and the Better Business Bureau
Pursue unstructured citations: Try to get mentioned on relevant HVAC blogs, forums, and other websites.
Here are some of the data aggregators and recommended websites for HVAC contractors:
Data Aggregator
Recommended Websites for Citations
Acxiom
Yellow Pages, SuperPages, CitySearch
Infogroup
Yelp, FourSquare, Yahoo Local
Localeze
Bing Places, Facebook, Google Maps, LinkedIn
Step 9: Optimize Page Speed and Website Experience
You should really optimize your HVAC contracting website’s page speed in 2023. Page speed can make or break the user experience on your website, which directly affects bounce rates and search engine rankings.
To quickly optimize page speed and website experience for HVAC contracting websites, you can use better and lighter themes like the HVAC contractor theme available on Codecanyon and Nitropack-like WordPress plugins. These tools can help improve website performance, reduce load times, and enhance user experience. And don’t forget to optimize your website for mobile users too!
Step 10: Track Rankings Using Google Search Console
Google Search Console can help you track your HVAC website’s ranking. This way, you can see where you can improve your website’s content and structure, ultimately leading to increased organic traffic and potential leads.
To interpret the website ranking data and take action, an HVAC contractor can use the following table:
Goal
Ranking Data to Look For
Action to Take
Optimize Internal Linking
Pages with keywords in the top 4-14 positions
Improve internal linking structure to improve PageRank
Build Topical Authority
Pages with no ranking keywords in the top 20 positions that don’t align with the user’s search intent
Uncover new areas and ideas to create fresh content that can easily rank
Improve Underperforming Pages
Pages with no ranking keywords in the top 20 positions that don’t align with the user’s search intent
Improve or redirect underperforming pages
Step 11: Optimize Your HVAC Business’s Local Google My Business Account
Google My Business is a free service that allows businesses including HVAC businesses to provide more information about their business when it appears in search results, including photos, videos, business hours, and location. Here’s what you can do to optimize your HVAC contracting company’s local listing:
Claim and verify your business listing. Only provide accurate and up-to-date info
Choose a specific and relevant category for your business. Here, you can use “HVAC contractor” or “Air conditioning repair service” to help Google understand what you do
Add high-quality photos. Showcase your team, HVAC relevant equipment, and services to build trust with customers
Encourage customers to leave reviews. Promptly respond to negative reviews in a respectful way, and try to find a solution for the customer’s issue
Use Google My Business Insights. Track how customers are finding and interacting with your listing, including how many people are viewing your photos, clicking on your website, or requesting directions
Ensure your website is optimized for local search. Include your NAP information on every page, use local keywords in your content, and build high-quality backlinks from other local websites
While these steps can be done in-house, it’s also recommended to work with HVAC marketing companies that specialize in local SEO to ensure everything is done correctly and efficiently.
Step 12: Focus on the Ultimate Goal — Leads and Conversions
Organic traffic is a very cost-effective way to attract clients. But beware — organic traffic alone isn’t enough. Here’s why:
A short-tailed keyword like “HVAC” can bring in a lot of organic traffic. But, it’s only bringing traffic from people who are looking for the definition of the term HVAC, or even looking for general information about heating and cooling.
Unfortunately, these people aren’t likely to become actual leads. But if you use more specific keywords, like “emergency HVAC repair”, you may not get as much organic traffic — but the traffic you do get will be from potential clients, who actually need your HVAC expertise.
So don’t get blinded by traffic alone. Look for ways to generate traffic that has a high potential to generate more leads and conversions. This will ultimately be key to your business’s success.
How to Evaluate an Agency to Help with SEO of Your HVAC Business
We’ve gathered three key things you should assess before choosing an agency to help you with your SEO:
1. Expertise, Reviews, and Results
Expertise
Look for an agency that has experience working with clients in the HVAC industry. This means they’ll have a good understanding of your niche, so they can adopt a customized approach for your business.
Reviews
Previous customers are a great source of info about the company’s work. So, look online for reviews from the agency’s previous collaborations. Do they seem like a success? You can also ask the agency to provide you with case studies to showcase how they’ve handled previous clients’ challenges.
Results
The agency you choose should have a proven track record of improving its clients’ SEO. So, look for statistics that show how well the agency has helped boost a client’s organic traffic, keyword rankings, SERP rankings, etc. Don’t buy into flashy words used by salesmen. Look for actual results.
2. SEO Services Offered
Creativity and Innovation
SEO isn’t one-size-fits-all. Sure, its principles are mostly the same, but no two companies can have the exact same SEO strategy. So your agency of choice should have a creative, innovative approach to your SEO strategy. This will ensure they can address your challenges effectively, in a way that yields the best results.
Real-World SEO Experience
SEO is easy on paper, but in reality, it’s a complex practice with many intricacies. So look for an agency with at least 10-15 years of experience in SEO. This way, they’ll know for sure how to handle any new curveballs the world of search engines throws at them, and your business SEO strategy can be done by true experts.
3. Contract Duration and Flexibility
Ensure that the agency offers a contract duration that works for your HVAC contracting business and allows for flexibility in case you need to make changes. For example, if you need to adjust your SEO strategy due to changes in your business, ensure that the agency can accommodate those changes without penalty.
Need an SEO Strategist to Set up the Plan and Answer all the Pressing Questions?
Your HVAC contractor business needs a solid SEO plan to improve its search engine ranking. But that can be easier said than done, especially because SEO is intricate and always changing.
This is where an SEO consultant can come into play. Outranking’s SEO consultant and strategist can work with you to develop a comprehensive strategy that aligns with your HVAC business goals and ensures you know everything you need to know before hiring an agency.
Our consultant can help you with planning and execution to ensure everything goes smoothly and you get the right results for your HVAC contracting business. You can be confident that you’re making the right decisions for your business and that you’re on the path to success.
Contact us today to become the top HVAC contractor in your region!