Keyword Research for Plumbing Companies: Tips and Tricks

Did you know that there are more than 300,000 queries for plumbers each month?

The keywords you use on your website and in the content, you publish matter. It's what's going to connect you to users who are searching for the plumbing services you offer and get you the customers you need to start growing your business.

You might think that all you need to do is look for the most popular SEO for plumbing companies’ keywords and you’ve got a list of terms to incorporate on your site, but it’s actually more complex than that.  

Not all top-performing keywords are worth competing for. They may also not be the best keywords to help you achieve a certain goal.  

Sometimes, you need to take a strategic approach to make sure you can effectively rank at the top for keywords that you know will get you leads.  

Want to know what keywords you should be ranking for? Read on!

SEO Keyword Research for Plumbing Companies

Search engine optimization is the process of improving your website and its content so that it ranks high for relevant plumbing searches. As a result, users can see your business right away and reach out to you.  

Part of this optimization process is doing keyword research to figure out the right keywords to use in the content you publish and on your website.  

Keyword research is an ongoing process of finding and analyzing actual search terms that your ideal customers use in search engines to find plumbing information on the web.  

The insight you generate from doing keyword research allows you to create a more strategic content plan that will put your plumbing company ahead of the competition and reach new customers online.  

Choosing The Best Keywords for Your Plumbing Website

A lot of plumbing companies use generic SEO for plumbing companies’ keywords with high search volume because it means a lot of people are using these terms in their search.  

Although these keywords can generate huge amounts of traffic to your website, there's no guarantee that these users will turn into customers. Plus, high-volume keywords are incredibly hard to rank for.

The best way for you to rank high and be able to attract traffic that is likely to become customers is to determine relevant long-tail keywords that have enough search volume.  

Long-tail keywords are search terms that are more specific to your business. Although they generate less traffic, they do attract users who are more likely to turn into customers.  

Some examples of long-tail keywords are “affordable plumbing services in Miami”, “the best local plumbers in Fort Lauderdale”, or “affordable toilet installation in Florida”.  

SEO Keyword Research Tips for Plumbing Companies

1. Find Long-Tail Keywords‍

There are two types of keywords you need to know about: long-tail keywords and head keywords.  

Head keywords are generic search terms that drive high search volume. Meaning a lot of people’s searches contain these words. Long-tail keywords, on the other hand, are more specific search terms. This is why they tend to be longer.  

Lesser people use these terms in their search – they are those who are ready to buy.  

To differentiate head keywords from long-tail keywords, here’s an example:  

• Head Keyword – “Plumbers Near Me”
• Long-tail Keywords – “The Best Affordable Plumbers in Miami”

Here’s how you can find long-tail keywords:

• “Searches related to…” section in Google – Search for the “searches related to” results of a long-tail keyword in Google. This is a great way to build up your list of long-tail keywords.  
• People Also Ask – Another way to determine what long-tail keywords you should be writing about or optimizing for is to go to the "people also ask" box. This will give you an idea of what questions people ask around the topic of the term you typed in.  

• Google Search Console (GSC) – You can use the GSC performance report to find out the long-tail keywords that you rank for on the nd  Google. You can do this by going to the performance report and then sorting the list by position. Scroll down until you see positions 10-15. Find out the search volume for the keywords that rank in these positions using the Google Keyword Planner. Create more content for these keywords so you can rank on the first page for them.  
• Use Answer the Public – Use this keyword research tool to generate question-focused keywords related to your plumbing business.  
• Quora – Find out what questions people commonly have about plumbed and topics that are related to it. You can use this platform to guide your overall content strategy and determine long-tail keywords.  
• Google Suggestions – Use Google’s autofill search suggestions to find out what the popular plumbing search topics are. Here’s a trick you can use to get Google to suggest a long-tail keyword: use an underscore in the middle of a phrase. For example:” best_plumbers in Miami”. Google will then show you a list of commonly searched words in place of the underscore.  
• Google Trends – Some keywords are more popular during certain seasons compared to others. When choosing what keywords to use, find out first which search terms are trending for a specific time of the year using Google Trends. This way you know what topics to write about and what keywords to optimize for.  

2. Research Your Competitors

Aside from finding out what keywords you should use in your website and its content, you also want to research your competitors and find out what keywords they use and which ones they’re ranking for successfully.  

By knowing which keywords your competitors dominate and what they’re doing to achieve this result, you can discover what you need to do to boost your search rankings too!  

Here’s what you need to do to reverse engineer your competitor’s SEO for plumbing companies’ strategy:

Identify your top competitors: List down your competitors, and then establish what qualifies them as competition. There are two criteria for this:

• Nature of competition – Identify if the businesses on your list are direct competitors or indirect. Direct competitors are companies that offer the same plumbing products or services as you. Indirect competitors, on the other hand, offer a different product or service but solve the same pain points as your business does.  
• Size of target – Determine if this specific competitor on your list is a big player in your niche or a soft target.  

Collect performance metrics for each competitor: You need to know what you’re competing against so you need to have a thorough look at your competitor’s web assets.  

There are tools you can use to help you do this, such as BuzzSumo, SEMRush, Google Adwords, and Ahref’s Keyword Explorer.  

For every competitor, collect the following information:

• Domain score
• Organic monthly traffic

• Organic keywords
• Number of domains that link back to their site

Measure the overall SEO health of your competitors’ plumbing companies: You want to know how competitive your competitors are. Make sure you monitor the following:

• Traffic demographic
• Average monthly visits

• Pageviews
• Bounce rate
• Time on site
• Traffic sources
• Top referrers

Use key success indicators to determine how well they’re doing in every stage of their customer journey: For every stage of the journey, there are corresponding keywords that every business uses to attract the right customers.  

• Awareness – Informational keywords. How do they engage with their audience? Is their content high-quality and optimized for SEO for plumbing companies?
• Consideration – Comparisons, product reviews, backlinks. What are people saying about your competitors?
• Conversion – Study your competitors’ PPC campaigns and ad copy. Determine their estimated Google Ads budget for paid keywords. Usually, if a company is spending money regularly for PPC campaigns, it means it’s getting them the customers they need to see a return on investment.  

Gather Your Competitors’ Keywords: Start gathering your competitors’ keywords and filter out highly competitive terms and those that don’t make sense for your business. You want to go after keywords that have enough search volume yet are not too competitive or those that your competitors are not optimizing for.  

If you want to compete for highly competitive keywords, you need to assess the following about your business first:

• Is your domain authority strong? You need to have a lot of quality links pointing to you to successfully compete against competitors who are already dominating certain keywords.  
• Do you have experience in SEO for plumbing companies? Will you be able to easily get backlinks from a network of other reliable sites?
• Can you produce high-quality content consistently to build your SEO and match your competitors’ blog posts, videos, and whatnot?

If your domain authority is strong,  can easily get backlinks, and can consistently produce high-quality content,  you can definitely compete against competitors who are dominating certain keywords.  

Just remember that this won’t happen overnight and may take months before you start seeing results.  

All this information you gather about your competitors will help you determine their weak spots and how you can beat them.  

3. Localize Your Keywords

If you have a local office and are serving within your local area only, it’s best to localize your keywords to target customers who are close to your location or within your target area.  

You can localize your plumbing keywords by adding the name of your city and surrounding cities.  

Here’s an example: “the best affordable plumbing company in Boca Raton”.  

Localizing your keywords helps you rank higher for local and “near me” searches.  

Do You Have a Keyword Strategy for SEO for Plumbing Companies?

Now that you know how to conduct keyword research, the next step is to have an SEO for plumbing companies keyword strategy in place.  

To start ranking high for your chosen long-tail keywords, you either create a blog optimized around them or naturally incorporate them into your content.  

At Digital Resource, our team of digital marketing experts and SEO specialists will work with you to create a custom content plan that will put your plumbing business ahead of your competitors.  

Want to get more clients online? Contact us today! We can help optimize your website so your target audience can see your business first.

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