Top 11 Proven HVAC SEO Strategies for Contractors

HVAC SEO–which is short for search engine optimization–can increase your traffic numbers and quality, help differentiate your business from the competition, and elevate your sales. What are some services your company can’t go without?

The following HVAC SEO strategies are integral to your marketing efforts:

• Google Business Profile and Google Maps
• Local Keyword research
• Local SEO for HVAC
• Website content strategy
• On-page optimization
• Conversion rate optimization
• Link building
• Technical SEO
• Site speed
• Mobile Optimization
• Performance and rank tracking 

In today’s guide, we’ll explore the importance of SEO for HVAC companies and its benefits. Then we’ll take a deep dive into SEO for HVAC contractors, including services and strategies. 

What Is SEO for HVAC Companies?

Let’s start with a definition of SEO for HVAC contractors.

As mentioned in the intro, SEO is short for search engine optimization, a marketing practice that determines where on the first page of a search engine result your website appears. 

Every company’s goal is to reach the top spot for their industry, niche, and city/town (in the case of local SEO), but there’s only one top spot.  

Even if your website ranks second or third on the page, being on the first page is important for visibility.  

When your website is bumped to the second page, you might as well be invisible.

Reputation management resource Reputation911 notes that 91.5 percent of all Google traffic comes from the first page. Only 4.8 percent goes to the second page, and 1.1 percent to the third page.

Okay, so that’s SEO in a nutshell, but what about HVAC SEO? 

SEO for HVAC contractors involves strategies and best practices to elevate your company’s spot in the Google rankings. 

What Are the Benefits of SEO for HVAC Contractors?

Are HVAC SEO services the right choice for your company? If you’re not pleased with where your website ranks, then the answer is absolutely. 

Here are some of the top perks of working with an HVAC SEO company.

More Traffic

Many websites without a professional-level SEO strategy get traffic trickles. Perhaps you notice an uptick in traffic from time to time, but it’s never sustained.

With SEO for HVAC contractors, the services instituted will result in more consistent traffic to your website. 

Higher-Quality Leads

You might have leads now, but how many of them are qualified?

A qualified lead enters your HVAC company’s search funnel already more informed than the average lead. They know a bit about your services and may be closer to reaching a purchasing decision. 

These leads could have a higher chance of converting, which grows your HVAC company’s audience further. 

Better Search Engine Rank

This is the premier goal of many companies looking to hire an HVAC SEO agency. They want to appear on the first page of search results and ideally capture that top spot on the first page as we talked about in the last section. 

Through the services we’ll discuss momentarily, such a goal is attainable! 

Brand Awareness

With more visibility comes people learning about your brand. As you continue to work with an HVAC SEO agency, you transition to strengthening your brand once most of your target audience has become aware of your company and your work. 

Increased Sales

Between better visibility, higher page ranks, and more qualified leads entering the sales funnel, SEO HVAC can increase a contractor’s sales.

11 Effective SEO Strategies For HVAC Contractors 

For the rest of this article, we want to go over the HVAC SEO strategies from the intro that are achievable with an SEO agency. 

Through all or a combination of these methods, your HVAC contracting business can improve your search engine ranking and enjoy the myriad of benefits that goes along with that! 

1. Google Business Profile and Google Maps

Does your HVAC company have a Google Business Profile?

If so, is the page filled out completely?

If you answered no or “I don’t know” to either of those questions, that’s the first thing your HVAC SEO agency will want to change.

According to marketing firm The Media Captain, when a lead checks out your Google Business Profile, the instances of that lead also visiting your website is more than 50 percent. 

At a glance, Google Business Profile provides all the pertinent information that would-be customers need to know about your HVAC business to make an educated purchasing decision. 

That includes your company name, your website, your address, your hours, your phone number, directions to your company, photos, and reviews. 

You can use Google Maps to claim your Google Business Profile. Here’s how to do it.

• Open Google Maps.
• Search for your HVAC business in the Google Maps search.
• Confirm your business name (or correct it if it’s wrong).
• Choose the “claim this business” option.
• Verify that you own the business. 

Having a completed Google My Business account can elevate your rank. You’ll also increase your visibility, so take the time to fill out your profile. 

2. Local Keyword Research

Another element of your HVAC SEO plan is keyword research. 

We’ll talk more about this shortly, but your HVAC website should have a blog where you regularly publish content. Keyword research helps you determine which relevant and highly sought-after keywords to target when producing content.

While you can use many keyword-generating tools on the Internet, that doesn’t mean that all keywords are created equally.

That’s why tools such as Google Keyword Planner and Moz Keyword Explorer exist, to check the veracity and search volume of a keyword.

Search volume refers to how often someone is searching for that keyword. The best keywords to target are relevant to your industry, and have a high search volume, but aren’t oversaturated. 

If you’ve struggled to find those kinds of keywords in the past, then SEO for HVAC contractor services is an especially fruitful choice for your business. 

3. Local SEO for HVAC

SEO for HVAC contractors must include a local element.

Unless your HVAC company operates on a nationwide or global scale, then you should target the customers in your neighborhood first, and that’s what local SEO is all about. 

In a previous post on our blog, here are some strategies for boosting your HVAC company’s local SEO:

• Deploy an HVAC social media strategy.
• Encourage customers to leave reviews and bolster your reputation through positive reviews.
• Add mobile search functionality to your website if you don’t already have it.
• Focus on local keyword research.
• Optimize your website.

4. Website Content Strategy

Your HVAC company might have a blog, but are you producing content that’s SEO-optimized? 

It’s more than that. Your content also has to be written for your audience. This requires a careful balancing act between keeping your customers top of mind and trying to better your HVAC SEO at the same time, but it is doable.

You’re already off to a good start in having done keyword research. After you optimize your website, you’ll also surely attract more leads that will be interested in reading your blog.

Keyword research will give you keywords or topics to target. It’s up to you to choose which topics will resonate the most with your audience and then produce that content.

According to marketing resource Hook Agency, in 2022, the favored word count for blog content is between 1,760 and 2,400 words. 

It should take an hour to an hour and a half to produce one blog post, but your HVAC company cannot publish only one post per week.

Having an editorial calendar will ensure your HVAC company continues publishing blog content around the clock.

When it comes to your content strategy, know that it’s more about quality than quantity. High-value content that prioritizes a user’s search intent is what will accelerate your HVAC company’s SEO ranking, not fluff. 

5. On-Page Optimization

An optimized website is tailored to your HVAC target audience and can increase your rate of organic traffic. 

Some of the HVAC SEO strategies that we’ll discuss a little later, such as link building, site speed prioritization, and mobile optimization, all count as on-page optimization strategies. Here are some others that are worth utilizing.

• Use off-site SEO: Off-site or off-page SEO is the external method you use to boost your website’s standing. From brand mentions to influence marketing, and guest blogging, these strategies can all increase your off-site SEO.
• Focus on on-site SEO: Don’t forget your on-site SEO as well. Now is a perfect time to go through your HVAC website and optimize your meta tags, URL slugs, sub-headlines, and headlines. Those keywords that you gathered through keyword research come in handy here.
• Design according to the user experience: Today, the user experience is critical when it comes to keeping a lead on your website. Your website needs a clear design, calls to action above the fold, and easy-to-use navigation.

If you’re struggling to pull your HVAC web design together, we have a handy list exemplifying the best in HVAC web design that should inspire your own web design choices moving forward. 

6. Conversion Rate Optimization

What is your current conversion rate? Marketing resource Aspire states that the average conversion rate for an HVAC website is between two and five percent.

With conversion rate optimization or CRO as an HVAC SEO strategy, you might be able to boost your conversion rate even more. 

CRO focuses on three areas, the drivers that attract traffic to your HVAC website, the barriers that prevent leads or customers from taking action, and the hook that makes them convert.

Your goal is to increase drivers so you’re getting more traffic while reducing barriers. 

For example, perhaps people find your website too cluttered, or you accidentally forgot to optimize your website for mobile. In those cases, with some web design changes, your HVAC website could be a converting machine.

Maybe leads feel like it’s too hard to find out information about your services. Perhaps they feel like your website is too impersonal.

By personalizing your website and rewriting your website copy, you’re reducing barriers one by one. 

7. Link Building

Another service that HVAC SEO agencies offer is known as link building.

Link building is about more than generating your own hyperlinks via your own HVAC website but obtaining links from other sites that go on your own site.

Link building carries with it a variety of benefits for your HVAC business. You’ll elevate your rate of organic search, build your brand, increase referral traffic, and form relationships with influencers. 

8. Technical SEO

Even if your SEO for HVAC solely encompasses local SEO at this point, you still want to incorporate technical SEO strategies into the mix as well. 

As the name implies, technical SEO focuses on the more technical aspects of your website to elevate its spot in the search engine rankings. 

Here are some best practices your HVAC company can utilize to increase your technical SEO:

• Use an XML sitemap. An XML sitemap is like the skeleton of your website and includes all the tags, pages, and posts therein. Search engines use the XML sitemap to gauge your site’s structure.
• Switch to HTTPS. Hypertext transfer protocol secure or HTTPS is a securer version of the regular HTTP websites that you’re used to browsing. Search engines like Google prioritize safer sites, giving them higher rankings because the sites are more trustworthy.
• No duplicate content: Duplicate content can happen but being cognizant of it and making a conscious effort to remove it as soon as it’s identified is critical in helping your HVAC SEO.
• No dead links: When someone clicks a link, any link, on your website, does it direct to the right location? No one wants to see 404 error pages, and search engines like Google won’t rank you favorably for dead links. Prune your links regularly and get rid of ones that no longer work.

9. Site Speed

Another element of technical SEO that warrants its own subsection is site loading speed. 

A slow-loading site is harder to be crawled, which increases how long it takes to be indexed.

Your customers and leads will also have little to no patience for a slow-loading site. You’ll know it because your bounce rate will steadily go up. 

Google recommends that your website loading speed be about two seconds or under, notes marketing resource Blue Corona.

Optimizing your images, reducing reliance on JavaScript and CSS files, lessening HTTP requests, and switching to a content delivery network or CDN should speed up your website. 

10. Mobile Optimization

With mobile website traffic still the lion’s share today, your HVAC website is missing out on far more traffic than you should be. 

Mobile optimization is about more than accommodating the way that most people browse the Internet but is about making a more responsive website regardless of screen size. 

In many cases, optimizing your website for mobile requires a fresh coat of paint on your current HVAC website design. You should also ensure that your plug-ins are mobile-optimized as well. 

11. Performance and Rank Tracking 

The last HVAC SEO service is tracking. 

If you’ve hired an agency for professional HVAC SEO services, then they should produce performance reports every week to every few weeks indicating how your site is performing and if you’re rising in the ranks. 

SEO is not an overnight change in your website rank. Even if you do everything right, it can still take time for Google or another search engine to recognize your efforts and reward you accordingly. 

Be patient and be diligent in your SEO strategy! 

Hire an HVAC SEO Agency Now

SEO for HVAC contractors is more than just a technical endeavor – it’s about connecting with your target audience in meaningful ways. How can you do it? You can focus your efforts on local SEO, so you’ll be the first to be found when your customers need it. And when they’re on your site, technical SEO ensures that everything runs smoothly.

All this cannot work without an adequate strategy for the contents of your site, and a link-building strategy that ensures you the right authority on search engines. If you’re looking for HVAC SEO services, the pros at Mediaboom can help. Contact us today for more information.