8 Tips to Boost Your HVAC SEO: The Ultimate HVAC SEO Plan

How’s your HVAC SEO drip?

Have you been letting it slip?

In about 13 minutes, with 8 clear steps – 

Hook Agency has got clear-cut tips, to help you get a grip.

No – this article isn’t just a re-written, re-hashed, boiled down and bull$hit garbage can of the same old – from other websites. Each one of these tips has been ‘hand-tested’ by ME (a 10-year veteran of SEO), and ‘hand-selected’ for you – an HVAC marketing aficionado.

If you want to do these tips yourself today – there will be clear instructions for each one.

…or If you want to better understand HVAC SEO so you can delegate more effectively. (Bravo!)

But don’t skip them, even if they feel like review. From one smart cookie – to another, it always pays to let other high-performers sharpen us.

Just to give some context – and help you ‘buy-in’ to reading every word of this article. I was the primary SEO on this website last year (over 1.5M page-views) and have helped craft the effective strategy that drives 10’s of thousands of leads for our 40+ home services clients every year. We have 60+ five-star reviews, I’ve written 3 books, and have been featured on Inc.com, Forbes.com, and NeilPatel.com.

Step One: De-index thin and duplicate content with Yoast or RankMath, Get a second opinion on your setup

It’s not that crazy hard to do – but making sure you de-index thin and duplicate content (and get an initial overall technical SEO setup on your website) is important foundationally for your website’s SEO.

• Two culprits are ‘tags & categories’ so (unless these extra pages are being used structurally on the website) tick the box to de-index this in your SEO settings.
• In short – go through the easy set-up of your SEO plugin if it has that option, and de-index everything that doesn’t have a ton of content on the items (testimonials & portfolio are common one’s on commercial WordPress themes.)
• When setting up your sitemaps – dis-include any of these items, unless they are being used to house 200+ words on each item.
• After you’ve gone through your basic technical SEO setup in one of these plugins, submit your XML Sitemap to Google via Google Search Console, and ensure they’re aren’t any errors.
• These first few weeks – you’ll want to watch for 4XX errors (in WordPress backend if you’re using RankMath) and watch for indexing or speed errors in Google Search Console.
• Use a plugin like WP Fastest Cache or Nitropack.io to crank up your websites speed, toggle the settings back and forth – getting the highest possible minification, combining, caching, and compression while ensuring everything still works.
• Even though I’m an old pro at technical SEO – I always have another professional look at my set up, and you should be no different. It takes 3-4 hours to do an initial technical set-up for me, a half an hour for someone else to check my work, and could mean life or death for my website’s visibility, so it’s worth it.

Step Two: Create an undeniably good content strategy with Ahrefs or SEMRush

While lookey here – we’re back at that lovely step of ‘creating quality content.’

If you’ve been in marketing for 5 years, you’ll have heard this over and over until your ears bleed.

So I’ll go through as practical of tips on actual quality content creation, rather than swim in pleasantries:

1. Use Ahrefs to find things your competitors are ranking for, and attack those from a new angle.
2. Always think about the ‘intent’ of the searcher, and analyze the Search Engine Results pages relentlessly to fully understand what that search is really intending to get at, and what the other results are doing well.
3. Think creatively about how you can not just WRITE, but also CRAFT VISUALLY a better piece of content.
4. Ensure your ‘single blog post’ template is well designed, all your text styles are easily read, and you have good call-to-actions in your content and at the end of the page.
5. Opt for systems that create giant guides vs. tiny posts when possible, and focus on what’s really going to make you money – what keywords have a volume of searches, are reasonably easy enough to rank for, and where are you getting momentum. Push into what’s working as you start to rank, and always refresh old posts, and make your content more visually appealing.

If you create more comprehensive content that intentionally is useful for real humans and you’re intent-focused, I promise you – you’ll include enough keywords… but I still sprinkle them in a little bit more often because I’m aggressive like that. 😉

Step Three: Know Who, how often, and with what quality checklist your writers (or you) are blogging and writing landing pages

Let’s say you write 5 amazing blog posts for your HVAC SEO plan, but then you kind of stall out.

You have 10 other marketing activities to do, you’re pulled into redesigning the proposals – you have to attend a trade show, and the banner isn’t going to design itself.

5 Months later, and your HVAC SEO Plan, is a bust. Or so you thought!

It’s time to double back, and create systems and rhythms around your content creation that happen even when you aren’t constantly pushing:

1. Get a freelance writer (or an SEO team) to help you, and commit them to 4 pieces of content a month.
2. You can still write big guides, or create epic content when you have the chance.
3. You need to have a drip of content happening every week ideally, and expanding your buckets of content even when you don’t have time.

Step Four: Create link-worthy assets, and use a steady link-building frequency to get momentum

Link-building is real.

Don’t let Google tell you it doesn’t work any more.

They basically just want to sell you ads, and I’m not even mad at them – just understand their incentives are not aligned to allow them to tell you the truth about what works and what doesn’t in their search engine’s algorithm.

Here are the link-building activities I would start with:

1. Local Directory Listings.
2. Press release distribution.
3. Social Fortress linking.

Then I would move on to create a monthly drip of links with:

1. Guest post link efforts.
2. Niche Edits
3. Premium digital PR-style links like a Forbes or Inc.com link when possible.

In addition to these link-building activities – create content and do things that get links:

• Statistics posts.
• Inspiration type posts.
• Discounts + local promotions
• Sponsorship higher profile local events, groups and non-profits.
• Be on local news as a subject matter expert any chance you get! (Just make sure they link back to your website 🙂

Step Five: Use Search Console, Ahrefs, + Surfer SEO to Do ‘On Page SEO’ for your top and most lucrative posts and pages, doubling down on what’s working

My absolute favorite thing to do on our website now – is ‘On Page SEO’ – that just means going back to old content or landing pages and tweaking the copy and elements on the page so that what’s already working can do even better.

1. I check search console and find pages that have a large amount of impressions and a low amount of clicks.
2. I look at what terms its showing up for that I could better service.
3. I’ll add subheadlines, or FAQ’s at the bottom of the page to further service that intent, drop the keyword in there a few times, add some more useful images / graphs, and perhaps tweak the meta title and description to frontload the keyword and use language that invites a click.
4. Overall – I look around for ways to improve that post or page, and be useful to people. Yes, the more words – often the more useful you can be, but sometimes trimming content helps too, just empathize with your audience and be relentless trying to be helpful.

Step Six: Continue your lead with Podcasting, Video, and Pitching the media

Advanced linking efforts if you’re able to, are ideal:

1. Help a Reporter Out – Pitching the media a few times a day or week.
2. Podcasting – and being on other people’s podcasts drives a ton of links.
3. Video marketing, and connecting to more influencers drives links and referral leads.

Step Seven: Using Internal linking to distribute link power throughout your website, and create topical clusters

When you have a group of posts on your website that generally go together – they should have links to each other too.

• Add ‘breadcrumbs’ so people can easily navigate around your site up and down your heirarchy.
• Consider using sub-menu’s, or sidebar menu’s to help people easily find their way to related content.
• In each of your key topical buckets, go through and link each of the items to the others – in the content itself with keywords that make sense. These are the most powerful links (not the sidebar or navbar links.)
• The higher on the page the more powerful the link!

Internal Links are so powerful – and people aren’t utilizing them as well as the can be! Start by creating a spread sheet of your top topical clusters that you want to rank for, identify gaps, get the internal linking going, and make this central to your HVAC SEO strategy for the long-term.

Step Eight: Leverage Local Business Schema, FAQ Schema, Rating Schema in Search Results to Grab Attention

Overall – Local Schema and FAQ Schema are great options for roofing companies looking to create a bit more presence in the SERP. Local schema doesn’t always show up in the SERP, but when it does show up it’s very eye-grabbing. Particularly when it shows the star count, just make sure that you enter the information correctly so that Google is more likely to properly parse/’understand’ the information you’re feeding it. Try to make Google’s job easier.

Setting up local business schema with Rankmath is easy – here are the steps to do that:

I love using Matthew Woodward’s tool for FAQ schema – check it out here.

It has options for simple code, or a functions.php snippet if you enter the post or page number.

Also – RankMath now has an FAQ option in Gutenberg for WordPress now, so consider using that for a very simple option!

After you’ve created local and/or FAQ schema for a certain page and have entered it in your site, make sure to re-submit that page to Search Console. Google is slow to crawl based on these submissions, but it’s safe to presume that it will get crawled faster than if you didn’t submit it.

Does your HVAC Company need a Powerful Online Marketing Team?

Do all of this internally or outsource it to an HVAC SEO team?

Here are a few considerations before deciding:

• Are you trying to grow your business – or just maintain?
• Are you under 1M and could learn to do some of this yourself?
• Are you over 10M and have multiple marketing people internally, and could now hire an SEO specialist internally?
• Would it be more efficient for something that requires deep expertise (like SEO) to just do this piece of your marketing plan through and experienced agency?
• How much would 12-20 more high-quality inbound leads mean in revenue to your company a month?

Hook Agency is a Google Specialized Team That Actually Cares about contractors

We’re not trying to serve medical, lawyers, and HVAC companies – we only serve contractors and home services businesses, because that allows us to better focus.

• All of our processes are built around contractors,.
• All of our connections around link-building are built for contractors.
• All of our writers are focused on contractors, and writing for home-owners (and property managers in the case of commercial work.)

We’re here for you – if you’re ready to take your HVAC Search Engine Optimization efforts to the next level. Our HVAC SEO Services are right for you, if you’re growing and could use a partner that’s fully specialized (while getting all of the benefits of our ‘economies of scale’ – allowing us get the result of an 80k salary in a 50k price tag with an average of 4-5 people touching your account monthly.)

Send us a message now to get started!

Frequently Asked Questions about Search Engine Optimization for HVAC Companies:

Further Reading – Original Post from 2020:

When it comes to getting your site to rank higher on Google, it is not the easiest of tasks, which is why you probably came to this post about HVAC SEO tips.

There is a lot of information and SEO companies out there, but a good chunk of those companies and information are not doing the right things to get you to where you want to be.

That is why we made this list of HVAC SEO tips so you can level up your business and get the leads you have been looking for.

Let’s get started!

1. Ensure your Google My Business listing is fully complete and kept up to date

If you don’t have a Google My Business listing, you need to make one ASAP!

You don’t even need to have a website in order to do this so there shouldn’t be anything holding you back from doing so.

So what should you know about Google My Business?

• You can sign up even if you don’t have a website.
• Make sure you’re getting reviews
• Your name, address, and phone number should be consistent across the web.
• Throw in a photo or two of team members and your office, even if they aren’t professionally done.
• Make sure all the fields are filled out – and whip through it.

2. Get More Online Reviews

Getting reviews for your business may be one of the most underrated HVAC SEO tips on this list. You may not think it, but having good reviews is extremely important, especially now that so many people go to them when making a final decision on a product or service.

Thinking your business is doing fine without them? After all, it’s just a review, right? What will that do for my business?

What can 5-star reviews do for my business?

Google uses 5-star reviews when they decide who is showing on the top of the maps. It is also a great way to get more trust from potential customers. When they see the experience other people have had with your business, they are more willing to choose you because they know what to expect.

I already have reviews, I’m good, right?

If you already have some reviews and think all is fine and dandy, you may want to think again.
A few good reviews just isn’t enough, and as your reviews get older, consumers may not think they are as valid. That is why it is important to continue getting them.

How do I get more reviews?

The process of getting reviews may be simpler than you think.

Honestly, it’s just as simple as asking clients that you’ve completed work for. You can do this through a kindly-worded email or phone call.

You may be more likely to get them to do it by making it more likely for them by giving directions or a guide/process on how they are able to leave a review.

It is also a good idea for you to respond to the reviews left on your page whether they are good or bad. When you respond to the negative, it is important to take ownership and how that you are taking responsibility and are trying to improve from past mistakes.

3. Incorporate Video

Video is a great tool for you to improve your HVAC SEO.

With the popularity of video being greater than ever before, this is something that you should be taking full advantage of. Your potential customers are looking to be entertained and are searching for easier ways to consume their information.

Where should I put my videos?

Now more than ever people are going onto YouTube to learn something new. In fact, YouTube is the second-highest search engine only behind Google.

Another great reason for using YouTube as a host for your video is that you are also easily able to embed videos from YouTube into your website pages and blog posts.

How does video help with my SEO?

When you have video, you are able to bring people onto your website for longer and bring up the engagement on the site.

One thing that Google pays close attention to for its ranking algorithm is user engagement and how those users interact with what’s on your page. When you put video on your page, it will help to keep them there for longer so Google can take that information and use it to boost your SEO ranking. This is because it sees time-on-page as people liking your content and seeing it as useful so you can be rewarded for it.

Here is a great video explaining why video is Good for SEO:

4. Optimize Site Speed

These days, speed is king and is becoming more and more important for the users and improving search engine rankings.

When you have a slow site that keeps users waiting, it causes them to become impatient and move on to a competitor’s site that is actually responding.

How can I make my site faster?

This is one of those questions that depends on the way your particular site was built. If you have a site that is built on WordPress like the sites we build, here are some great options for you to utilize.

• When you use image compression plugins, they will optimize your images files so they are optimized for quicker downloads.
• Use caching plugins so you can enable browser caching.
• Remove any of the plugins that you aren’t using and be sure to maintain it.

5. Start Making Quality SEO Content

Content is becoming more and more important for SEO, but it can be difficult to stand out with all the other content out there. That is why good and quality content is important.

Where can I get started with getting good content?

The starting point for good SEO content is going to start with the keyword research. This helps you to target your niche and get them the useful information that they are searching for.

What else can I do for good content?

• Make your content unique and don’t just copy the competition. You can do similar work and improve on what they have done.
• Have content that is user-friendly and written in a simple way for your audience to understand. You are trying to be helpful here, not prove how much you know.
• Make sure your content is laid out with good formatting and headings.
• Try to make your content engaging and interesting. Things like video and graphs are great for this because it will increase engagement and keep people interested.

6. De-index thin & duplicate content

DO NOT SKIP THIS!!!!!

This is a critical HVAC SEO tip for most companies out there.

You want to make sure that your website does not have a lot of thin and duplicating content.

This may seem like a simple and unimportant thing to do, but it is massively important.

How can I check for thin and duplicate content?

You can check for this just by simply looking on the backend of your website and check for duplicates.

You can also just Google “site:yourwebsite.com” to see if a bunch of random and unimportant pages show up for your site.

7. Be Mobile Responsive

In the world we’re living in today, not being mobile responsive will destroy your efforts in SEO.

With so many people browsing the web on their mobile devices and tablets, it is more important than ever to have a website that they are able to navigate and have a good experience with. In fact, more searches are coming from these types of devices over the standard desktop computer and laptops.

Why is mobile-friendly so important for my SEO?

Part of the algorithm Google has is testing your site for mobile-friendliness and indexing websites for mobile-first.

What can I do to make sure that my website is optimized for mobile?

A few things you can do for making sure your website is optimized for mobile are the following:.

• Check to make sure all your content can be accessed from mobile devices.
• Be sure you have a ‘responsive’ design for your mobile design.

Now that you have some of the best HVAC SEO tips out there, it’s time to put them into action. Good Luck!

So now – here are your next steps:

Are you unsatisfied with your HVAC website’s Google rankings? If you’d like to boost your site’s search engine rankings, you need to develop a solid SEO strategy and follow it consistently. Here are 10 steps HVAC SEO services agencies take to improve SEO for HVAC companies.

1. Target Better Keywords

If you want to drive more search engine optimization traffic for money-making HVAC terms, you need to get better at targeting the right keywords for HVAC companies. When it comes to HVAC SEO, you can’t just choose any popular keyword. For SEO for HVAC companies, you need to carefully select your SEO keyword based on several factors. 

Here’s what an HVAC company should look for in terms of SEO for HVAC companies when performing keyword research for search engine optimization: 

• Buyer intent: If HVAC companies want to make money from HVAC SEO keywords, focus more on those that display buyer intent. An example would be “HVAC technician to fix broken heating near me,” as opposed to “general heating care tips.” While both might be good for search engine optimization, they’re not equal in terms of potential search engine conversions. An HVAC SEO company can help you determine buyer intent. 
• Local SEO relevance: HVAC SEO keywords that include local relevance often convert better. 
• Monthly SEO volume: The HVAC SEO keyword needs to have a decent monthly SEO volume for it to drive traffic. An SEO services agency can determine the minimum SEO volume to look for in your area. 
• Low SEO competition for HVAC: If there is too much SEO competition or the HVAC SEO keyword difficulty score is high, you won’t rank high enough to get a significant amount of SEO HVAC traffic. SEO services agencies use a variety of ways to measure SEO competition. 

It’s best to invest in a powerful SEO keyword tool like SEMrush or Ahrefs for the best keyword suggestions. An HVAC SEO services agency usually has powerful tools at its disposal for search engine optimization keyword research. 

2. Publish Longer SEO Content

First-page results tend to have over 2,000 words. Longer-form SEO content provides more information, includes more natural SEO keywords for HVAC, and just ranks better for HVAC SEO. While there is a point when you may start to experience diminishing SEO returns, publishing longer HVAC articles can help you drive more traffic. 

3. Include More Media

If you aren’t yet including images in your posts for HVAC SEO, now is the time to start. In addition, consider embedding videos from YouTube and creating infographics for your articles. It’s important not to upload videos directly to your site, as that can slow it down. An HVAC SEO company can help you find appropriate images for your HVAC site. 

If you have existing HVAC posts that aren’t ranking to your satisfaction, consider revising and improving them by adding more words, images, and embedded videos for improved HVAC SEO rankings. 

4. Optimize Your Metadata

On-page SEO optimization by a professional HVAC SEO company can help a particular page rank better for specific HVAC SEO keywords. Including the keyword once might not be enough. Try including the main keyword in your title and at least once or twice in the article, particularly in a subheading. 

You should also include the keyword in your meta title and description for better HVAC SEO rankings. The meta title and description should also be eye-catching and include a CTA. The title shouldn’t be over 60 characters, while the description shouldn’t be over 160; that way, they won’t get cut off in a search engine. 

5. Optimize Your URL Structure

Many business owners leave their URLs as they are by default, without optimizing them for HVAC SEO. You can change your URL to make them shorter and to include your target HVAC SEO keyword so it will look better in a search engine. It’s also critical to create parent and child pages for page structure optimization. 

6. Create & Submit a Sitemap

HVAC companies should create a sitemap of their site using a tool like Yoast SEO. Then, submit that sitemap to each search engine, primarily Google Search Central and Bing Webmasters. This sitemap will contain all of your site’s URLs and update automatically, so the search engines will know about new pages you add. 

7. Create a GMB Profile for Your HVAC Company

Having and optimizing a Google My Business profile should be one of your HVAC SEO strategy priorities. Indeed, it is one of the most important aspects of any local digital marketing strategy. 

A well-rounded GMB profile will allow you to appear in the “local pack” of GMB profiles that show up at the top of local searches. Not only can you get more local HVAC SEO traffic, but you can appear in Google Maps searches too. Google Maps must be part of your HVAC SEO strategy too. 

Here are some Google My Business SEO optimization tips for HVAC companies who want to improve their HVAC SEO strategy:  

• Make sure to create a service-area business profile by not adding a physical location, unless you have a store with permanent signage where you serve customers. If you only go to them, you are a service-area business that can choose up to 20 zip codes or areas as your service areas. 
• Choose the best HVAC category and subcategories as relevant to your business services. 
• Add HVAC pictures, a description, your contact information, a link to your site, and other relevant information. 
• Publish Google My Business HVAC posts with relevant updates for more SEO traffic.  
• Encourage reviews and respond to all of them, both positive and negative. 

8. Build Local Citations

While a Google My Business listing is vital for HVAC SEO for HVAC contractors, other listings are important for HVAC SEO too. For example, you can create digital marketing listings for SEO on: 

• TripAdvisor
• Yelp
• Apple Maps

While those are the big ones for digital marketing, there are also some SEO directories specific to HVAC companies. HomeAdvisor is a good one, but there are others. Also, there are local digital marketing directories that list services just for your city, neighborhood, or town, and try to get listed in those too to improve your HVAC SEO. 

When creating a directory listing for SEO for HVAC contractors, make sure to include a link back to your site. Also, you want your NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) to be the same across all listings and on your SEO website. That includes even the format of your phone number — if you use parentheses in one listing, try to use them in all. 

9. Create a Local Backlink Strategy

While on-page HVAC SEO is critical, you can’t neglect off-page HVAC SEO either. That starts with drafting a solid backlink strategy. 

Backlinks are correlated with higher HVAC SEO rankings, but the type of SEO backlink you get matters a great deal. Ever since Google’s anti-spam algorithm updates (many years back at this point), businesses need to focus on creating high-quality links instead of just aiming for a higher quantity. 

There are a few ways to build backlinks. As HVAC contractors, however, SEO relevance is one of the things you shouldn’t negotiate on. You shouldn’t build a backlink from a bicycle-themed blog unless it’s also a local blog in your area that talks about local events and businesses regularly. The best backlinks are from blogs in the HVAC niche — not competitors, but websites that give general advice and tips. 

There are several ways to build such HVAC SEO backlinks, but guest posting remains one of the strongest and most effective ones. Before reaching out to other blogs and suggesting a guest post idea, however, you need to do your research and create a list of worthwhile blogs to get backlinks from. 

There are other ways to build SEO backlinks too, and an agency that specializes in HVAC SEO services can use a combination of them to achieve the best results. An HVAC SEO services agency, for example, might use broken link building to get links quicker. 

10. Audit Your Existing Backlink Profile

As part of a strategy for SEO for HVAC contractors, it’s also worth taking some time to research your existing backlinks. You want to do this for a few reasons: 

• You might find that competitor HVAC contractors have created spammy backlinks pointing to your site with malicious intent as part of their black-hat SEO strategy to get your SEO rankings to drop. If that’s the case, you can disavow those links. 
• It allows you to form your digital marketing and SEO strategy going forward by learning which type of SEO content on your site attracts the most links. 
• It allows you to improve your SEO strategy by learning which blogs to reach out to in your SEO backlink outreach campaigns. 

When it comes to SEO for HVAC contractors, you can’t rely on SEO services that cater to general websites’ SEO services needs; you need an agency that can work with an HVAC company like yours for SEO and has experience doing so. Your SEO needs are specific and our HVAC marketing agency can help you meet them.