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Local SEO (or Search Engine Optimization) is vital for the success of today’s plumbing company.
In the not too distant past the number one place people went when they needed a plumber was to the Yellow Pages. People easily looked up the plumber and the results were listed or grouped by suburb and people could easily see where each plumber was located and could thus choose a local plumbing business and call their office and if you had invested in a nice big add, you got a large percentage of the business. Good or bad, those days are over – people do not open the Yellow Pages nearly as often – if at all.
So, if people ARE NOT GOING TO The Yellow Pages, where are they are now looking?
You probably already know – they are going straight to the internet. People are going to Google or yahoo or Bing and they are typing in “your city” + plumber OR plumber service + ‘your city” and they are looking on the map that comes up with the search results are referring to these listing when choosing the plumber service they require.
Now here is an interesting statistic –
Local Information Seekers: Looking for local information is done by virtually all smartphone users and consumers are ready to act on the information they find.
95% of smartphone users have looked for local information
88% of these users take action within a day, indicating these are immediate information needs
77% have contacted a business, with 61% calling and 59% visiting the local business
(http://bit.ly/mobile-use).
This helps illustrate that search engines are now far and ahead of Yellow Pages.
search smartphone
Additionally, as plumbing is First Click’s online focus, our company is very familiar with plumbing related keyword research. Using tools we have access to we are able to look at historic trends and see how many people are searching for these plumbing related words and phrases. We have found that (conservatively) there are around 65,000 searches in Australia alone on a MONTHLY basis and plumbing companies are paying nearly $500,000 dollars to Google for Adword advertisement places. Again that is per month.
So you need a strategy in place that utilises online local search, ensuring your plumbing business is turning up in the correct place for maximum online exposure according to the right keywords.
With all this in place it can result in a lot of phone calls and inquiries – meaning more business for your plumbing company.