How A Plumber Can Use SEO To Grow Their Business

Some of the things we'll cover today: 

• Creating blogs and what type of blogs
• The power of local directories and what is the "map pack"
• Guest blogging

Aaron: [00:00:16] Howdy,and dilly, dilly, podcast listeners.

Christian: [00:00:19] Dilly,dilly.

Aaron: [00:00:20] Dilly,dilly. One, I love that commercial. It's very popular right now, and it'sfunny. So I wanted to throw that in here. Has nothing to do with this episodeor plumbers or growing their business, but it's funny. So anyway, today'sepisode is really cool. I'm picturing this episode being written in brown forobvious reasons, but I just always think of plumbers in the color brown.Anyway, today's episode is how a plumber can use as SEO, so search engineoptimization, to grow their business. Plumbers have a very competitive industryso being hired doing SEO well really can benefit the business. We're going totalk about creating blogs, getting on local directories, and how to buildauthority with Google.

Christian: [00:01:08] Nice.Yes. All right. So number one, the first thing that you should be doing as faras SEO is creating content, and creating content means creating blogs on yourwebsite.

Aaron: [00:01:26] Right.So that could be- And you could do a blog or a vlog. Our notes say blog, butI'm just thinking a cool idea for a blog would be to do step-by-stepinstructions about how to fix little things like hey, you got a small leak. Howdo you turn off, you know, the faucet? Or how do you turn off the water or themain line to this device? So more than likely, you know, it may not be anemergency, but it's a small fix. And if you do step-by-step instructions,you're going to get a bunch of traffic to the site because people are going tospend time on there, and they may bookmark it. Like hey, okay, I learned itonce. Maybe something simple enough I can remember, or may bookmark and saylike dang, I forgot how to do this. Let me go back to it.

Christian: [00:02:05] Yeah.So I mean the idea behind creating blog posts on your website is you're one,updating your website constantly, and two, you're creating new keywords. Andpeople, you know- You have to make sure that the blog posts align with thingsthat customers normally would search for on Google which is, you know, why thisworks.

Aaron: [00:02:28] Soyeah, there's a lot with that. Christian. I thought he was going to saysomething else, but he just covered his mouth. Anyway, so big thing. Anotherbig thing anyway is getting on local directories. So you know, Yelp's not alocal directory, but like local directories like your newspaper, there may be-Like for us here in Allen, we have like Star Local Media which is like a kindof like a newspaper that goes out. But it's also a like a directory ofbusinesses. The Chamber. Those are all local directories, and that pushes youup in local search rankings. They get a bunch of traffic which pushes you up,and what you really want to get to is that map pack. You know when you go toGoogle and you search for something like hey, plumbers near me and then you getthose three options that all have their business name, phone number, reviews.They have the directions, how to call them. That's really where you get 70percent of the traffic, and that's where you want to be. Getting on localdirectories allows you to do that, and you don't get overlooked as well.

Christian: [00:03:29] Yeah,exactly. And like Aaron said here, the people who- Or the companies that areunder the map, what's called a map pack, get 70 percent of the traffic, youknow, search traffic to their website just from being on that list, and likeAaron said, I think reviews are a very important part to being able to placeyourself in the map pack.

Aaron: [00:03:54] Itdoes. So local citations, reviews, and I think that you know, at least mepersonally, the very first listing of the map pack, if it only has one reviewand the next person has like a hundred reviews, I'm going to go to a personwith 100 reviews and they have a five star- Rating matters, but a five starrating and it has a bunch of reviews versus somebody who's in that pack but itdoesn't have any. Not saying you won't get the traffic, but that's where thereviews start to really take place is like hey, I don't want to try thiscompany out. I want to know that it actually is good.

Christian: [00:04:23] Agood way to get reviews right away is for your plumbers to carry an iPad with,you know, 3G hopefully. So they don't have to rely on people's Wi-Fi, but withthe ability to right there quickly, people fill the reviews and do it rightthere. So that way, you know, they catch them when they're one, most happybecause they just finished the job, you know. You've accomplished what theywanted you to do, and it's top of mind right there. You know, it's in front ofthem. So you know, it's not going to take very long for them to fill out areview, and it's something that will greatly benefit your search rankings.

Aaron: [00:05:03] Right.And the next thing here is blogging, but not necessarily blogging for your sitebut having other people. So reaching out to people who are in relatedindustries. So if you need somebody who does- Or somebody who does like homeinspections, and they have a website. If they wrote a blog and then theyrecommended like a roofer or if they recommended somebody who's going to do - Idon't know - like something else within your home. Maybe like pest control orsomething like that, but then also recommended a plumber. And they linked yourbusiness. What that does is if they get a decent amount of traffic and theylink back to your site, you'll get people who click on it, absolutely, but whatit does is if you're on more of those authoritative sites, Google really enjoysthat. And so they'll push you up in your ranking. So they say hey, if thisperson is connected to so many other websites, it must be good content. So I'mgoing to push them up in the search rankings at that point. So all right. Threebig things here with SEO. There's obviously a lot more of that goes into SEO.The reviews like we talked about, but create your blogs, get on those localdirectories like the Chamber or Star Local Media here for people locally, andthen also get blogs related back to your site. This is a very quick episode.Plumbers, we're knocking it out quick for you. We're not saying that you don'tlisten to podcasts, but we wanted to knocked this one out quick for you so youcould get back to doing some plumbing stuff.

Christian: [00:06:36] Plumbingstuff.

Aaron: [00:06:37] Right.There's a lot of things that they could be plumbing. So you know, hey.

Christian: [00:06:43] Yeah,that was pretty good. And one last thing before you leave. Make sure to leaveus a review on- I mean, if you're listening to on your iPhone on your podcastapp, you can leave us a review right there. That will help us greatly improveour podcast show, and also if you want to contact us and talk to us, you can doso on Twitter. You can message @BitBranding. You can find us on Facebook too atBitBranding. Facebook.com/bitbranding.

Aaron: [00:07:15] Wedo a lot of other content. We preach the content part of it. We do a lot ofother content on Facebook and YouTube as well. So highly encourage. We're goingto use the rest of this time to just say hey, selfish plug. Go check us out,the rest of your content. If you listen to the podcast, we think you'll alsoenjoy some of our video series that we do as well.

Christian: [00:07:34] Yeah.And one last thing. Thank you for listening. If you reached down to sevenminutes into this episode which seven-

Aaron: [00:07:42] Youshould. Seven minutes and 27 seconds.

Christian: [00:07:45] Againno, thank you for listening and for your support.

Aaron: [00:07:48] Allright. Make sure you again share this with a friend, and we will talk to youguys next week.