As an SEO company that has served the plumbing industry for over a decade, Plumbing Webmasters has devoted its business to helping plumbers thrive. We’ve already written the ultimate guide for Plumber SEO based on our decade-plus experience working with plumbers, but we also understand that the SEO algorithms consistently evolve. With this in mind, here are five plumber SEO changes for 2022 and how to respond.
1) Quality Content Over Thin Blogs
Google’s patience for thin content is growing ironically thin. In 2022, Google prefers not to index thin content or trash blogs from plumbing websites. Here’s the reality; most plumbing websites don’t provide great blog posts for their users. Instead, they publish short and ineffective posts with the idea of keeping their website fresh.
This mentality is obsolete, and plumbers should avoid publishing worthless content. Instead, focus on creating service pages for each one of your services. Google prefers to rank service pages as individual pages rather than bullet points from a single page. So focus on creating great service pages for each one of your plumbing services in 2022.
As for blog posts, only publish long-form blog posts that target high-volume keywords. While blog posts are unlikely to deliver customers directly, they can capture leads at the top of the funnel, which many eventually convert into customers. Additionally, long-form posts can strengthen your service pages with tactful interlinking and attract external links from reputable 3rd-party websites.
2) Reviews & Reputation Are Even More Important
For years statistics have provided that reputation directly influences a company’s success online. For example, when users find a plumber, they want to verify their reputation from 3rd party review platforms like Google My Business and Facebook. In 2022, reviews and reputation are even more critical.
As more companies put resources into acquiring reviews, customers have grown to expect a certain level of social proof. Software apps like DataPins and Podium have made showcasing feedback more manageable than ever before. DataPins, in particular, takes things a step further by allowing plumbers to publish geo-pins on their website along with schema markup.
Showing that you’ve performed jobs in a specific location and having reviews and schema to validate those jobs is a great way to separate your plumbing company from local competitors. The reputation game has gotten support from apps and software, but it’s also more competitive. Plumbers must take their reputation seriously in 2022.
3) Auto-Changed Title Tags
Google recently implemented a mechanism that auto rewrites title tags on particular web pages. For the longest time, title tags were the most important SEO factor, as they told Google what your pages’ topic was in 50-60 characters. While Google says they’ve only changed about 20% of title tags and still use the traditional title 80% of the time, the results have been controversial.
Plumbers can ensure their pages display a solid title regardless by producing high-quality content with relevant H1 tags. In many cases where Google auto rewrites the title, they are taking the H1 and attaching the company brand name or website brand name. So if you correctly write your H1s to describe the page’s topic and subsequently content, you put yourself in a great position to maintain your click-through rate on SERPs.
The initial results of Google’s change upset many in the industry as some of the titles displayed made no sense to users. However, Google has since improved the process, and many of those horrible-looking titles are now eliminated. Nevertheless, the moral of the story remains the same, produce great content with a sound and logical structure to protect your website from any updates to title tags.
4) Hyper-Changes in The Algorithm (Stay The Course)
Google’s algorithm has reached a point where noticeably updates now occur daily and sometimes hourly. Loopholes that once existed to get your page to #1 on SERPs have been closed and replaced with a more dynamic selection process. Our research shows that websites are not staying cemented in their position but moving around more regularly.
The good news is that staying on page one remains very achievable with the proper SEO framework. That’s why we encourage our clients to stay the course so that they can maintain visibility on page one. While directly impacting your exact position is now basically impossible, you can still ensure impressions and clicks by following the best SEO practices.
For a reason, Google is the top search engine and provides more relevant results than other search engines like Bing, Yahoo, and DuckDuckGo. While the results are less predictable than they once were, you can still provide significant signaling from your plumbing website. By following best practices, you will see your Google Analytics and Search Console Data maintain or improve traffic in 2022.
5) Logic + Consistency Wins
In 2022, plumbers can’t outsmart the algorithm with manipulation. So instead, provide the customer and Google the most relevant information about your company (reviews, social proof, social signals, etc.) so that people trust your business as legitimate.
In addition, follow the best practices like site speed, web design, mobile responsiveness, etc. Google’s Page Experience Update placed a premium on user experience and website performance. You can use plugins like WPRocket to boost site speed, which is a logical choice for plumbing companies.
Google values consistency, so producing a systemized SEO process is your best chance of ranking on Google SERPs. Instead of looking for the silver bullet to manipulate search results (which no longer works in 2022), you should focus on showing Google that you can remain consistent with your web work and SEO process.
The Bottom Line for Plumbers in 2022
SEO is constantly evolving, so maintaining your top results requires your company to pay attention to industry changes. The best opportunity for plumbing companies is hiring an SEO company to stay on top of the latest changes. Plumbing Webmasters works with hundreds of clients to ensure consistent traffic and high-quality lead generation in 2022 and beyond. We look forward to working with your company to produce those results.
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