Author Archives: Plumbing Webmasters

The Coolest Review Software Ever | The Plumbing SEO Podcast

Out of all the activities that our plumbing SEO specialists recommend, getting reviews clearly offers the greatest benefit for businesses. Not only do they draw more attention to your brand, they knock down the psychological walls that stand between you and potential clients. In our latest podcast, Jason and Nolen discuss the amazing results that feedback produces for your plumbing company, plus how our custom-made software makes getting reviews ridiculously easy.

Be sure to listen in if your business has struggled with local map ranking in the past.

Key Points to Listen For

Getting reviews from multiple sources makes your company appear more trustworthy.
Righteous Reviews makes it much easier to ask for and collect reviews.
Our software also provides geotags for reviews and check-ins, supercharging your SEO.

The Typical Process of Getting Reviews

Did you know that no one is quite so effective at getting reviews for your business as you? “Ask and you shall receive” certainly applies here, but not everyone has the same skill at soliciting feedback from their customers. In fact, some plumbing contractors are downright terrible at asking for reviews!

That’s too bad, because customer feedback plays a huge role in SEO for plumbers. When Google crawls (examines) a website to judge its content, the search engine looks for three key characteristics commonly referred to as the “E-A-T factors“:

Expertise
Authoritativeness
Trustworthiness

When Google examines a company and sees a hearty collection of 4-5 star reviews, it interprets those reviews as a signal of trustworthiness. In other words, the search engine believes it can trust your business enough to direct people to the company website for your given service category (ie: plumbing). Getting feedback on Google Reviews isn’t enough, however. It’s best to procure them from a variety of resources.

The Problem With the Normal Reviews Process

Not all plumbing contractors faithfully collect reviews for their business. There’s just enough active plumbers however, that trying to compete on basic reviews alone won’t produce the premium search rankings that your business craves. When Google takes two companies with outstanding reviews and stands them side by side, the oldest local business typically wins out in search results.

That is unless your company displays better plumbing SEO practices.

Plumbing Companies Doing a Good Job at Getting Reviews

Getting Reviews is an Essential Part of Your Local SEO!

We talk a lot about organic search engine optimization at the Plumbing Webmasters, especially when it comes to aligning your website with Google preferences. In the past, we noticed that most businesses don’t know how to effectively tie in their client reviews into their website performance. It’s not the fault of plumbers or their marketing team! There simply weren’t many great options for posting reviews on the official company website (again, effectively).

Since WordPress widgets and tacked-on solutions weren’t cutting it. So our team produced a completely new tool that not only greatly simplifies the process of collecting reviews, it also supercharges them for the purposes of SEO. We call this in-house developed solution Righteous Reviews.

“E-A-Ting Up” With Righteous Reviews (RR)

Remember how Google uses normal reviews as proof of your business activity? That effect only goes so far when competing against other more experienced companies who also collect reviews. With the Righteous Reviews platform, every 5-star rating comes tagged with the specific service(s) you performed for that customer.

Why does that matter for your business?

Any business can claim to provide “high-quality, professional water heater repair in Fort Worth, TX” (for example). Google churns through dozens, sometimes hundreds of these website claims, but only a handful ever make page one in local search results. When Google starts seeing dozens reviews associated with a specific service in a specific geographical area, it heavily prioritizes these reviews in local search. The search engine craves this geotagged data, because it proves legitimate service activity (instead of just claiming to provide a service).

How does the collection process work? It all starts with a process your team controls. Every time your plumbers finish up a project at a jobsite, they fill out a simple form. All you have to do is describe the service provided and the location of the job, then fill in the client’s name, number, and email. You can even take a picture of the finished work! Plumbers can easily complete this all in 60 seconds.

After completing the form, your client automatically receives an email or text with links to your favorite review platforms (Facebook, Google Reviews, etc.). When the client follows those links and submits their rating, the review is automatically geotagged with their general location and the service(s) provided. All of these check-ins and reviews are uploaded to your website, were Google and your future customers can browse them.

An Example of Getting Reviews That are Geotagged

Getting Reviews is Great, Getting Geotagged Reviews is Better!

The Geotagged Review Collection Process

Step #1: Your plumbers finish a job and perform a 60 second check-in.
Step #2: Your client automatically receives a request for a review via text or email.
Step #3: The data from both the check-in and review get uploaded to your website.
Step #4: Google and your future customers see the reviews.
Step #5: Your local search rankings climb!

Other Fantastic Benefits of RR

Our team produced Righteous Reviews to work specifically with our custom, optimized websites. Since the software is fully integrated with your site (not tacked on as an afterthought), you don’t have to worry about bugs or other performance issues. This enables our team to provide a number of other invaluable benefits through the reputation management platform.

Unhappy customers happen. That’s why our team created an early warning system that automatically generates an email alert whenever a client rates your company 3 stars or lower through Righteous Reviews. This means you can quickly contact any frustrated customer and work to fix the situation. Deal with low ratings, and discover new ways to improve your customer service in the process!

As we mentioned before, geotagged check-ins and reviews automatically upload to your website. Each event is tagged to a specific service and city page (if your site has them), where they show up as pins on a local map. Readers will also see the latest reviews you’ve received from the field. No more losing customers because of dated reviews from 5 years ago!

Simplify the Process of Getting Reviews from Your Happy Clients!

Why Does Righteous Reviews Matter?

That’s the real question, isn’t it? Our team at the Plumbing Webmasters wants your team to earn continued growth through better Google Search rankings. Our clients who faithfully perform these check-ins often experience tremendous growth in their website traffic and generated leads. With your reviews working twice as hard to advocate your business, you’ll enjoy stronger plumbing SEO than ever before!

To learn more about Righteous Reviews, getting reviews, or any other aspect of local search marketing, talk with one of our experts at Plumbing Webmasters. Get a free consultation today when you call us at (877) 388-9884! We can’t wait to serve you.

True Client Stories: PPC vs Organic SEO 2020 | The Plumbing SEO Podcast

Many plumbers swear by their PPC company, while others complain of lackluster results. No matter what sort of strategy you have in play for pay-per-click, there’s a chance you’ve been missing out on valuable business opportunities. This week, Nolen and Jason discuss the real story of a seasoned plumber who grew disillusioned with their PPC company. Be sure to listen closely if your campaigns have started to stagnate!

Key Points to Listen For

PPC offers dependable, but frequently diminishing returns for businesses.
PPC companies generally have no incentive to improve your organic SEO efforts.
Paid ads work best when partnered with a solid plumbing SEO foundation.

The Story of Pay-Per-Click Bob

Recently our team at the Plumbing Webmasters received a call from a frustrated plumber in the Northeast. His name was Bob, and you could hear the subtle, but certain anger in his voice. Bob’s business has supported his local community (a sizeable metropolitan area) for over a decade. He has very little discernible organic presence online. Instead, he pays a PPC company to run his online advertising for him, primarily out of Google Ads.

Here’s the kicker: Bob pays up to $12,000 a month for his PPC work.

To be fair, Bob informed us that the advertisements from the PPC company are producing very consistent results each month. However, the prices of his keywords seem to be rising (sometimes going as high as $100 per click). He also noticed that the rate of return for his PPC efforts also seem to be slowly dropping each month. Any plumber finding themselves in the same situation would have real cause for concern, so we agreed to take a look at his website analytics.

A Disappointing Situation

We found Bob had more reasons to be disappointed in his PPC company than he realized. They had almost completely neglected his website, diverting all their attention to managing the pay-per-click campaigns. The PPC ads simply directed Google Search users to custom landing pages, which didn’t really help the rest of his site metrics. Granted, the advertising efforts seemed to be producing real business for Bob’s plumbing business, but even those returns were diminishing.

Since Bob had been in business for so long, any sort of organic plumbing SEO on this marketing team’s part could have produced some outstanding results and cut down his monthly costs. But our findings clearly indicated that was not a priority to this PPC company. What was the ultimate summary of our analysis?

Bob was missing out on serious lead opportunities, and (quite literally) paying for it.

A PPC Company Utilizes Ads to Promote a Client

It’s Easy to See the Results for PPC Advertising.

Key Lessons for Your Marketing

First of all, we need to make something clear. Bob isn’t a bad guy. His PPC company isn’t evil, but there is widening gap between Bob’s potential growth and where he is now. Let’s explore some facts that could help explain this situation.

Be sure to read closely if Bob’s situation feels all to similar to your plumbing SEO situation!

Lesson #1: PPC Isn’t the Problem…

Advertising gets results. While it may not produce the long-term results and branding benefits of SEO for plumbers, PPC offers fairly consistent results. The reason Bob continues to spend thousands of dollars every month is that he can easily see their return.

When it comes to PPC platforms like Google Ads and Facebook Ads, accountability plays an instrumental part in their success. Every campaign operates on a set budget, geographical area, and a target market. SEO rarely offers such precision, instead working towards appealing to a broader volume of people. Of course, PPC campaigns come at a price!

They can get expensive.

Operating exclusively through PPC means that you are essentially every new customer that contacts your plumbing business. Once contractors ignore plumbing SEO for so long, they start to feel locked into the cycle of paid ads. Your PPC company won’t complain, but your profit margins will!

A Facebook Ads Course a PPC Company Might Use

Facebook Ads Offer Quite a Variety of Targeting Attributes.

The Best Uses for PPC Campaigns

If you want to extract the most value from your pay-per-click efforts, diversity is often the key to success. Most plumbers stick with Google Ads (formerly Adwords) because that’s what they’re most familiar and comfortable with. However, there are numerous ad platforms that offer convenient ways to connect with your target market. Some even provide a better return on your investment!

Powerful PPC Company Tools

Retargeting Ads
Facebook Ads
Instagram Stories

All of these tools/platforms provide exceptional customization on your ad campaigns, and quality base conversion rates. It may take a little work to set up a Facebook Business account, but the 99.9% of plumbing professionals should have one anyway. Retargeting ads are particularly effective for connecting with interested consumers your website may have missed otherwise.

Lesson #2: Lack of Organic SEO Is.

As mentioned before, Bob’s PPC company put little to no effort into improving his organic online search results. This made it tremendously harder for people find and engage his team. Considering the extensive experience and skill, Bob could have easily created a lead-generating website at minimal cost. Once his website took off, he could even have tapered off his PPC spending and maintained the same volume of traffic.

An Optimized Site Example a PPC Company Won't Design

Even a Simply-Designed Website Can Offer Great Results if Optimized Correctly.

There is no valid reason to operate online and not invest time into organic plumbing SEO. Organic search results consume far less of your marketing budget, thus producing a higher rate of return. That doesn’t mean you have to drop all of your PPC immediately! In fact, search marketing principles teach us that organic SEO and PPC work best when partnered together.

What Can Bob Do?

So what sort of options does Bob (and businesses like his) have to start taking advantage of plumbing SEO? First, he’ll need to take some time to analyse the health of his website. There are many elements to examine during this process:

Menu Navigation
Service Categories and Hierarchies
Color Scheme
Visual Element Spacing
Page Keyword Optimization
General Keyword Strategy (Primaries and Secondaries)
Writing Quality
Coding
Image Optimization

These website facets heavily influence the exposure of your brand through Google Search. Of course, there are a few key off-site activities to execute that have powerful impact on your marketing effectiveness. If you haven’t claimed and completed your Google My Business account, do so immediately. This profile can make or break your Google Maps strategy. Be sure to get your business listed on other citation sources (such as the BBB), and start asking your customers for reviews!

Lesson #3: PPC Companies Shy Away From SEO

This may be one of the hardest lessons to absorb, for clear reasons. Your PPC company makes money through ads. SEO for plumbers generates leads organically through local search, minimizing the need for PPC campaigns. If a company specializes in PPC, they have no reason to help you grow organically (and subsequently save thousands of dollars).

Google Analytics Tool a PPC Company Can Use for Performance Research

Which Channels Provide the Most Traffic for Your Business Website?

Bob was starting to feel the effects of diminishing ad returns, but his PPC would do little to fix the problem. How could they without cutting their own profits? While this marketing agency operated with applaudable transparency, so many others work to take advantage of their clients by exploiting their marketing inexperience. It’s possible that your PPC company doesn’t even have the capabilities necessary to enhance your website’s search results.

Closing Thoughts

PPC is a perfectly valid solution for many plumbing companies. It provides dependable results, especially during periods of heavy online competition. However, organic search traffic provides a far better rate of return on your investment. It also grows your brand, whereas PPC campaigns and purchased leads grow the prestige of those platforms. With the right management, your organic SEO efforts will create fantastic, long-term results for your business.

Team Up With the Plumbing Webmasters!

At the Plumbing Webmasters, we know that plumbers earn the best results when they combine PPC strategy with strong, organic SEO efforts. That’s why we always start with custom-coded and highly-optimized website designs, and our clients feel the difference! Not only do our plumbers consistently earn higher rankings, they also enjoy better quality leads. We’d love to help your business grow too.

Call us at (877) 388-9884 for a free consultation with a seasoned plumbing SEO pro!

What Makes Us Different From Other Companies | The Plumbing SEO Podcast

Have you ever been ripped off by a plumbing SEO service company? With so many businesses out in the market, separating the wheat from the chaff can be a tough challenge. Today, Nolen and Jason talk about how to separate shady web companies from legitimate SEO services. They’ll also explain the differences between our team at Plumbing Webmasters and other digital marketing services. Listen in and check out our guide below, especially if you’ve been frustrated by web companies in the past!

Key Points to Listen For

SEO results usually take a few months after starting out.
Some SEO service companies use deceptive metrics.
Mixed-match online solutions often produce poor results.
Pretty websites don’t always perform.

Finding Your SEO Service Company

So you want to take your budding plumbing business online and pursue new clients? Great! Now you just need to find a dependable SEO service company to guide your digital marketing strategy. There’s just one question:

Who do you trust with your company’s online development?

Finding your perfect online marketing partner isn’t as simple as Google searching “SEO for Plumbers” and picking the first organic result. Admittedly, the Plumbing Webmasters team would be very happy if you did, but that’s besides the point. With multiple quality solutions available on the market, and a long list of poorly performing services, you’ll need to do some careful research.

SEO Service Qualities to Investigate

Familiarity with your service industry
Content writing quality
A service’s own SEO rankings
Typical time requirements (production & search results)
Pricing and results policies

The Webmasters Showing Up as a Top SEO Service Company

It’s Smart to Examine Multiple Top Companies, Including Their Reviews, Pricing, and Included Services.

As you cultivate a list of potential prospects, you’ll inevitably come across both winners and losers. Examine each solution carefully, especially when it comes to included services and promised results. Below we’ll explore some of the crucial qualities to hunt for in your SEO service company, and which ones to avoid like the plague!

Great Qualities in Your SEO Service Company

Look for the same qualities that Google demands from its listed companies: expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E-A-T, for short). Try to cultivate a list of at least 5 premium candidates for your plumbing SEO service company. Here’s what those characteristics may look like for such a business:

Expertise: Years in Business; Certifications; High Search Rankings
Authoritativeness: Extensive Content Production (blogs, videos)
Trustworthiness: Great, Uncensored Reviews; Listings in BBB

This certainly isn’t an exclusive list. The team you want heading up your plumbing SEO should at least be able to rank in the front page of their own primary keywords. Also, you should desire a company that shows clear knowledge of the search industry in their writing. Finally, great companies crave transparency. They’ll happily show you all their reviews, both positive and negative.

Red Flags For Plumber SEO

Reducing your negative options is just as important as collecting your top 5. For this, you’ll need a list of serious red flags that should automatically disqualify (or at least devalue) potential candidates for your plumbing SEO service company.

Avoid These at All Costs

Intentionally deceptive or misleading claims
Salesmen that try to exploit your inexperience with SEO
Overly narrow marketing services
Companies with no reviews in search or on their website
Businesses that don’t rank well themselves
SEO service companies that don’t understand plumbing
Services that guarantee immediate results

All business relationships must grow from a foundation of trust. Misleading or deceptive online companies are not worth your time or your money. The same can be said for underperforming digital marketing businesses (or “specialists”) that can’t prove their own capabilities. Finally, try to stick with candidates that already work plumbing companies like yours. It makes a difference!

Setting Your Expectations

One of the most destructive forces in a business relationship is failed expectations. With that being said, reasonable goal-setting both drives your plumber SEO company towards quality results and protects your business from wasted investments. Unfortunately, most plumbing contractors haven’t been trained on how to gauge success in online marketing. This leaves plenty of opportunity for unreasonable expectations to take root.

Dangerous Fallacies for Plumbing SEO

#1: “Search engine optimization produces results practically overnight!”
#2: “Search engine optimization requires at least a year to take effect.”
#3: “This single service can produce lasting benefits for your SEO.”
#4: “Our team guarantees immediate results.”
#5: “Our team ensures front page rankings for all your chosen keywords.”
#6: “Anyone can handle their own SEO plan, website development, etc..”

At Plumbing Webmasters, we’ve seen these lies cost businesses thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars in wasted investments. Let’s undo each of these falsehoods right here.

Google Analytics Results From Our SEO Service Company

SEO Naturally Fluctuates, Which is Why it Pays to Create Logical Expectations Early On.

Reasonable Expectations for Plumbing SEO

#1 & #2: Most business see significant results after 2 to 3 months.
#3: Optimizing for search requires hundreds of small changes that no single solution provides.
#4: Even Google doesn’t guarantee results, and your marketing team isn’t Google.
#5: Front page local ranking is a reasonable expectation for some keywords, not all of them.
#6: Few plumbing contractors have the required talent pool for handling pro-level SEO.

How to Measure Your SEO Service Results

Don’t let these points discourage you from pursuing a fruitful partnership with a capable SEO service company. We simply wish to drive plumbers toward qualified, trustworthy businesses that can actually provide lasting results. To gauge these results, you’ll need sophisticated metrics for your SEO strategy. There are numerous metrics your business can examine for success.

How to Measure Success

Localized keyword rankings (primary and secondary)
Site traffic improvements
Lead call, email, and/or text volume
Lower bounce rates
Heavier page engagement
and More

How can a business that is just starting out get a hold of these measurements? Unfortunately, there may not be enough data initially to track most of site related activity. However, there are still ways to track SEO progress. During lead calls, talk with your potential clients about how they found your services. If they answer “I saw your website.”, you’ll know you’ve found a winning company.

Of course, you can also track your keyword ranking improvements through the Incognito Search function in Google. Since these don’t track your browsing history, you’ll get more accurate results when you test local keywords to see if your brand is ranking. If your marketing company created a new business website for you, you’ll be able to start tracking results within a few months via Google’s Search Console and Analytics.

Team Up With the Plumbing Webmasters!

At the Plumbing Webmasters, we consistent and measurable results for our clients. Our plumbing contractors dominate the ranks in their local search results, often for hundreds of keywords. This naturally produces better site traffic, stronger engagement, and higher quality leads. Of course, we invite you to check out our reviews and see if they back up our claims.

If your plumbing company struggles with online search marketing, or if you’ve just entered the industry, we can help! Consult with one of our seasoned SEO veterans (for free) about your goals, and see if our business could be the right fit. You’ll quickly find why plumbers and many other service professionals choose us as their trusted SEO service company!

Simply call (877) 388-9884 to get started.

2 Ways to Enhance Your Reputation Management (Podcast)

Reputation management encompasses multiple marketing aspects of your plumbing company, including reviews, content creation, and social media. In today’s podcast, Jason and Nolen dig into the subject and explore how plumbing contractors can make their reviews, service pages, and city pages work much harder for their businesses.

If you’ve struggled to improve your local rankings, even if your company has plenty of reviews, be sure to listen in!

Be on the Lookout for These Key Points:

Do reviews alone improve my local search engine rankings?
Should new plumbers focus on reputation management or social media marketing?
Is there a way to coordinate reviews across different platforms?
Are city pages worthwhile?

Managing Your Company Reputation

In a way, reputation management revolves more around the perception of your plumbing company than anything else. Along with the obvious consumer perceptions created through reviews, your site’s graphic design, and navigation, there’s another crucial aspect that all too many plumbers forget about. How does Google perceive your business?

In the past, we’ve talked about the crucial E-A-T factors: expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. When Google spiders (re-examines) an existing plumbing contractor website, it attempts to identify data elements showing that your site, content creators, and business possess these qualities.

Where Google Looks for E-A-T Factors

For Expertise: Content creator bios, content organization, and quality.
For Authoritativeness: Content, creator bios, reference sites, keywords, & web design.
For Trustworthiness: Reviews, geo-tags, check-ins, images, navigation, and link profiles.

These character traits impact both Google and customer perception of your business. Of course, that also means you can expect two-fold benefits when you nail all three elements! Below, we’ll dig into three of the most crucial aspects of reputation management.

Review Management

Reviews can make or break a plumbing business. While almost any plumber could tell you they need reviews, many don’t know how to collect them effectively or what to do with them once they start pouring in. While they certainly contribute to a company’s perceived trustworthiness, reviews don’t automatically cause your site to rank higher on google.

So how can you get the greatest value from your customer testimonies and all those 5-star ratings? First, make sure your reviews come from a variety of sources. In other words, don’t put your eggs exclusively in Google Reviews, Facebook, or Angie’s List. While Google once prioritized recommendations through its own platform, the search engine now prefers a more diverse collection from multiple sources.

Second, be sure to take time to display customer reviews on your website! Not only does this please Google, but potential customers will also feel more confident about using your services. It may take a bit of research to find a widget that presents reviews in a way that matches your tastes.

At the Plumbing Webmasters, our team uses our special platform, DataPins, which conveniently pulls recommendations from Facebook, Google, and other top providers.

Site Optimization – Navigation & Service Structure

Continued site optimization also impacts your reputation management. After all, few things affect a customer’s first impression of your company more than your website design. Will they have a convenient time of browsing your services when they land on your homepage, or will they get frustrated and leave?

We’ve encountered many plumbers over the years who ask why their site isn’t performing well, only for our experts to learn their design was creating a terrible user experience.

Simplistic, concise navigation makes for the best visitor interaction. That’s why many of the most successful plumbing contractor websites simply rely on a few service categories to showcase their work. This simplistic navigation also makes it easy for Google to explore your website and identify your key services.

Content Creation

Of course, professional content also impacts your company’s reputation too! Not only does the quality of the material affect Google’s perception of your business, but the quantity also affects your ratings as well. Companies that release new content on a regular basis tend to earn better rankings in the long run.

What Types of Content Can You Use?

Blogs
Podcasts
Videos
Images
Guides
Infographics
and More!

Two Ways to Enhance Reputation & Rank Up

As we’ve mentioned, our Plumbing Webmasters team utilizes our in-house tool to collect reviews. DataPins allows customers to leave reviews directly on their preferred platform (Google, Facebook, etc.) on a client’s website. It also collects reviews left on those platforms and citation services.

While that cross-platform functionality certainly offers convenient reputation management, the really exciting benefit of DataPins is geo-tagging! When a customer receives a request for a review (usually via text), their submission gets tagged on Google Maps without revealing their exact address. Google loves this input and ranks up websites that display them.

Our reviews platform also allows plumbing professionals to check in on a job site, provide a tag of the service they’ve provided, and even post pictures of the work they completed. Again, this information gets geo-tagged in Google Maps and displayed on that client’s related service page and city page.

Even if each plumbing truck only checks in a few times a day, that leads to dozens of check-ins within a single week! This provides extremely visible proof of your activity to Google, and the search engine greatly rewards the effort.

If you’d like to learn more about the processes behind reputation management or if you’d like additional details about how DataPins can help your business, give us a call. At Plumbing Webmasters, our clients regularly dominate the rankings in local searches. They earn higher traffic volume, stronger user engagement, and better lead generation. We’d love to partner with your plumbing business too.

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Online Marketing Confusion – Buzzwords Explained

Lately, we’ve talked with many plumbing companies about highly technical services that marketing agencies try to sell. In today’s podcast, Nolen and Jason talk about the dangers of single-service “cure-all” solutions.

We’ve also provided a short terminology guide to help you understand some of these crucial terms. If you’ve struggled to determine what your plumbing company needs to succeed online, be sure to listen in!

Look Out for These Key Points

Can a singular service improve my rankings online?
Is a low-dollar service package a good deal?
What do these online marketing terms mean?

Confusion Regarding Online Marketing

Explaining concepts and processes to homeowners is a crucial portion of the job for plumbing contractors. Not only do you manage expectations better this way, but you also enable your customers to make informed decisions based on their needs.

Now imagine a homeowner that claims they need a particular service (which you know to be unnecessary) because a shady plumber said so. Naturally, you’d want to guide your client toward the best solution and steer them away from potentially wasteful suggestions.

When it comes to online marketing, plumbing contractors often rest at a significant disadvantage to the professionals within the marketing industry. That’s because marketing experts spend countless hours researching the latest trends in an online search.

Most businesses use this information to serve their current and future clients better. Unfortunately, some marketing companies try to exploit this knowledge gap for their own ends.

That’s where we see the rise in buzzword marketing, promoting a technical service in a way that sensationalizes both the function and the results of the solution. In buzzword marketing, an agency salesman often takes a service out of context with the rest of search engine optimization (SEO), making it difficult to understand its purpose.

Of course, the sales pitch usually comes with dramatic claims of soaring site traffic and customer leads.

Be Careful of Cure-All Solutions

Plumber SEO is influenced by hundreds of different factors. Many rest within the confines of your commercial website and how well it’s optimized for search.

Other external factors include your business’ reviews, the completion of your Google My Business listing, and your social media marketing activities. All of these points contribute towards your overall online marketing success.

If a business struggles with low rankings, slow traffic, and poor lead generation, it’s almost never because of one factor. So when a marketing firm comes along and promotes a singular service to turn everything around, plumbing contractors should automatically be suspicious.

If a company approaches you with a brand new, highly complex solution, take it with a pound of salt!

Taking a Full Health Approach

The most successful (results-producing) marketing companies always examine their clients from a broad point of view first. Our team at the Plumbing Webmasters examines hundreds of data points whenever we take on a new client.

That’s because your search engine marketing (SEM) success depends on your success in several key areas.

Crucial Factors for Success

Factor #1: Your Company Website – Coding, Keywords, Content, and Management
Factor #2: Your Advertising – Adwords PPC Campaigns, Facebook Ads, etc.
Factor #3: Social Media Content – Visitor Experience, Reviews, Response Speed
Factor #4: Citations – Reviews on Google; Listings on Yelp and Angie’s List
Factor #5: Phone and Email – Employee Courtesy, Responsiveness, Organization
Factor #6: Credentials – Licenses and Certifications (Including Their Promotion)

All of these elements contribute to your lead generation and online search rankings. If that seems like too much to handle for your plumbing business, don’t worry! Experienced digital marketing companies have both the time and the experience needed to handle all of these elements (minus the credentials, that’s on you).

Below, we’ve taken some of the big industry buzzwords and provided a brief explanation for each. The next time a marketing company tries to sell you something you don’t need, you’ll have a wonderful surprise waiting for them!

8 Fancy SEO Buzzwords Explained

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

This broad term encompasses all the activities devoted to promoting your business on Google and other search engines. Practically every element of online marketing falls under SEM.

Another broad term, typically referring to website design and other activities meant to get your site acknowledged, analyzed, and (highly) ranked by Google and other search engines. It can be divided into two categories:

On-site SEO: activities and elements inside of your website meant to improve rankings
Off-site SEO: activities and elements outside of your website meant to drive better site rankings

Keywords / Key Phrases

These are words and phrases intentionally placed inside your site content. Ideally, your content should include words and phrases frequently searched by people in the Google Search Bar.

The search engine identifies these words inside your site and uses them to determine a page’s relevance during a consumer’s search query.

Content

This short but profound term refers to any material created by a business, organization, or individual for the purpose of consumption. This may include written material, videos, infographics, pictures, and more.

In the context of a plumbing website, content usually refers to the material in your service pages, homepage, “Contact Us,” “About Us,” and blog posts.

Content Marketing

This concept made its popular debut over 5 years ago now. It refers to the development and distribution of non-sales-oriented content for the purpose of creating followers. This is why businesses now produce so many guides, top 10 lists, industry FAQs, blog posts, and podcasts (like this one).

While the process takes time and consistent effort, content marketing is designed to grow brand value, enhance rankings, and establish your company as an authority.

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3 Reasons Your Plumbing Website is Sandboxed (Podcast)

The Google Sandbox is an old-school SEO term that refers to either an algorithmic penalty or the confinement and suppression of a search result for violating Google’s guidelines. Despite some disagreement over whether a sandbox ever existed, many believe their websites continue to fall victim to Google’s constraints.

As a digital marketing agency that helps Plumbers succeed online, some ask us about being sandboxed before investing in our service. Our response is the same for everyone. SEO is not the same as it used to be. Before the Penguin algorithm update in 2012, many black hat tactics were exercised regularly by SEO agencies.

When Google started to drop the hammer on websites that benefited from them, terms like sandbox were thrown around quite often. Things like hidden text and 500-word title tags were examples of tactics that became subject to the wrath of Google’s newfound idealism.

Today, penalties are rare. First, most websites that use old-school black hat tactics no longer see benefits. Second, the websites that are “supposed” to be in the top 10 are now usually placed there. So there’s no reason to knock a website down 20 or 30 spots because it was never high enough to warrant consideration in the first place. Second, Google now has a better grasp on ranking websites for their positive qualities.

Things like clean code, schema markup, and quality content can now be interpreted by Google and used as a ranking consideration. Despite these advancements in the search engine algorithm, many plumbers remain frustrated with their rankings or lack thereof. Plumbing Webmasters can help you determine what factors limit your existing website and what can be done to reverse course going forward.

Here are 3 reasons why your plumbing website could be sandboxed:

Hacked Website

If your website has been hacked, a giant red notice will appear to all visitors. Needless to say, this is bad for SEO purposes, which can be why Google would dismiss you from search results. One of Google’s duties is to protect its users from viruses or unsafe web interactions like phishing.

A website that has been flagged for being hacked will never perform well online. Even if some users do reach your website, they won’t stick around. While hacks are not assuredly a “sandbox” penalty, they are unequivocally detrimental to your plumbing company’s web efforts.

Lack of Reviews

Being sandboxed on Google Maps can stem from reviews or lack thereof. While you might have hundreds of reviews on Angie’s List and HomeAdvisor, having zero on Google is a bad look. That’s not to say you get no credit for other reviews but having at least some on Google gives you far more credibility, particularly regarding Google Maps rankings.

Competitors with more reviews than you may rank higher on Maps even if you feel their plumbing services are inferior. They may be horrible at plumbing, but it’s irrelevant if they have a good reputation.

Poor Site Quality

Most ranking problems can be traced back to poor website quality. This can be from the perspective of content, design, and, most commonly, a combination of both. Most plumbers who call us for help have a template website that they mistakenly believe is custom.

These sites are not custom folks. They are templates that have been duplicated repeatedly with slight tweaks to put your logo and contact information up. Google prefers a custom codebase with schema markup to better understand what a website offers. Plumbers should invest in custom.

Is The Google Sandbox a Myth?

The possible “sandbox” penalties we’ve listed can be attributed to a wide range of terms. Not everyone will attribute the problems we noted to a sandbox. The reality is that Google has never confirmed the existence of a sandbox, and because of the paranoia that exists within the SEO industry, it’s just as likely that it is a myth.

What we do know, however, is that certain qualities on a page will influence its ability to rank. What kind of terminology you want to ascribe to such concepts is entirely up to you, but what we know as a digital marketing agency for plumbers is that our clients are successful when they have custom websites optimized for search and coded cleanly with schema markup and mobile usability. There’s really no complicated way to deny it.

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Web Geek Cocky | The Plumbing SEO Podcast

As a plumbing contractor, you like to keep your business fairly simple. When a homeowner has a problem with their plumbing system, you explain to them what their options are and how much it will cost them. Web marketing agencies are not as humble.

The vast majority of them behave as if they are on a superior intellectual level to their client base. Just because they know more about search engine optimization does not make them a rocket scientist. Common logic still applies to SEO, just like it does with plumbing and any other kind of service industry. The arrogance of marketing companies in 2019 can be known as web geek cocky.

Marketing Companies vs. The Common Man

It’s part of their schtick to be arrogant. It’s almost like a defensive mechanism. They understand that the work they are doing is nothing special, and so they have to oversell it to make it seem more valuable. You might think that using big words that don’t really mean anything will not impress a plumber or any business owner, for that matter. But people can be swayed by the illusion of expertise.

When marketers appear as if they possess rare knowledge, they are sometimes able to convince a client to buy in. It’s not the fault of the client if they fall for the trick, but it is something that plumbers should be aware of when they are looking for help with website design or SEO.

Marketing is Not Rocket Science

Just like plumbers won’t act as if they are the only person on earth who can perform the service, SEO experts should follow suit. There’s a culture of talking down to clients, especially those who work in the home service industries.

These marketers try to pretend their work is unattainable by the common man. While web design and SEO do take specific skill sets at the end of the day, it is merely a service that a bunch of different companies can offer around the country.

Plumbers Need a Straight Shooter

In an age where plumbers are looked down upon by arrogant fools in the marketing industry, a straight shooter becomes a breath of fresh air. What if someone who could relate to your business challenges was also the person creating and implementing your marketing campaign?

That is the case with Plumbing Webmasters. Owners Nolen & John come from humble beginnings and were once home service providers themselves. They started their own web company after being talked down to with web geek cocky nonsense.

Identifying Web Geek Nonsense

If you are a plumber currently looking for SEO services, there are some red flags you should consider during your research. If a company starts speaking in an empty language (using words that don’t mean anything), you know you’re in trouble. This web geek is probably cocky.

They think they can trick the common man into overspending on services they don’t need. Many such marketers will get you involved in the shell trick scheme, where they take SEO money and use it on PPC. Steer clear of these egomaniacs.

They have done enough damage to the country already. Especially the common hard-working American who is the foundation of our economy.

Plumbing Webmasters: The Exception

Plumbers can relate to the owners here at Plumbing Webmasters because they lived the same experience. Having once been a home service provider company themselves, they transitioned to SEO work because they couldn’t find another company that wasn’t unpretentious.

It’s almost like shopping for a doctor. They are mostly arrogant people who think because they went to medical school that, they are God-like figures. The problem is even more absurd with web geeks, though, because the work is not dependent on a decade of high-level schooling.

At the end of the day, Plumbing Webmasters is a web marketing company run by relatable people. You can trust that our hundreds of clients are enjoying our professional-level design and SEO services without the web geek cocky.

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I Want Plumbers to Succeed in 2019; Here’s How They Can | The Plumbing SEO Podcast

Summary: Nolen of Plumbing Webmasters discusses how plumbers can succeed in 2019 with digital marketing ventures like SEO, Website Design, PPC, Social Media, and more. Having worked with hundreds of plumbing clients, Plumbing Webmasters understands what it takes to rank on top of Google as a local contractor.

The Typical Process of Getting Reviews

The Problem With the Normal Reviews Process

“E-A-Ting Up” With Righteous Reviews (RR)

Other Fantastic Benefits of RR

Why Does Righteous Reviews Matter?

Related Webmasters Articles & Services

The Story of Pay-Per-Click Bob

A Disappointing Situation

Key Lessons for Your Marketing

Lesson #1: PPC Isn’t the Problem…

The Best Uses for PPC Campaigns

Lesson #2: Lack of Organic SEO Is.

What Can Bob Do?

Lesson #3: PPC Companies Shy Away From SEO

Closing Thoughts

Team Up With the Plumbing Webmasters!

Related Content From the Webmasters

Key Points to Listen For

Finding Your SEO Service Company

SEO Service Qualities to Investigate

Great Qualities in Your SEO Service Company

Red Flags For Plumber SEO

Setting Your Expectations

How to Measure Your SEO Service Results

Team Up With the Plumbing Webmasters!

Related Content From the Webmasters

Managing Your Company Reputation

Review Management

Site Optimization – Navigation & Service Structure

Content Creation

Two Ways to Enhance Reputation & Rank Up

Confusion Regarding Online Marketing

Be Careful of Cure-All Solutions

Taking a Full Health Approach

8 Fancy SEO Buzzwords Explained

Hacked Website

Lack of Reviews

Poor Site Quality

Is The Google Sandbox a Myth?

Marketing Companies vs. The Common Man

Marketing is Not Rocket Science

Plumbers Need a Straight Shooter

Identifying Web Geek Nonsense

Plumbing Webmasters: The Exception