Chattanooga Water Heater Co. joined Plumbing Webmasters when their company was less than a year old.
Despite that youth, the specialized plumbing company was equipped with an outstanding brand name.
However, when Travis Mullis, owner of Chattanooga Water Heater Co (CWH), approached our plumbing SEO company several years ago, he had several challenges standing in his way to the top.
First, Chattanooga Water Heater Co. was a brand new entry to the industry.
New businesses are always fun to work with because their owners don’t come with preconceptions about how marketing works.
They’re eager and willing to work hard. Travis certainly brought enthusiasm to the table.
Conversely, new companies start with zero brand recognition and search clout. Our team was building from scratch.
CWH’s case was even more challenging.
Water heater services are a specialized, highly competitive subindustry to enter.
Our Plumber Marketing Challenges
We needed to employ extraordinary SEO tactics if Chattanooga Water Heater Co. was to challenge the existing power structure.
Given the small size of the business, we also started off with a tighter budget than many of our other clients.
Our team needed to generate some results fairly quickly to maintain the client.
If you’ve read our SEO for Plumbers guide, you’ll know that search engine optimization is anything but fast.
To summarize our challenges:
- We had a limited budget to work with.
- Our team needed to produce at least some results quickly.
- The client brand had no existing recognition.
With our strategy and service, Chattanooga Water Heater Co. quickly ranked for local search results for some of the most powerful plumbing industry keywords.
Initial Brand Development
GMB Optimization
First, we completed and optimized CWH’s Google My Business profile.
This free listing is a key ingredient for plumbers who desire more qualified clients within their service area, but few businesses optimize it to the fullest extent.
That’s a real shame, especially since so much of what we perceive as generalized search is becoming increasingly localized.
Without an activated, verified, and optimized GMB account, plumbers rarely get the prestigious map pack placements (which we eagerly wanted for Travis and his company).
We also got to work securing listings on other citation sources.
Organizations like Facebook Business and the Better Business Bureau don’t just provide supplementary reviews.
They also serve as signals to Google about the trustworthiness of your company.
Website Construction
As we always say at the Webmasters, your plumbing company website is the foundation of digital marketing strategy.
Almost every other lead-generating channel springs from your website and/or feeds into it.
With Chattanooga Water Heater Co., our seasoned web designers focused on creating a healthy balance of user-friendliness and alluring visual style.
The end result was a refreshingly practical and easy-to-navigate website (seen below).
This Snapshot Conveys the Simple, Functional Design We Strove For For CWH.
Notice the spacious design that draws the eye to the “free quote” call to action.
The simplistic menu also makes it easy to find the company’s dedicated service pages, which we’ll explore further.
Each major service received its own category blocks with additional information (and clickability), making it even easier for consumers to locate their desired solutions.
We also included valuable information about brand product warranties and financing so consumers feel more comfortable making impulse calls from the home page.
Keyword Rich Service Pages
While some plumbing pros think the homepage does all the heavy lifting for local search, that’s actually not the case.
Service pages generate many of the high-quality leads coming into the website, which is why our team took such care crafting the content for CWH’s site.
Our content writer on the account utilized a healthy, diversified serving of local primaries and secondary keywords.
Just a quick reminder:
- Primary keywords are typically shorter, general terms with high search volume and competition.
- Secondaries are longer, more specific terms with lower volume but higher search intent.
By utilizing both on the CWH site, we ensured a steady stream of leads through the secondary keywords while the primaries (which take longer to rank for) slowly matured.
Unlike many other marketing agencies, however, we generate hundreds of keyword listings for even greater returns in local search.
However, even our expectations were blown out of the water when Chattanooga Water Heater Co. started appearing in local map packs in less than two months.
Imagine Little Pins of Your Service Activities All Over Google Maps
Geotagging for A+ Local SEO
By far, the most impactful element of our SEO work came from our DataPins software, which was conveniently built into CWH’s new website.
The software allows plumbers (and other contracting professionals) to pin job sites and generate automated review requests.
DataPins generates a map pin on the website’s corresponding service page when a client checks in after a repair or installation.
Another pin appears every time a client submits a review through the application.
That may sound fancy, but what did this tool actually do for CWH?
With the Local Search Update, map results suddenly became much more fluid.
New businesses could suddenly bust into the premium map pack positions with the right optimization and local activity.
These map pins, tagged with our geotagging software, provide undeniable evidence that Chattanooga Water Heater Co. provides services throughout the city.
Each pin contained information about the job performed, the general area services provided, and the date.
All this information is priceless to Google.
It proves CWH’s ongoing activity, meaning the company is a dependable choice to recommend to local consumers.
GMB, Pins, and Reviews Heavily Influence Local Search Results.
Fast Forward
Travis Mullis’ company jumped to the top of local search results less than two months after his site launched.
Before the Local Search Update, that rarely happened.
Several years after their site launch, CWH continues to dominate map packs in his community, generating some enviable levels of monthly leads.
You can find his company in search through queries like:
- “water heater in Chattanooga”
- “water heater repair in Chattanooga”
- “water heater installation in Chattanooga”
- “tankless water heater Chattanooga”
- and many more high-dollar keywords!
Chattanooga Water Heater Co., a brand-new company, managed to snatch these rankings from established businesses with years of tenure in the local market.
Thanks to quality web design, extensive keyword research, professional content writing, and technical support from the development team, this fledgling business launched with very satisfying success.
However, Travis Mullis’ dedication to completing check-ins and asking for reviews earned him the outrageous results we see today.
We look forward to seeing what other plumbing professionals can achieve with the DataPins system.
