Would you like to master the basics of SEO for HVAC contractors in 2022 to build a stronger brand and drive more leads? In this article, our leading hvac marketing agency will cover everything you need to know about HVAC SEO to prepare you and your team for an effective SEO strategy for 2022, including:
- Identifying your HVAC Contractor SEO keywords;
- Creating an effective HVAC SEO strategy; and
- Optimizing your content for better results.
Your HVAC contractor business must maximize its multi-channel hvac digital marketing approach in 2022, and search engine optimization (SEO) is a crucial component of that to help increase brand awareness; drive traffic to your HVAC website; and increase phone calls and form submissions.
Infused with knowledge and wisdom from HVAC industry veteran and our Director & CMO Elizabeth Ortlieb, we will help you assess the current state of your HVAC SEO strategies in this article. Let’s get started.
SEO for HVAC Companies: What to Know
Firstly, HVAC SEO is one of the most cost-effective and efficient ways to attract high-quality leads to your HVAC contractor business.
If implemented correctly, SEO for HVAC contractors means that prospects—who can be at any stage of the buyer’s journey—find your company’s HVAC services from organic search results, such as on Google, Bing, and Yahoo, and Duck Duck Go.
Sometimes, the phrase any stage of the buyer’s journey confuses people. So, let me give you a specific example that we like to use for explaining an SEO campaign.
For example, HVAC SEO strategies done right may appear as such in the following example. A prospect may perform the following search inquiry about fixing his or her air-conditioner in your city.
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Type one of your targeted keywords in on Google. Ex: “Fix my air conditioner in Murfreesboro”
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See your company’s page ranking on the first page.
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Click onto your website.
- Fill out a service request inquiry.
In essence, this is what an effective HVAC SEO strategy does. It ranks your web pages for the targeted HVAC SEO keywords you and your team have selected. The goal is to write authoritative, relevant, and thorough content that captions your target audience’s attention and leads them to fill out a desired form on your website.
Perhaps, at the moment, you don’t know what your company is ranking for or you don’t have a list of targeted HVAC SEO keywords. If this is the case, it’s time for you to build a better SEO strategy for your HVAC contractor business.
It starts with finding and identifying HVAC SEO keywords that you should rank for. Otherwise known as performing HVAC keyword research and then finalizing an HVAC keyword list.
“The majority of small businesses are without an SEO strategy. This, while more and more customers are using search for buying decisions.”
HVAC Keyword Research: Finding Your HVAC SEO Keywords
Your HVAC contractor SEO strategy must have a solid foundation of HVAC keyword research. As a result, your strategy starts with identifying, finding, and selecting your HVAC SEO keywords. This requires performing the proper HVAC keyword research while keeping your buyer personas in-mind.
Such keyword research is an elaborate process based on industry knowledge; marketing best practices; and internal subject-matter experts (SME). When conducted, you and your team should consider the following:
- types of buyer keywords;
- keyword volume; and
- likelihood of conversion
If you don’t know what we mean by the types of buyer keywords, we will go into a little more detail about those now. We have noticed that both B2B and B2C HVAC companies typically don’t understand the different types of buyer keywords to be aware of.
Basically, there’s something called the Search Commercial Intent funnel; HVAC SEO keywords can be at any stage of this funnel. Each stage of this SEO funnel represents a different type of buyer keyword.
Types of Buyer Keywords
- Informational keywords;
- Commercial Investigation keywords;
- Transactional keywords;
- Navigational keywords; and
- Local keywords.
Think of HVAC SEO keywords in relation to the SEO funnel (above).
As you move down the SEO funnel, the probability of a conversion increases. This is why it’s important to employ a variety of types of buyer keywords and know the search intent behind each HVAC SEO keyword in your final HVAC keyword list.
Informational Keywords (Research & Questions)
Informational keywords are keywords at the top of the SEO funnel in the awareness stage.
Prospects use these keywords to perform research and find information about a topic, product, or service.
They may be “how to” types or question-based searches.
Examples:
- “Air-conditioner filter sizes”
- “How often should I change my HVAC filter?”
- “How to save money on your air-conditioning bill”
- “Why is my furnace so loud”
There is not an immediate connect between an informational keyword and monetization, as people using these types of keywords are typically in the Awareness Stage of the buyer’s journey.
However, while the probability of a conversion is low with this keyword, it doesn’t make it not worthwhile.
Informational HVAC SEO keywords enable you to introduce your products and services to prospects who may not be ready to purchase now but would like to learn more overtime about what you can offer and may become a part of your brand community.
You can maximize the opportunity of informational intent keywords by offering gated content behind a landing page or encouraging them to subscribe to your emails.
The point here is, don’t disregard this type of keyword just because it doesn’t monetize immediately. They can have a significant impact overtime for increased brand awareness, including content downloads and email subscribers
Important note: Informational keywords could be attached to your business or brand name, or they could be more generic. If the former, you will have an easier time ranking organically in local search. If the latter, it may be much more competitive to rank for the generic keywords, having competitors doing the same out of your geographic service area.
This is something to consider in your HVAC SEO strategy.
Commercial Investigation Keywords (Buy in the Future)
Commercial keywords are keywords in the middle of the SEO funnel.
This type of keyword is still very research-oriented, but it indicates that a prospect wants to buy something in near future.
Examples
- “top rated air conditioner window units”
- “best air conditioner for apartments”
- “quiet air conditioner for recording studio”
Do you notice the difference between informational intent and commercial investigation keywords? I think there is an important nuance between this type and informational; however, some marketers do not notice. What do you think? Do you recognize this in your HVAC SEO efforts? Let us know in the comments below.
Let’s now move on to the keywords that are in the middle and bottom.
Transactional Keywords (Buy something with location intent)
Transactional keywords are in the bottom of the SEO funnel. The prospect makes a search for a product or service they have decided upon; they have the intention to buy.
They may use words such as buy, hire, subscribe, for sale, etc.
As you can guess, transactional keywords provide an excellent opportunity to make a conversion or sale.
These keywords may focus on price, brand, and location.
Examples
- “buy air conditioner near me”
- “hire ac contractor in Murfreesboro”
- “Murfreesboro ac contractor”
As you can see, transactional keywords can be mixed with navigational and local keywords.
Navigational Keywords (Specific company, product, or service)
Those who use navigational keywords are searching for a particular brand or service.
Examples
- “Reviews of XYZ Contractor”
- “Features of ABC furnace”
- “HVAC contractors near me”
- “Cost of ac repair in Murfreesboro”
Depending on your brand authority, a navigational keyword could be coupled with your brand name in search.
Local SEO Keywords
Local keywords are keywords that prospects use when they want to use a service or buy something locally.
Local keywords can be some of the most important SEO HVAC keywords for contractors, as you service a specific city, region, or state.
Connect HVAC SEO Keywords to the Buyer’s Journey
So, there you have it; the different types of HVAC SEO keywords that can be employed on your website and blog content.
Remember, each type of keyword in the SEO funnel plays an important role in the buyer’s journey. You will want to make sure that the content on your website provides a full funnel experience and throughout the buyer’s journey.
Thus, in your keyword research, you should make sure that you incorporate enough keywords from each type of buyer keyword category.
Once you have conducted this research, you will want to narrow down to a few keywords in each category (e.g., 10 in each category) that you have the best chance at ranking for in the near- and long-term.
How you assess this is through utilizing (free or paid) SEO tools that analyze keywords and provide their volume; cost-per-click; paid difficulty; and search difficulty, etc.
(At Alpyne Strategy, our team manages SEO for clients in various platforms; we are well-versed in Semrush, Moz, UberSuggest, etc. We can help you assess the right SEO tool for your needs.)
Understand Short-tail and Long-tail Keywords
In addition to having a proper mix of the different types of buyer keywords, you should have a proper mix of long-tail and short-tail keywords, depending upon various factors such as brand awareness, domain authority, geographic service area, etc.
Short-tail keywords
Short-tail keywords are keywords that are no more than three words. Typically, they have high search volume and are very competitive to rank.
Examples
air-conditioner repair
buy new furnace
Long-tail Keywords
Long-tail keywords are keywords that are more than three words. Typically, they have lower search volume and not as competitive to rank.
Examples
best fridge for garage
radiant floor heating in bathroom
When first beginning an SEO strategy, you should focus on long-tail keywords first and foremost.
Here’s an example on understanding why.
Importance of Long-Tail Keywords
For instance, let’s say we have a keyword, “hvac murfreesboro tn.” This is a short-tail keyword that has a monthly search volume of 170, which is high volume for local search.
Because of its competitive nature, it’s going to take a lot of work to rank for this keyword if you do not have any previous HVAC SEO strategy in place.
As a result, it’s better to look for a longer tail keyword that lowers the competitiveness and makes it easier to rank for. We do so by making the keyword more specific: “hvac contractors murfreesboro tn.”
Simply by doing this, we’ve made it a lot easier to start ranking.
In fact, as you can see from the image above, HVAC contractors murfreesboro tn” and “hvac contractors in murfreesboro tn” can be quite easy to target in your content marketing strategy. They have a search volume of 20 and 10, respectively, which is lower but much easier to rank organically for.
Thus, the importance of long-tail keywords should be utilized in your SEO strategy, especially if you are new to the SEO game. Once you establish more domain authority, you can then begin to target the shorter-tail keywords.
The more specifics a keyword has, the likelier the chance of a conversion.
Optimizing Your Website for HVAC SEO Keywords
Once you have your list of keywords in each category and know their search volumes and difficulty to rank, it’s time to take this keyword research and identification into action by optimizing your website.
Title Tags
Title tags are also known as your Header tags (e.g., H1, H2, H3 … H6).
Be sure that each page on your website has only one H1 tag following H2 … H6 with each subheading in those pages. Using more than one H1 tag can negatively impact your ranking on organic search.
Moreover, your H1 tag should also contain your most important keywords for that page and, if it permits, the first few words of the H1 tag should be your target keyword.
Just remember, one H1 per page, and include your most important keyword phrases that you are trying to target into this tag.
The other headers (e.g., H2 … H6) are not as important, but be sure to have only one H1 and for the subheadings, use the H2 … H6 tags. This will help you organize your content and help the reader follow through your content in sequence, as it can help organize it into sections. But, also include your keywords in these tags as well.
Creating Content for Your HVAC SEO Keywords
Finally, to be at the top of your SEO game, you will need to continuously hone and refine existing content on your website and create new content.
We say this because it’s important to understand that ultimately SEO for HVAC contractors is not static but rather ever evolving.
Understand that your pages can be outranked. Understand that your keywords can change overtime. Understand that you may find that some keywords don’t attract the types of personas you thought.
But through this discovery, you will find the best keywords overtime. SEO is a long game that is very rewarding for you and your team.
SEO is a long game that can be very rewarding. But, for it to work, you need to create and publish effective optimized content, which can be in many different mediums across your owned channels, including website, blog, social media, gated content, etc.
Well, that concludes our post for understanding SEO for HVAC contractors in 2022.
Thanks for reading.
Contact Alpyne for HVAC SEO Solutions
At Alpyne, we drive HVAC marketing excellence. We can create a custom HVAC SEO solution that works best for you and your team to reach your goals and maximize success. Contact us today to get started on building a stronger SEO strategy.
p.s., Do you need ideas for HVAC hashtags on your social media? Check out our blog post “HVAC Hashtags.”
