Essential Plumbing Keywords: Your 2024 Guide to SEO Success (Free Download)

Knowing the right plumbing keywords is crucial to achieving online marketing success for your plumbing company.

According to BrightLocal, 98% of consumers use the Internet to find information about local businesses. What happens if you’re the best plumber in your entire city, but no one finds you?

This guide cuts to the core of SEO for plumbers, pinpointing the keywords that matter in 2024. Learn how to harness these keywords to amplify your visibility and reel in the traffic that converts.

• Keywords are critical for plumbing SEO. Optimizing a website with top searched terms like ‘plumber,’ ‘emergency plumber,’ and ‘sump pump’ can attract relevant traffic and improve search rankings.
• It’s essential to understand different search intents—informational, commercial, transactional—to align content with what users are looking for, leveraging tools like Google Keyword Planner and Analytics for keyword research and trends.
• Consistent content updates and avoiding common keyword pitfalls, such as keyword stuffing and ignoring search intent, are vital for maintaining site relevance and achieving SEO success in the plumbing industry.

To unlock the power of plumbing keywords, it’s essential to understand what they are and their role in enhancing your business’s online visibility. Keywords represent the terms and expressions that potential clients use in search engines while searching for plumbing services.

By optimizing your website with high-volume and relevant keywords that reflect customer search patterns, you will improve your chances of attracting qualified traffic.

However, the process of selecting the right keywords is not as simple as it may seem.

It requires in-depth knowledge of the plumbing industry, your local target audience, and search engine algorithms. The importance of choosing the right keywords cannot be overstated.

The right keywords can help to improve your search engine rankings, attract the most relevant traffic to your website, and ultimately increase conversions and sales.

Top Searched Plumbing Keywords

Knowing the top searched plumbing keywords is fundamental to your SEO strategy. These are terms potential customers often use when looking for plumbing services. To optimize your website, it’s important to focus on the best plumbing keywords, including plumbing SEO keywords. Some of the top searched plumbing keywords include:

By focusing on these keywords in your website’s content and optimization strategies, you can enhance your online presence and draw in more prospective clients to your plumbing company.

To download a list of the top 300 keywords for plumbing, click here.

Finding the right SEO keywords is not just about the services; it’s also about the problems your potential customers want to solve. Some popular plumbing keywords include:

• electric water heater
• gas water heater
• water heater repair
• toilet repair
• tankless water heater
• sump pump

Knowing these popular keywords and incorporating them into your content can greatly enhance your plumbing company’s online visibility and attract potential customers by targeting commonly searched keywords.

Crafting Content Around Popular Keywords

Creating engaging and valuable content that addresses the problems and challenges faced by your target audience is an effective way to establish your plumbing company as an industry authority.

This fosters trust with potential customers and sets you apart from the competition. In the competitive online plumbing market, quality content that provides informative posts on services can be a decisive factor in building customer trust.

When crafting content, strategically include popular keywords in a way that adds value to the user and avoids the pitfalls of keyword stuffing. For example, if ‘sump pump’ and ‘water heater repair’ are among the top searched keywords, create informative content that educates clients on these services and solutions for related common plumbing issues.

This approach not only showcases your company’s expertise and reputability but also improves your search engine rankings.

Search Intent

Understanding the different types of search intents is crucial in keyword selection. Search intent refers to what users hope to achieve by typing certain terms into search engines. These intents can be classified into informational, navigational, commercial, and transactional.

On the other hand, there are four types of search intent:

• Informational search intent refers to when users are looking for information or answers to their questions.
• Commercial search intent refers to when users are investigating brands, products, or services.
• Transactional search intent refers to when users are ready to complete an action, like booking a plumber for a drain cleaning service.
• Navigational search intent refers to when users are specifically looking for a particular website or webpage.

By understanding and targeting the most searched keywords in each category, you can better align your content with the needs of your audience, ultimately leading to higher conversions.

For many years, Google has been working towards producing localized search results for the appropriate keywords. The algorithm has learned to determine the search intent of the user and almost 50% of the time chooses to provide a local result rather than a more national or generic result.

Localized Informational Keywords

For example, as a consumer if you wanted to know how to unclog a toilet (an informational keyword), Google would generally provide a more generic result like below. The algorithm infers that you’re not interested in having a local business come out to unclog your toilet, but rather just want information on how to do it.

As a business owner, you may ask yourself why you’d want to be on the first page for a keyword that isn’t indicative of buying intent, and most often will be out of your service area. This is a good question, but not a totally simple one.

Google’s algorithm rewards the most deserving authoritative businesses with higher search positions. If you have content about how to unclog a toilet or about the difference between different types of water heaters — even if people in your market don’t read them — you’ll signal to Google that you’re authoritative about plumbing in general, and this has the potential to increase your relevance in the keywords that actually matter to you.

Localized Transactional Keywords

Contrast that with a search like “plumbers near me” — the highest volume plumbing keyword on our list. This has very clear transactional intent. In these types of searches, Google will provide localized results.

Interestingly, if you use an SEO tool like SEMRush and search for the keyword “plumbers near me” without any geographic specificity, it will generally return something more generic. For example, the SERP looks like this:

You’ll notice that almost all of the results are directories like ANGI or Yelp and don’t have any real geographic focus at all. This helps demonstrate why it’s so important to track results locally vs. nationally for the highest-intent keywords.

If you’re actually located in a city, the results will be localized to your individual market. As an illustration, here’s what the same search looks like if you search in Franklin, Tennessee:

Unfortunately, a big keyword like this is often still dominated by the directories, but the results are localized to Franklin. (And there is actually one local brand on the first page of the SERP.) While 823,000 people a month search for plumber near me nationally, only about 170 do in Franklin.

At Valve+Meter we try to put ourselves in the shoes of your potential clients. Potentially, they are typing in a phrase like “Franklin plumbers near me” from Franklin. In theory, Google’s algorithm should know the searcher is in Franklin already and disregard the “Franklin” part of the query. Here’s the actual organic results for that search:

There are definitely differences between the two SERPs. Instead of a single actual business, the version where we used a city name modifier in the search query returned five actual businesses. The more long-tail the query, the more likely this type of result will hold.

(One important note: probably fewer than five people a month search for “Franklin plumbers near me” from Franklin, Tennessee. It’s not high-volume, but it’s definitely high-intent.)

Local SEO plays a crucial role for plumbers. When your customers search from a specific geographic location, you need to do everything you can to show up for them.

With a significant 46% of Google searches for local businesses being location-based, using location-specific keywords such as ‘plumbing services near me’ and ‘emergency plumber in [location]’ can significantly improve your visibility in local search results.

Beyond keywords, a strong review profile, a presence in online directories, and maintaining a cohesive online presence through accurate local citations and social media campaigns can influence your local rankings and reputability.

Also, creating and optimizing a Google Business Profile, along with ensuring Name, Address, and Phone Number (NAP) consistency, is instrumental in improving local SEO for plumbing contractors. These strategies can help drive relevant local traffic and inquiries to your plumbing business.

Finding the right plumbing keywords to target doesn’t have to be a guessing game. There are powerful tools and techniques available to help you identify the most effective keywords for your plumbing company.

Utilizing tools like Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush, and Moz Keyword Explorer can provide insights into relevant plumbing keywords. These tools can help you understand the terms potential customers use to search for plumbing services and how you can integrate those keywords into your website and blog.

In addition to finding keywords, it’s also important to analyze your competition. Understanding your competitors’ use of keywords and their content strategies can provide you with insights to develop more effective SEO strategies. This competitive analysis can help you identify opportunities to differentiate your business and stand out in the crowded online marketplace.

Utilizing Google Keyword Planner for Plumbing SEO

With Google Keyword Planner, you can discover new keywords related to your plumbing services or business website. This tool provides suggestions for keywords alongside estimates for their search volume and cost to target. These insights can help you identify new opportunities to reach your target audience.

Moreover, Keyword Planner allows you to:

• Organize keywords into different categories related to your brand and services for targeted campaign structures
• Search for new keywords or upload existing ones to create a keyword plan
• Obtain search volume data and forecasts
• Have performance forecasts showing potential conversions, clicks, or impressions based on planned expenditure

It ensures that your plumbing business can effectively utilize SEO and precisely target potential customers with relevant content like ‘drain cleaning’ and ‘leak detection’.

Incorporating high-quality and strategically planned keywords into your website content is key to enhancing your online visibility. Whether you’re creating website content, blog posts, or tags, it’s important that you include the right keywords. These keywords should reflect the services you offer and the search terms your potential customers use.

But remember, it’s not just about stuffing your content with keywords. You need to incorporate your keywords naturally within your content, providing value to your readers.

Regularly reviewing your analytics to determine the performance of your implemented keywords can help you adapt your strategy to target the most effective terms. By aligning your SEO efforts with seasonal demand for certain plumbing-related issues, you can ensure your content always hits the mark.

While keywords are crucial to your SEO strategy, there are common pitfalls to avoid. One of the biggest mistakes is ignoring search intent. This can lead to targeting plumbing keywords that don’t convert because they don’t match what the user is actually looking for. In addition, failing to review the search engine results pages (SERPs) to understand what type of content ranks for target keywords can lead to misaligned SEO strategies.

Another common mistake is focusing solely on high-volume keywords without considering user intent or competitiveness. This can lead to pursuing highly competitive keywords that are difficult to rank for, rather than focusing on more achievable targets.

Some tips to avoid this mistake include:

• Conducting thorough keyword research to identify relevant and less competitive keywords
• Considering user intent and targeting plumbing keywords that align with the purpose of your content
• Avoiding broad and irrelevant keywords that may not attract your target audience
• Balancing keyword volume and competitiveness to find the right balance for your content strategy

By following these tips, you can optimize your keyword strategy and improve your chances of ranking higher in search engine results through search engine optimization.

The Risks of Over-Optimizing Your Content

Keyword stuffing is a common SEO mistake that can have serious consequences. Overuse of keywords can make your content appear untrustworthy to both search engines and users, damaging your website’s reputation and effectiveness. Excessive keyword use can also reduce content relevance, making it less useful to users and leading to lower search engine rankings.

A website penalized for keyword stuffing can suffer from a poor user experience due to difficult-to-read content, resulting in high bounce rates and low engagement. But it’s not all doom and gloom. Recovering from keyword stuffing penalties involves identifying and removing overused keywords, improving content quality, and submitting a reconsideration request to search engines. Remember, the key is to provide high-quality content that naturally incorporates relevant keywords.

Creating an effective SEO strategy for plumbing websites involves more than just selecting the right keywords. Here are some key steps to follow:

1. Focus on keywords with high search volumes and low difficulty to connect with the targeted audience effectively.
2. Create specific web pages for each plumbing service and ensure that the content is optimized with relevant locations and demonstrated expertise.
3. Improve search visibility and establish industry authority by regularly updating and optimizing your content.

By following these steps, you can create an SEO strategy that will help your plumbing website rank higher in search engine results and attract more targeted traffic.

However, navigating the SEO landscape can be complex. That’s where professional SEO services for plumbing companies come in. These companies specialize in the plumbing industry and can provide you with the following benefits:

• Expertise in the latest SEO techniques and strategies
• Customized SEO solutions tailored to your plumbing business
• Improved search engine rankings and visibility
• Increased organic traffic to your website
• Higher conversion rates and more leads
• Competitive edge in the online marketplace

With their expertise, you can ensure that your SEO strategy is as effective as possible, helping your plumbing business grow and succeed.

Long Tail Keywords: Connecting with a Niche Audience

Long-tail keywords may have lower search volumes, but they tend to have higher conversion rates. These are very effective for niche market targeting. Due to less competition for specific queries, long tail keywords make it easier for plumbing services to achieve higher rankings in search engine results.

Targeting long tail keywords also allows you to:

• Reach customers further along in the buying process
• Increase the likelihood of conversion
• Attract a dedicated niche audience
• Provide specific services that your business offers

For instance, incorporating long tail keywords like ‘gas line repair’ and ‘tankless water heater installation’ in your content can attract a dedicated niche audience. These customers are more likely to convert because they are looking for specific services that your business provides.

Mastering the use of plumbing keywords is a game-changer in the highly competitive plumbing industry.

From understanding and unlocking the power of the right keywords, using keyword research tools to incorporating them into your digital marketing strategy, avoiding common pitfalls, and building an effective SEO strategy – every step matters.

The journey may seem daunting, but with the right approach and tools, you can transform your plumbing business, attract more customers, and establish yourself as an industry leader. Remember, the power of plumbing keywords is waiting to be unlocked. The question is, are you ready?