Essential SEO Checklist for HVAC Contractors

There are tons of ways homeowners can find your HVAC business online such as paid search and local service ads. While those are fantastic ways to get noticed by prospective customers, every individual ad needs to be funded.

SEO is part of a dynamic digital strategy for any HVAC contracting business. While paid channels have a quicker turnaround, SEO is an investment that compounds over time–that is, if you have the right strategy and execute it well.

This checklist tells you everything you need to lay the foundation for phenomenal search engine optimization practice for your business.
 

High-Quality Website Content

You have all those keywords, now you need to use them effectively. You do this by making highly valuable content that users gravitate towards. Each piece of online content you have on your site is another magnet to draw users in and teach them about your brand, services and why you’re the best fit for them.

There are many types of online content, and the creation process looks like this:

• Make relevant content: The biggest mistake that nearly every business makes online is creating content that they want to make, not what users want to read. Match the user intent and you can’t go wrong; anything else is irrelevant.

• Create visual appeal: It’s not just about the text. Online content should be visually appetizing to anyone who visits. Image choice and quality play a factor.

• Ultimately, it provides value: In a nutshell, value equates to importance and usefulness. If it isn’t valuable to your audience, it isn’t worth your time.

Creating high-quality website content sounds like a cinch, but there are a lot of factors that play into it including style, word choice, voice, and more. That’s why it’s always best to hire professional writers who can best appeal to your audience.

Internal Linking

An internal link is when you select anchor text on one page and use that text to create a link to another page on your website. This sounds simple, but the implications are that you’re tying one piece of content to another, showing relevance between the two.

Strong internal linking strategies do a few things like:

• Continue the user journey: Content should be targeted to one specific topic, and it should stay on-task. But if a user wants to know more about a relevant topic that’s mentioned, an internal link can further their journey with new information.

• Understand that more doesn’t equal better: It’s good to have internal links; it’s bad to have too many. This can muddy the initial message and overload readers. Internal links should be precise and targeted.

• Lead to sales: Internal linking is part of your sales strategy. With the right internal links, like you’ll find at the end of this checklist, you can entice the reader to solve a problem.

Technical SEO

Technical SEO doesn’t sound the most exciting, but it’s necessary to get features in front of your target audience. We’ve already covered how to manage a user’s search expectations, but now you need to appeal to search engines so they display your site as often as possible.

Strong technical SEO is dynamic and part of other sections of your online strategy.

• Create a fast, responsive website: A responsive site quickly loads on all types of devices, from mobile to desktop, and even tablets. Google ranks sites on a mobile-first basis, so a non-responsive site means you’re already behind.

• Crawlability: Google uses website crawlers (bots) to understand the structure of your website. Poor structure means poor SEO and bad ranking in search results.

• HTTPS and SSL: Google and other search engines want to connect users to secure, safe websites. That’s where HTTPS and SSL security certificates come in. They’re complex and need to be set up properly.

Optimal User Experience

User experience plays a role in SEO. If a user has a hard time navigating your website or cannot find what they’re looking for quickly, they’ll hit the back button and end up on Google’s search results again.

An optimal experience can be achieved like this:

• Minimize distractions: When a user lands on your website, they should be able to find what they need quickly. Steer them towards their goal so they don’t have to search for it too hard.

• Content readability: Ever read online content that’s a mile long with no break in sight? You probably navigated away from those posts pretty quickly. Make content easy to read for users and search engines.

• Accessibility features: You need alternate text for images and easy website navigation with the keyboard. Better accessibility benefits your SEO.

When a user stays on your page, it signals to Google that users enjoy your content and find it valuable. To Google, that means they displayed a result that best benefitted the user–they found what they were looking for.