This report will give you an idea how we could help you see the same results.
I am going to touch on a wide variety of areas in this case study, including:
Your website
Trust signals
Google profile
Site Speed
Content
Backlinks
Online Directories
Popular search terms
Technical factors
Social Media
Optimized pages
Competition
Some will be VERY impactful while others are minor, but all are geared toward building trust not just with Google but also with your potential customers and making your PHONE RING!
Chapter 1:
Website Homepage
Your homepage is the virtual storefront for your business. What visitors see first thing on your site sets the tone for whether they see enough reason to trust you to work on their home.
But your website needs some fixes – most of which are very easy – to really capitalize on all who visit it.
While you have some great specials and coupons that are sure to get people’s attention, having a stock image as the prominent visual on your site is keeping people from realizing you’re the great local company you are.
In addition to showing actual photos of your team and company, your website is lacking some vital elements that, when added, will really help people see why you’re the one to trust with their business.
Google doesn’t rank websites. They rank website PAGES. You only have one page for all your air conditioning services. There’s a big problem with that, and it’s one keeping you from getting as many web visitors who are in need of your services.
Simply put, when people in Plano Google for AC installation, Google will likely not send them to you.
The navigation on your website is a big issue.
If you step back and look at it from Google's perspective, none of these words really ‘mean’ ANYTHING to Google. For example, all these words in the main navigation could apply to a plumber, roofing company, or electrician.
When it comes to Google, TRUST is the name of the game. If Google thinks you are a generalist and ‘kind of’ good at a LOT of things, you won’t get a fraction of the clicks and calls you deserve vs. if it is CLEAR that you are very good at a handful of your most important services.
I threw this together to give you an idea of what navigation would look like on a STRONG HVAC website!
Google would have ZERO confusion about what this company does!
You are missing some important (even essential) items in your footer and just above it.
This bottom section should have something warm and inviting. Also, you have some broken links at the bottom right. The “feed” link goes to a page with a bunch of web code. The “schedule” icon takes visitors to a broken page.
Here is an example of what we did on the bottom of a homepage (below the Google map) with one of our HVAC clients – Hanna Heating and Air Conditioning. It is inviting with the message and the image of their friendly front desk staff.
Chapter 2:
Tell Your Story
Samm’s Heating & Air Conditioning has the history, the people, and the stories that show how you are a local company people can trust in their homes and with their money. We just need to let people see who you are by telling that story.
The About page is almost always the MOST viewed page for every service business we work with.
Beyond this first paragraph telling when you started, there’s not much more of a story. Who started the business? Who is on your team? What are the milestones you’ve accomplished? Any awards you’ve won?
Where are all the photos of your team that you have on your Google profile page? Those are great!
Your About page should tell your story, show off your team, put a “face” on your business, and most of all, help to build trust. While yours has many of the necessary elements, it’s missing some “heart.”
Here is an excellent example from Drabek & Hill in Oklahoma City. They have been in business for 60 years. I love this image they show on their website.
Your Meet our Team page is excellent. It gives people a good look at who runs the business and the technicians they might be letting into their homes. This page would be easily improved by adding a little bio about each person.
Having About pages that tell our clients story and really captures the ‘heart’ behind their business is an area where we shine!
Here are a few examples of this work that we have done for a couple of our HVAC clients.
Chapter 3:
Trust Signals
It’s hard to overstate the importance of building trust when it comes to your website. That’s essentially the whole point. Without trust, people don’t pick up the phone and call you.
There are “trust signals” that every website for a local service business should be taking advantage of.
Of course, any industry associations, safety, compliance, service organizations that you can be a part of (cheaply) are worth their weight in gold when it comes to trust, especially if they provide you with a badge to show off on your site.
You have a great display of these trust signals!
It is great to show glowing reviews; however, there’s a better way to display testimonials.
Let me ask you this: which do you find more credible?
This from your site:
Chapter 4:
Google My Business
It is hard to overstate the importance of your Google My Business profile. This is your chance to tell Google who you are, where you are, what you do, and why you deserve to be #1 for thousands of search terms!
Google is constantly adding more features and options to this platform. This makes sense (for them) because the more they can keep visitors on THEIR site and not on individual websites, the more they ‘win.’
It is incredible how much you can find out about local businesses without ever clicking to their website!
Wait times
Photos
video
Products and services
Specials / promotions
Service areas
Business category
Recent posts
Specials
Hours
Holiday hours
Busy times of day
Phone number
Click to driving directions
Reviews
COVID updates
Video Text messaging
Some high impact items to address with Samm’s Google My Business profile:
Continue adding even more photos of your team. Have pictures of your shop, your team, workers on the job, staff in the office, technicians wearing booties, etc. (Our average HVAC client has close to 100 photos on their Google profile).
Set up a chat / text feature so customers can message you right from Google.
Add a GET A QUOTE box
Make more frequent posts. Your last one was March and the one before that was back in November. You are also missing out on taking advantage of this FREE way to help you rank better by not posting more often on Google. Posting regularly (even weekly) gives Google even more reason to rank you higher as a relevant company still in business in Plano.
Most of our clients were also not taking advantage of all the great opportunities you can do with Google My Business. So we get to create some HUGE results for them!
Take a look at this client that signed on with us one year ago. This shows the year-to-year comparison of how much their growth on Google increased once we started handling their online marketing needs.
Their website traffic is TEN TIMES more than last year, too.
Chapter 5:
Website Content
When it comes to “Content,” there are 3 key items that every excellent HVAC website should have:
Strong service pages
A robust FAQ page (with actual questions you hear from customers).
Recent content! A blog with content added consistently – even if that’s once a month.
There is no bigger opportunity to edge out the competition than content.
Excellent content isn’t just for your visitors. It is essential for Google rankings. Great content will tell Google that you have what customers are looking for, and that will cause you to rise to the top.
We dove into your site’s content. You do not have the pages you need to have for the people searching for the services you provide.
Using a software program to analyze how Google sees a particular page, we looked at how well your current blog post rates for people searching “air purifier.”
It’s missing popular search terms, readability, sufficient links, but most importantly – it’s missing words. Google is not going to rank a blog post with only 357 words when there are other (local) web pages that provide more content and information on the topic.
Are you paying a company to write regular content for you? Are you seeing reports of how much traffic these articles are bringing to your site? I’d be surprised blog posts with such little content are doing much to get people to your site.
Your content – on this page and other pages across your site – has significant problems keeping your website from ranking well in Google searches.
What makes great content?
It’s the questions you hear every day as an HVAC technician.
Ask anyone who answers the phones every day and schedules the service calls what they hear from customers. ANSWER those questions in a helpful way and put THAT on your website. That’s great content that will drive results and make your phone ring!
Having RECENT content on your site related to what Samm’s does for its customers is vital.
We add fresh content EVERY MONTH to all our HVAC client’s websites!
And we create specific HVAC content that is typically five times larger than what you currently have and enhanced with compelling visuals.
Below are some year-to-year comparisons of a couple of our newer clients.
Last February, they saw 4 or 5 times more website sessions and clicks! We can show you more examples of how content directly drives new website visitors and phone calls!
Chapter 6:
Call To Action
I am sure you have heard the line, “You can’t manage what you can’t measure.”
One of the biggest items missing from your website, social media, and online presence is a Call to Action.
A Call to Action is something of significant value you can give, tell, or show your ideal clients that is GOOD ENOUGH for them to exchange their email address for it or actually to pick up the phone to call you.
You do a great job of having several great Call to Action items on your site.
Save $2900 is a hugely compelling
Coupons
0% Financing
Read our Reviews button
Request an Appointment button
The “More Special” button
Chapter 7:
Reviews
Reviews are a critical factor and are only becoming more and more important to your potential customers! There is no excuse for being apathetic about collecting reviews anymore. It’s important.
Having a 4.9 star average on Google with more than 600 reviews is excellent!
And not just that, on review sites outside of Google, you are average a 4.86 star rating! It is obvious that your company is well respected in your community and that you provide excellent customer service.
I see that you do make a point to respond to all your Google reviews. Great job!
This is very important as it shows Google you are ‘active and engaged with a potent (and free) tool that drives a LOT of your business from the web! Plus, a simple ‘thank you’ can go a long way when somebody leaves a review!
The unique challenge you face in Plano is that your competition is also doing really well.
You should continue working on getting more 5-star reviews if you want to get further ahead of the pack.
We have found several different ways to go about getting reviews for our HVAC clients. We’ve been able to double the number of reviews many of our clients have received (sometimes within a few months) as well as raise their average rating.
One of our best examples is a client of ours in Texas. They started with us just a year ago, having only 32 reviews. Now they have 166 reviews with a 5.0 average rating!
We not only got their average star rating up, but they now have five times as many reviews.
Chapter 8:
Video
People watch videos all the time online. Having at least one video on your website is incredibly powerful.
Videos tell your story and build trust
Videos keep visitors on your site longer
Videos turn random visitors into PHONE CALLS!
Some of your competitors are already a few steps ahead when it comes to video. It is a great way to deliver your company’s message to visitors to your site who will likely watch online videos. A high-quality video helps visitors see why you are the company to trust and hire.
That man’s testimonial you have on your Testimonials page would be great on your homepage where the majority of your visitors go (versus a tiny fraction who will ever go to the Testimonials page).
We make videos for our clients. This doesn’t require an additional budget, a film crew, or even taking up hours and hours of a client’s time with a video shoot. We make effective, compelling videos for our clients, often with just a handful of great photos.
For example, we made a video highlighting a client’s generous donation of a new furnace to a local vet in need. For another client, it was a year in review video of all the work they accomplished.
Chapter 9:
Long Tail Of Search
The long tail of search is very simple and applies to every industry.
What is long tail of search?
In a nutshell, it is ranking for the longer search phrases commonly searched for AND are most certainly being ignored by the competition.
The term “hvac” or “air conditioning” likely gets searched thousands of times a month in the Plano area, but this is the OPPOSITE of a long tail search. These short search terms are very general and get a LOT of searches.
The trouble is this search term shows zero intent and not where most people will start their search on Google. Instead, most people will start their search with trying to solve THEIR problem, “My furnace is clicking”, “my AC is frozen up”, “my furnace is blowing cool air” – this is where we want to find them – while they are still trying to solve their problem!
Ranking for high-volume keywords like ‘hvac’ is difficult, costs a lot of money, time and expertise. Plus, you are competing with tons of paid ads, directories, and competitors with deep pockets.
When somebody Googles ‘HVAC’ in your area, this is what they see – including paid ads.
The long tail of search is very simple and applies to every industry.
What is long tail of search?
In a nutshell, it is ranking for the longer search phrases commonly searched for AND are most certainly being ignored by the competition.
The term “hvac” or “air conditioning” likely gets searched thousands of times a month in the Plano area, but this is the OPPOSITE of a long tail search. These short search terms are very general and get a LOT of searches.
The trouble is this search term shows zero intent and not where most people will start their search on Google. Instead, most people will start their search with trying to solve THEIR problem, “My furnace is clicking”, “my AC is frozen up”, “my furnace is blowing cool air” – this is where we want to find them – while they are still trying to solve their problem!
Ranking for high-volume keywords like ‘hvac’ is difficult, costs a lot of money, time and expertise. Plus, you are competing with tons of paid ads, directories, and competitors with deep pockets.
When somebody Googles ‘HVAC’ in your area, this is what they see – including paid ads.
Not to mention you are competing with Houzz, Yelp, Yellow Pages, Angie’s List, Yahoo Local, Expertise.com, local directories, three best-rated, Porch.com, Thumbtack – all trying to rank for that search term ‘HVAC companies.’
So, where is the big opportunity? The answer is in the image below.
When you think about your ideal customers - the challenges they are running into and the questions they commonly have - therein lies the opportunity.
To be honest, few people get that the key to succeeding online doesn’t lie in being #1 for ‘HVAC’ or ‘heating and air.’ These terms have massive search volumes, but it’s foolish to try and rank for them.
The real money is in ranking for search terms like
Best Furnaces for 2021
AC making weird sounds
Furnace not igniting
Why is one room too hot?
When you think about your ideal customers - the challenges they are running into and the questions they commonly have - therein lies the opportunity.
I bet you would like about 50 more calls a day from folks who search for things like this?
THESE are the words being searched by potential customers with a problem (right now) they are trying to figure out how to solve.
I could show you a couple THOUSAND more search terms just like these!
There is a lot less search volume, they are easier to rank for, and they are from actual customers with a problem you can solve!
Chapter 10:
Site Speed
I used two different tools to grade the speed of your website. For many years this has been a crucial ranking factor to Google.
Our tests for your website’s speed came out very good. But that wasn’t too surprising since your website only has a few pages and not much content or images.
The first one was this site - https://tools.pingdom.com/
The 2nd one is provided by Google - https://developers.google.com/
The 44 (out of 100) score is for your speed on mobile devices. That is a real problem. Most online searches happen on a mobile device, so you want to make sure your site is fast on both desktop AND mobile.
Your slow site speed problem is absolutely costing you customers and sales.
An essential factor in building trust with Google is a consistent name, address, and phone number for your business across different platforms (your website, social media profiles, directories, and associations related to your industry and general business directories).
The more consistency there is, the easier it is for Google to trust you are who you say.
With some clients, this is a BIG issue just because of how companies often grow. They might start in the owner’s home and then move to a small shop, and some years later maybe a bigger shop. You throw in a partner change, a name change, or more than two moves (not to mention a variety of employees or agencies ‘helping’), and you can end up with quite a mess.
We did some research and found a handful of issues for Samm’s Heating & Air:
Having only 3 NAP errors means you are in decent shape, a lot better than most companies. The biggest opportunity here is getting on the sites that Samm’s is currently missing from.
I was surprised to see you missing from some of the big sites that typically HVAC companies are on, including the Better Business Bureau, Localeze, and WhitePages.
One of our tools shows the citations of the top 5 ranking HVAC companies in Plano. This gives you a powerful look into what is helping your competitors rank as well as they are!
If you would like to see this report, give us a shout, and I will be happy to send it over.
Chapter 12:
Optimizied Pages
An ‘optimized’ website page simply means it is CLEAR what the page is trying to rank on Google for.
If there is very little text on a page, it’s hard for Google to know what that page is about. Likewise, if there are images with no descriptions, Google doesn’t know what those images are! If the explanation for that page is ‘Samm’s and Plano’ that doesn’t help them understand that page is about AC repair!
This is an example of a well-optimized website page (one of our HVAC clients)
https://www.hannainc.com/air-conditioning-installation/
We will touch on just 4-5 areas real quick to try and explain:
Page title (this is what shows up in the little tab on your web browser)
“Air Conditioning Installation | Wichita, KS” (PERFECT)
URL (website address): air-conditioning-installation (CRYTAL CLEAR WHAT THE PAGE IS ABOUT)
Page description: Hanna Heating & Air Conditioning. Fast, reliable heating and air service for Wichita families since 1983. 24/7 Emergency Service. (EXCELLENT)
On the page, there are links to driving directions (which helps Google know where Hanna is located), FAQ, and recent posts.
It’s rare to find website pages for local HVAC companies that are optimized very well. This is a HUGE opportunity just waiting to be capitalized on and a cheap, easy fix! Remember, when it comes to Google, the name of the game is TRUST, and you only have to be better than the other guy!
Here's a breakdown of the issues of your website:
It is concerning that you have 16 errors. These errors on your site include 4 broken pages, a broken image, duplicate titles, and meta description (which is the information Google relies upon to know how high to rank your various pages).
Many of the 148 warnings are not of big concern. But they are items that are hurting your SEO and ability to rank well on Google.
Fortunately, it wouldn’t take long to clean up a lot of the biggest technical issues your site has.
Chapter 13:
Backlinks
To Google, how many and how strong backlinks are pointing to a website is a massive indication of trust.
Samms is lagging behind the competition when it comes to backlinks. You have 1191 backlinks, which is about half of what the average competitor has.
Chapter 14:
Social Media
Social media has proven to be an excellent tool to engage your community and earn trust and customers!
It is great to see Samm’s has a nice presence on Facebook. However, while your posts are a mix of fun as well as informative/promotional posts to your site’s content, your Facebook page is not capitalizing on it.
This dog post is excellent! It definitely deserves more than the handful of likes it received. But there’s no wonder why. Your posts are often missing the mark on being engaging.
You need to be posting on Facebook with posts that are interesting to your customers. The more personality you bring to most of your posts on social media, the more visibility and traction you will get when you occasionally share a special or sale!
This literally can be the difference of hundreds and hundreds of people seeing your post about an upcoming special or 5 or 6 people!
When you have people engaging with your posts, you might find yourself having 22 people like and 4 people SHARE a glowing review you post on Facebook, just like this recent example for one of our clients.
Unfortunately, the situation is worse on Twitter, where your posts are getting absolutely zero engagement.
Just because you can be on a social media site doesn’t mean you should be.
While many new social sites are just simply not worth the time for an HVAC company to be on, there is one that is HUGE for service businesses like yours.
NEXTDOOR.
Over the past year, we’ve expanded our HVAC clients’ presence on Nextdoor.
It’s great to see that Samm’s Heating & Air already has a local advantage here - recommended 231 times and a Neighborhood Favorite in TWO Neighborhoods!
With a very talented graphic designer as part of the team, we are constantly surprising and delighting our clients with fantastic images and design work all geared to making them look great
Get in contact!
You do what you do best, and we handle the marketing.
