Search · plumbing and heating
SEO for plumbers is the work of making your business the one Google shows when somebody nearby searches for the job you do. For a plumber that means two things at once: being in the map results when a pipe bursts at nine at night, and having a page that ranks when somebody spends a fortnight researching a new boiler.
Knox Growth is a marketing team in Hove that works only with construction and trade businesses, and this guide is the plumber-specific version of the SEO work we do.
It puts your business in front of people who have already decided they need a plumber and are choosing which one. That is the whole point and it is worth stating plainly, because a lot of what gets sold as SEO for plumbers is something else: a blog nobody reads, a monthly report of rankings for terms nobody types, or a directory listing that charges you for the enquiry you would have had anyway.
A plumber’s customers search in two moods. The first is urgent. Water is coming through the ceiling and the search is “emergency plumber near me” on a phone, with the first business that looks real and answers the phone getting the job. The second is considered. The boiler is twelve years old, the search is “boiler installation” followed by the town, and the person is reading two or three websites before they ring anyone.
Good SEO for plumbers serves both. The urgent search is won in the Google map results, which depend on your Google Business Profile far more than on your website. The considered search is won on the website, with a page for that job that proves you have done it before. Most plumbing firms have half of one of these and wonder why the phone only rings when a lead platform sells them the call.
Not the biggest ones. “Plumber” on its own is searched by people in every town in the country and ranking for it nationally is neither possible for a local firm nor useful. The searches worth having are the ones that name the job, the place, or both.
The job searches are the ones that match what you want more of. If the profitable work is boiler installation, the term is “boiler installation” plus your town, and the related ones a customer types along the way: “new boiler cost”, “combi boiler replacement”, “Gas Safe boiler fitter”. If it is bathrooms, it is “bathroom fitter” and “bathroom installation” plus the town. If it is landlord work, it is “gas safety certificate” and “landlord gas check” plus the town.
The place searches are the towns and areas you actually cover, and this is where most plumbing websites go wrong. A single page listing twenty towns ranks for none of them. One honest page for each of the three or four places where you genuinely do most of your work, each saying something true about that area, ranks. Twenty near-identical pages with the town name swapped is the thing Google explicitly penalises, and the penalty lands on your site, not on whoever built the pages.
How you decide which jobs to chase is covered in marketing for plumbers, because it is a business decision before it is an SEO one.
The map results, the three businesses with pins that appear above the ordinary results on a local search, are where the emergency work is won. Getting into them is mostly about your Google Business Profile, not your website. Six things decide it.
Your primary category should be Plumber, with Heating contractor or Boiler installer as a secondary where it applies. A profile filed as “Contractor” is not eligible for a plumbing search in the way a profile filed as “Plumber” is.
A review that says “fixed our leaking tap” is fine. A review that says “replaced our boiler in Worthing, same week, left the airing cupboard cleaner than they found it” tells Google what you do and where, in the customer’s words. Ask for them after every job, and ask people to say what the job was.
Somebody searching at eleven at night filters on “open now”. If your hours are blank, you are not shown. If you claim 24 hours and do not answer, the review that follows costs you more than the hours gained you.
A van, a finished bathroom, a new boiler in a cupboard. Not stock. Profiles that get new photos keep appearing; profiles that were set up once and left go quiet.
If the profile says you cover Brighton, Hove and Shoreham, the website should have pages that say the same, and the business address and phone number should be identical on both.
Your profile, your website, your Checkatrade or Which? listing and your Facebook page should all carry exactly the same details. Small differences, a missing postcode or an old mobile number, make Google less sure which business is which.
None of this costs anything but time, and it is the fastest part of SEO for plumbers to show a result.
A page for each job you want, and a page for each place you want it in. That is the structure, and it matters more than any individual word on any individual page.
A job page, for example boiler installation, has to do three things: explain the job in plain language, show the proof that you have done it (a photograph, a named review, your Gas Safe registration number where it can be seen), and make it easy to enquire about that specific job rather than filling in a general form. The page should answer the questions a customer asks in the first thirty seconds, in the order they ask them, because that is also what Google and, increasingly, AI search engines look for when deciding which page answers the query.
A place page, for example plumber in Hove, has to say something true and specific about working there. The age of the housing stock, the kind of jobs you get called to most in that area, the roads you can reach in ten minutes. If it could be about any town, it is a doorway page, and it is better not built.
The homepage ties it together. It should say in the first two sentences who you are, what you do and where, so that a person and a machine can both work it out without scrolling. How the whole site should be built so that it converts the visitor once the ranking has done its work is covered in website design for plumbers.
The Google Business Profile work shows results in weeks. Getting the category, hours, reviews and photographs right can move a plumber into the map results within a month or two if the competition in the town is ordinary, and it is the first thing we do on any plumbing account.
The website side takes longer. A new job page on a site with little history takes three to six months to settle into a position worth having, and it keeps improving for a year after that as reviews, links and content build up around it. Anyone who tells you page one in thirty days is either talking about a term nobody searches for or about something they cannot deliver.
On cost, the right way to think about it is the number you would pay for a job rather than the fee. We publish our real cost per lead from a live trade account, £4.84, £10.85 and £53.13 for three different services, and the reason the spread is so wide is that a boiler install is worth more than a tap washer. Work out what a boiler installation enquiry is worth to you and what proportion you convert, and you have the ceiling for what any marketing, SEO included, should cost. The method is in what a trade lead should cost.
Not to rank for plumbing jobs. A page for each service and each area does that work. A blog helps when it answers a real question your customers ask, for example whether to repair or replace an old boiler, and it is a waste when it is written to have something to post.
It can, over time, and it should at least reduce how much you rely on them. The difference is that an enquiry from your own website is yours, not sold to three other plumbers at the same time. Most firms run both for a year and then decide.
No. Ads put you at the top while you pay and disappear when you stop. SEO is slower to build and keeps working after the work is done. For emergency plumbing both can make sense at once; for considered work like boilers and bathrooms, SEO is usually the better long-term spend.
No, and nobody honest can. Google does not sell positions, and neither does any AI search engine. What we can guarantee is that the work is done properly and that you see the real numbers every month, which is the same standard we hold for the paid side of what we do.
Yes, and in some ways better, because the map results in a given town are won by whoever has the best profile, not the biggest firm. A sole trader with forty named reviews and current photographs beats a regional company with a neglected listing.
Tell us the one job you would like twice as many enquiries for and the three towns you would drive to for it. We will look at your Google Business Profile and your website the way a customer with a burst pipe would, and tell you the first three things we would change. Half an hour, no charge, and you keep the list whether or not we work together.
The wider picture of how we approach SEO services in Brighton and Hove for trade businesses is on the main SEO page, and what we do as a construction marketing agency across every channel is on the hub.
