Niche Navigators: Plumbing

INTRO:
It's time for the SEO show where a couple of nerds talk search engine optimization so you can learn to compete in Google and grow your business online. Now here's your hosts, Michael and Arthur.

MICHAEL: Hello and welcome to the SEO show for another week. I'm Michael Costin. I'm in the studio with The much esteemed, wonderful, competent SEO, excellent co-host, Arthur Fabik.

ARTHUR: Wow, what a lovely, lovely, lovely introduction.

MICHAEL: You've turned me off. It wasn't even that lovely and it had your tongue tied. What did I do to deserve that? I don't know, I just felt in a good mood today. More importantly, what do you need from me? I need you to talk about plumbers. Because we've got another episode of Niche Niche Niche Navigators. Niche Navigators. We're diving, we're delving into the world of plumbing. Diving. Could come up with some sort of a plumbing analogy. A little plumbing pun. We're plunging into the world of plumbers. Very good. Um, so if that's not interesting to you, it's probably about time for you to bow out of this episode. Don't tell people to stop listening. But you know what? It doesn't, What we talk about doesn't just have to apply to plumbers. We've just had a look at some plumbers to put this together. But if you're an air conditioning person or if you're a construction person, even if you're a digital marketing agency, some of the stuff here is going to be relevant for you. If you're a service business looking to generate leads, this is going to be relevant for you.

ARTHUR: Right? Yeah. I just can't believe you told people to bow out.

MICHAEL: I'll tell you what, bow out and go over to our YouTube channel that we've just launched. Arthur's had nothing to do with it, but we've done it. We've launched it. It's over at, uh, youtube.com forward slash something around the SEO show. Watch the SEO show, something like that. And, um, I've got about four episodes on there now. And one of them has gone viral. So I had a couple of hundred views.

ARTHUR: Wow. That's not viral, mate.

MICHAEL: It is in my world where we're coming off a very low base of zero. So that's viral. We did an episode on buying links on Fiverr and just having a look at how good they are because you know, you go on Fiverr. Do a search for link building and there's hundreds of things and they all look good. They're all saying big words, using things like DR and drip feeding links and waiting for indexation and all this stuff. But are they actually good? Well, that's what I did. I spent $164 to find out if they're good or not. And have you found out? I have found out, but you're going to have to go to YouTube to watch and find out if they're good or not.

ARTHUR: We're not going to give us loyal listeners a little bit of a spoiler.

MICHAEL: All right. You ready? Oh, really? Yeah. I think you knew that already just by virtue of it being on Fiverr. But yeah, head over there. If you haven't checked it out, we've got a 60 odd subscribers, a couple of hundred views. We are going viral. So get in there, get on that rocket ship and enjoy that content. But for the ones that want to stick around, chat plumbing, plunge into the world of plumbing, let's get into it. So what's the first thing you'd say about plumbers from an SEO point of view? If you know, the minute you say plumbers and SEO combined, what do you think?

ARTHUR: In an SEO perspective, I guess local SEO is probably very important. Not probably, it is very important. A lot of people, when they will search for plumbers in their area, won't even look at the organic results. They'll just look at the local part. So making sure your GMB profile is there, showing, optimized, and basically showing in your area would probably be the most important thing, I'd say, for any service-based business.

MICHAEL: I would be maybe not for a local service, like someone coming to your house for sure. And we have a big chunk of stuff dealing with local SEO here. So I agree. You could crush it from an SEO point of view without people ever even making it to your website.

ARTHUR: Yeah. Well, I'm just trying to think how I search for plumbers or anything that's kind of like a local service business. I'll just open up the three most highly rated relevant local pack listings a lot of the time.

MICHAEL: Yep. Right click website in a new tab. Basically, yeah.

ARTHUR: I'll scroll down and if I see the organic listings match with the local pack, that's almost like a, you know, like a verification to me that they're legit proper business. Yep.

MICHAEL: And, um, I guess there's ads there. What do you do with the ads?

ARTHUR: Um, I often, well, I, I skipped through the ads a lot of the time. Yep. Um, Not always, but I know how ads work. So for me, I don't know. I don't know. Everyone's different, right? If I see an ad, if I see the GMB listing and I see the organic listing, like the Holy Trinity or whatever you want to call it, that's epic, right? Because you know that this is a real business. They're obviously investing in their advertising on Google ads. They've done well in the local pack. They've got a lot of positive reviews and they're ranking well. That to me is like, hey, this is a, you know, a trustworthy business. But I often skim through the ads.

MICHAEL: Yeah, well, good for those plumbers that you do that, because it is super, this landscape here is super competitive, like the Google ad costs for plumbers are astronomical. But the reality is, if you are servicing a big city and you're not just a small operation relying on referrals from strata companies or whatever, then you need to be on those Google Ads to have a chance, because a lot of people do click them. But if you can crack it on the SEO front, that's where you're going to drive substantial profit, because you don't have that huge cost to acquire a customer that you do on Google Ads. So you'll find most plumbers will be using Google Ads. And SEO is something they can expand into once they have a bit more scale behind them. And once you do do well on the SEO sense, it's just a nice earner. In addition, let's say you've got your Google Ads dialed in. Also having SEO being there in the maps and the organic results is where you're going to see some real profit from your advertising. So let's chat local because That is the number one corner of the… I'm going to call it the Golden Triangle, not the Holy Trinity. I don't know, I just made that up on the spot.

ARTHUR: I like Holy Trinity, but… Is it Trinity Three?

MICHAEL: Yeah. Yeah. So that makes sense, right? Yeah, it does. Isn't the Holy Trinity- The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. No, isn't that something to do with- Which one is which?

ARTHUR: No, no, no. Like with halal snack packs. Isn't it like garlic barbecue and something, chili sauce, the Holy Trinity?

MICHAEL: You know, I've only ever had one snack pack in my life, I think. I went to Queen Street Kebab Shop in Campbelltown, which I read was a good one.

ARTHUR: Yeah. It was all right. Yeah. I think that's what the Holy Trinity is. Those three sources.

MICHAEL: Okay. Well, out of this, what would local SEO be?

ARTHUR: Which sauce? Yeah. Good question. Probably the garlic sauce. Yeah.

MICHAEL: I think so. Yeah. That's the garlic. And then the chili. What are the sauce we got? Garlic, chili, and barbecue. Yeah. I think barbecues are worse. So that's going to be Google ads. Google ads. Yep. And then local SEO is your garlic.

ARTHUR: And then chili is SEO. Yeah. Because it's always a little bit spicy.

MICHAEL: Yeah. Love it. All right. So with local SEO, above all else, your location matters. At the end of the day, it really does depend where the person is searching from. So before we started, when I was preparing for this episode, I was up in the Gold Coast and I was searching for Plumber Sydney. I would have been seeing different results than someone that was in Bondi searching for Plumber Sydney or someone in Parramatta searching for Plumber Sydney. Something that you can't really avoid, that level of local personalization, unless you have lots of Google My Business profile set up all across the city. Which is very hard to do. Very, like these days, very hard to do. So you might legitimately have that, or you might legitimately put a lot of time into getting that set up. But if you don't, there's always going to be that local aspect that you just can't get around. Yeah. That doesn't mean you shouldn't obsess over everything else, because there's a lot of other factors that come into play. You know what I'm going to say next, don't you? I do.

ARTHUR: What? Well, reviews, obviously, but I know why you're going to say reviews. Why? Well, because of the little cards that you got, that you're really, really excited. Well, obviously because they're very important, but also because of the little cards you got.

MICHAEL: I did get some little cards. So let's, reviews are like, Crucial. If we're talking normal SEO, meta title tags, H1 tags, backlinks, they're the big ticket items. Reviews have got to be the equivalent of like your title tag or something from a local point of view.

ARTHUR: The more reviews you have, the better, the higher your listing will show, the more positive reviews you have.

MICHAEL: Well, here's a little anecdotal, some anecdotal data for you. I searched Plumber Sydney. The one that showed first in the map pack had 1500 reviews. The one that showed 2nd had 892 reviews. The one that showed 3rd, 885 reviews. 4th, 498 reviews. 5th, 370. 6th, 192. 7th, 132. What's happening there? the review count is going, it's getting lower each time. It pretty much was ranked in order of reviews. Now I'm not saying that that is the be all end all to ranking, but that for this particular niche, the more reviews you have tends to correlate with ranking higher in the maps result. So you should be hustling for reviews wherever possible.

ARTHUR: And that's your segue into your little cards.

MICHAEL: Yeah. I don't know why. listening, you're probably not going to care, but I got a whole bunch of cards that have a NFC chip in them and a QR code on them. You can program the chip so that if someone has a phone that has an NFC reader in it, just tap your phone on the card and it will pop straight to your Google review profile so that they can leave a review if they're logged into Google. If they don't have NFC, they can scan the QR code. Bang. That is going to get you reviews, because you know how it is. You ask people for reviews. They say yes. They will never do it. They don't do it. You send emails after you've done a job. They've had a great experience. They tell the person, oh, that was great. Yeah, we'll leave you a review. Yep. They forget. They don't. They forget. They get busy. But if you make it part of your process where you say, you're happy, like your toilet was leaking everywhere, now it's not, and we saved the day, yes, well, would you mind, like, really help us out if you could leave a review? We have this little card, you can do it right now. You don't have to worry about doing it later. If you have people out seeing 10, 20, 100 customers a week, whatever it is, just think of the review count going up. And if you've got to get 1500 reviews to close the gap between you and the top plumber in Sydney. Yeah. That's a lot of review card tapping. That's got to go on.

ARTHUR: What about getting a QR code on your like, um, like your outfit or your, what, what do you call it? I guess Polo. Yeah. Your Polo, whatever they wear. Yeah. Overalls. Yeah. I don't know. They probably don't wear overalls, but like your Polo ones in the stock photos always do.

MICHAEL: They have a wrench and they have overalls and like a plumber hat.

ARTHUR: But having that QR code on the shirt, you could always have it there. Love it. You could always scan it.

MICHAEL: Give us a review. Do you think a QR code can print to a shirt? Yeah. I've never looked into it. A hundred percent it can, yeah. With enough like clarity that you can just scan it. No problem.

ARTHUR: What's going to be less, you don't need as much clarity because if it's large. I guess a big one. Yeah. Yeah. A hundred percent. I've seen it. I've seen people wear it. Love it. That's a lot easier than having to take a card out. Absolutely.

MICHAEL: You're just trashing my cards. I've got a hundred of them.

ARTHUR: I'm not trashing it. Well, the cards are good as well. I like the, the ones that are at restaurants on the, like on the table where you can just tap them and you can just leave a review. Cause that's super handy. Yeah. So this is just, I guess, next level. Cause you just take it with you, but you have to take it out. You have to, you know. Could be a bit awkward.

MICHAEL: Like you get to the end of a shift and you say, here, please just scan my left nipple and leave me a review. Could end up with bad reviews.

ARTHUR: I don't think he would.

MICHAEL: The job went well until I was harassed at the end.

ARTHUR: I don't think he would. I think my idea is good.

MICHAEL: Okay. No, I do. I do like it. I like that. But anyway, the point is you got to be getting reviews. And yes, you have to be asking in your follow-up emails, have it on your invoice receipt you give them, have it everywhere, like most people do. But also the more you can sort of ask people in person, they're more inclined to do it because they don't want to let you down. They want to reciprocate the good service that you've just given them. There's a lot going on there. So go ahead and hustle for reviews.

ARTHUR: And also Google's cracking down on fake reviews. And it's going to start labelling profiles, already has started labelling profiles, that it believes has fake reviews. So, more important now than ever than to get real reviews.

MICHAEL: Yeah. Because I probably would find a lot of these have fake reviews, if we're honest. A hundred percent.

SPEAKER_01: A lot of it goes on out there.

MICHAEL: Yeah. All right. Well, outside of reviews, Local citation and directory links. We always bang on about that, but I spot checked, uh, maybe the top three ranked, um, Sydney for Sydney plumber or plumber Sydney. They all had a bunch of local citation and directory links. So you should too. And then the other thing I noticed with all of them is they were extremely active on their Google, my business profiles. Interesting. So I put here every nook and cranny. Yep. Any of the dark corners of your Google My Business profile.

ARTHUR: So what do you mean by active? Like posting?

MICHAEL: Posting photos, like regular photos of jobs from jobs. Yeah. Photos of the team out doing stuff. So like dudes standing by their bands, like smiling at the camera. But then, you know, Google Business, whatever it's called. It's not even called Google My Business anymore, but that's what I call it. Yes, it is, isn't it? It's called Google Business Profile now. Still anyway. Yeah, same thing. A lot of the ones that are doing really well at making use of the posts. Yep. So their feed is frequent. They have specials, offers, stuff going on. Yeah. When I was checking they had all posted in the last few days. Okay. Listing as many services as possible. So all of the top ones that I checked had over 30 plus services. Right. Everything like gas, hot water, plumbing, emergency, drainage, all that sort of stuff. With pricing or? Most of them just had the services listed. A couple had the service in a little blurb. I saw none with pricing, but the top ranked ones just had a big list of services. So you don't even have to fill out the description with it all. The top five for Plumber Sydney are all open 24 seven on their profile. I would assume most plumbers would put that by default. But the top five for Plummer Sydney as well, had more than 30 photos each on their listings. Wow, you really analyzed this, didn't you? And the top five all list the specific suburbs they service. So like somewhere for like North Shore, somewhere Eastern suburbs. They're very specific about where they do and don't service. And I did research it, yes. Because this is, I'm navigating a niche. I don't know what you're doing. I don't know what I'm doing either. So it's not groundbreaking, it's not rocket science, is it?

ARTHUR: Well, no. I mean, a lot of people wouldn't be posting on their profile, GMB profile, whatever it's called now. That's a missed opportunity, I guess. If you're a plumber or anything that offers specials and you know people are going to be looking at your GMB profile, it's just an easy way to advertise that for free. Yeah.

MICHAEL: And even if they're not looking at it, being active is probably good. Google likes it. So it's pleasing to Google. Sure is. So let's move into regular old SEO. Boring SEO. The chili sauce in our holy trinity. You know what we're going to say here. Ready? You ready? Yep. Service pages and suburb pages. It's not groundbreaking when you're navigating a niche, but I'll tell you about suburb pages. What I noticed in the plumbing world, a lot of plumbers do things like, like their service pages will be plumber, emergency plumber, hot water, gas, maybe some drainage, block drains. So let's say that's five categories right there. A lot of them go ahead and build suburb pages for all five of those categories. So it might be forward slash plumber, forward slash Sydney, forward slash Beecroft. Then it might be forward slash hot water, forward slash Sydney, forward slash Beecroft. So on and so forth. That's too many suburb pages.

ARTHUR: Really? What do you think about that? That's too many. Um, probably it would be quite repetitive and it would be thin content. Wouldn't it?

MICHAEL: That's what I reckon. And it's what the research I have done would suggest. Cause I go and look at some of these guys and I've just plugged paramatter in to Ahrefs and I've gone into the top pages and the one pretty much that gets 96% of estimated traffic. Yeah. It's the plumber, like the main plumber suburb page. Yeah. All of the other ones get like one, two visits a month, max zero for most of them. So it's just junk that's sitting there. Is it because it's not ranking? Um, they have some keywords, three keywords, five keywords, one keyword, but the main plumber one. Yeah. Has the bulk of the keywords. Of course. Yeah. So just make your suburb page focused around plumbing and plumbing related services in that suburb. Don't waste time. Maybe some of this stuff's done programmatically where you don't spend that much time on it, but it's not serving a benefit. And my contention is it could even hurt you. You've got too many pages on your site. Google might think it's thin content if it is. So just have one really good suburb page for each suburb you service.

ARTHUR: It's funny because you mentioned Parramatta, it's quite a large, I guess, suburb, right? Once you start going down to smaller suburbs, there's going to be like no search volume for like block-drained, block-drained plumber, like Wetherill Park, I don't know. Exactly. So, not worth it.

MICHAEL: Let's just do one. I'm going to put in a suburb here. I'm going to go Beecroft because we said that before. Oh, I've been signed out of Ahrefs. That's always fun, isn't it? But, um, yeah. You sound really upset. Well, we have like, um, a bunch of people using Ahrefs and they don't want you doing it. They want you spending a ton of money on licenses.

ARTHUR: If you did Blockdrain's Beecroft, there are sites ranking for that page.

MICHAEL: No one's searching it. No one researched block drain Beecroft.

ARTHUR: Well, there could, there would be very, very few people doing it, but I guess if you are starting out and you're competing against plumbers that have been in the game for, you know, decades with really strong DRs and they rank really well for like plumber Beecroft, it might not be a bad idea to build out, you know, more niche pages because otherwise, you know, you're not really going to be able to compete on the higher volume terms. So I guess there is still a purpose to it.

MICHAEL: My argument would be you would get so few leads from it. Chase the long tail is what you're saying.

ARTHUR: Chase the long tail, but like if you're starting out and you've, you know, your DR is quite low, you still want to get traffic somewhere, right? You're not going to get it through Plumber's Beecroft. So you're going to go down the route of using long tail keywords.

MICHAEL: So for this site that I've been analyzing, it currently ranks in the top three for plumber Sydney. If I search address for Beecroft, it's main plumber Sydney, it's main plumber Beecroft page doing well, hot water page, no traffic, no rankings. And then the rest of the pages have no rankings of visibility whatsoever. Cause I just kind of feel it starts getting thin to the point of Google ignoring it at best. So let's have a look, if we go Plumbers Beecroft, the site that ranks first at the moment just has a generic suburb page. Yeah. And then all of these other ones that are ranking. So I'm looking at two plumbers here. I won't say their names, but they're in the top five for the keyword plumber Beecroft. I know for a fact, these two have suburb pages for every service they offer and their page that's ranking for plumber Beecroft is just a plumber page.

ARTHUR: How annoying would it be to be a plumber in Beecroft, like Beecroft plumbing, and then having to compete with like generic plumber that is, you know, catch all over Sydney.

MICHAEL: Yeah. So now if I search hot water plumber Beecroft, there would be, you know what, I'm seeing some of these pages, some of their hot water plumber Beecroft pages rank. So I hear what you're saying. It's, you want to go super niche, you get dribs and drabs of traffic.

ARTHUR: Yeah. Like for someone that's been in the game for 10 years that are ranking for plumber Sydney, that have a super strong DR and all that, they're probably not going to be too concerned about it because they're going to be chasing plumber Sydney. But if you're like a plumber, you've been around for two, three years, you've got a site, you're not ranking really well, your DR is not super high and you still want to get traffic, you know you're not going to compete for Plumber Sydney unless you spend tens of thousands of dollars a month getting links. You're going to try and get traffic other ways.

MICHAEL: So just build a suburb. So we're going to flip and reverse everything we've been saying.

ARTHUR: We, you are. I've always been for.

MICHAEL: Suburb page for every single service you offer.

ARTHUR: In the right, I guess, environment. Yeah. Right. So if you like, for example, like if you're in a, if you're a plumber in Beecroft, then you want to try to get business and you can't compete, then try to do that because you'll probably get some traffic compared to no traffic.

MICHAEL: I've noticed one of these ones I'm looking at has two listings on the first page for hot water plumber Beecroft. They have their hot water plumber page and their plumber page. Plumber Beecroft page. Um, all right. I'm going to, I'm going to officially concede that maybe you could have more than one suburb page. Yeah.

ARTHUR: Maybe you could. Depending on, I guess, the site, depending on the site, depending on who you are.

MICHAEL: Like my argument was going to be one suburb page targeted at the suburb, have sections on it for each of the services you offer. So you've got copy talking about it, then build links to the main like service hub. So you've got less suburb pages that you're trying to power up with all your link building, less pages on your site. That's stuff for Google's crawler to come back and look through all the the time.

ARTHUR: If you think about the content on the page for like a burst drain plumber, it's going to be very different to, uh, you know, hot water. It's going to be very different. Like FAQs, all the content is going to be very different. So you can really build out a page for that specific subservice.

MICHAEL: This sounds like an interesting test. Do you know that I'm running a test at the moment? No. Cause, um, someone on Twitter, Someone on Twitter shared a post about, here's a list of, here's a tactic that you can use to build links if you're like a SAS tool that's looking to build links. Go and search in title for write for us and you'll find a whole bunch of sites that want people to write for them. And a whole bunch of people were chiming in like, Oh, nice tactic. If it's 2008, you know, like Google doesn't even count links on sites that have right for us pages now and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, what did you say? You're saying that link any site that has right for us page, Google doesn't count. Like this guy was like, yes. I'm like, I disagree. I think that if you got links on a site that has right for us pages, that it would work, you know, if it's the right sort of site. And, um, I've gone ahead and started a little test. It'll be on our YouTube. But I've specifically got a single variable test going on, where one of them's going to have links from these types of sites, and that's the only thing different. It's going to rank higher than the one that doesn't have those links, I guarantee it. But this could be a test. Could be. I don't know if I could be bothered to do it, but trying to jam a whole bunch about a suburb into one page. Well, what's the site? What are the sites? the one that I'm doing. Well, I can't reveal that because it's gibberish. I'm using a gibberish keyword that's never been searched before. I have two domains that are each targeting that gibberish keyword and let H1, the title tag, and then throughout the copy. They're both crawled and indexed in Google. At the moment, only one of them shows. The other one's not showing because it's too similar. I'm building links to the one that's not showing. From sites that have right for us pages. Mm-hmm. And they're gonna it's gonna make that site outrank the other one It is who do you think you are car roof? I am I am I'm the new car roof the Australian car room, but I'm gonna go back on Twitter and be like, hey Does work did you do the test because I did like one of those types of people. I

ARTHUR: Oh, looking forward to watching that video on YouTube once it's eventually out.

MICHAEL: And if it turns out that they were right, you'll never see that video on YouTube. So I probably have jumped the gun by talking about it here. I should have waited till it actually worked.

ARTHUR: No, you should still release it.

MICHAEL: Well, yeah, you know what? It's a test, right? I'm not, but I was very confident that I'm in my position.

ARTHUR: Sometimes you need to be humbled, so.

MICHAEL: Okay. Well, I'll be humbled on that if, if necessary. And I'm going to take, I'm going to take your input on suburb pages. Okay. Let's create one for every service. What else should you be doing as a plumber? Probably link building. True. Very hard to build links for a plumber. Natural links.

ARTHUR: Yeah. Well, it's hard to build natural links.

MICHAEL: Full stop.

ARTHUR: Yeah.

MICHAEL: Yeah. Well, I went and again, did a bit of research.

ARTHUR: In another YouTube video.

MICHAEL: Oh wait, reset. Sorry. This is just, I had a look at the top two ranked sites for Plumber Sydney. Both of them have many hundreds of links pointing to them, referring domains. They range from about DR25 to DR40 or so. The sites that rank for Plumber Sydney. So you might be discouraged saying, well, hundreds of links is hard to close a gap on. But when I filter them down by being DR 20 or higher, having a thousand or more traffic, being a do follow link, it actually is about 30 to 40 links that each of these sites have. So as a plumber, if you're trying to rank, um, your. thousands of service pages that you build, location pages. You don't really need to do, like from what I was saying, you don't need a huge amount of link building to rank for Plumber Sydney. That doesn't seem like a lot at all. No. Like obviously some of the other- Something's not right there. No, no, of course something's not right. Like there's more links in that, but you could start with these most juicy ones and then expect to see traffic and rankings coming through. And we've seen it with, We have had plumber clients in the past where they were ranked quite well, particularly on suburb pages without a huge amount of links. So I guess my point I'm trying to make in the link building front is you're going to be paying for links as a plumber. as any local home service business. So try and focus on the ones that move the needles first, have a look at what the sites that are ranking in the top five spots in Google have, filter out the junk, focus on the big ones first, and you're going to make an impact quicker. What do you reckon?

ARTHUR: I reckon that's a great strategy for link building, because you're not going to get any free links.

MICHAEL: No. What's some link bait you could do for plumbing?

ARTHUR: There's probably not a whole lot.

MICHAEL: You could come up with content like the worst plumbing disasters or something. Maybe the most horrific plumbing workplace injuries.

ARTHUR: Yeah. But still that stuff would get some links. Do you reckon you still need to like send it to the right people and Oh yeah.

MICHAEL: It's like, you don't just get links. Yeah. Yeah.

ARTHUR: If you're just a regular business owner, it's near impossible.

MICHAEL: You could do research on the number of apprenticeships being started in plumbing in different cities or councils and try paint a story like. You could. Apprenticeship signups are plunging to new depths. That's good. Like a plumber thing and news articles would cover it. But again, no plumber's doing that. They've got to go out and do some plumbing. So really, they're going to use most likely an agency and they're most likely going to buy links. But hey, it works. Yeah. Yeah, focus on, look at success leads clues, focus on the links that your competitors have.

ARTHUR: What about blog posts? What about them? What do you think, where did blog posts fit in the strategy, in this niche?

MICHAEL: Well, I see a lot of these plumbers posting stuff like, which side is the hot water tap on? And it gets thousands of visits a month. That's good if you're an SEO agency reporting on traffic, look at all this traffic you're getting. But I wonder how many conversions they get from that. Wouldn't imagine many. Yeah. Another one is how to fix a leaking tap. Yep. Like, yes, you could write it and be like, but you need to get in touch with a plumber to get the best advice. Yeah. But a lot of people searching that they're in DIY mode.

ARTHUR: Yeah. There'll be a small number of people that probably won't be able to do it. Yeah. They'll find it too difficult.

MICHAEL: Give it a go and then come back. Yeah. So at the how-to stuff, I see a bit more of a reason for, but like, which side is the hot water tap on? Well, that's just junk. What is a, what is a gasket? Yeah.

ARTHUR: No, not stuff like that, but there could be specific issues that, you know, require a plumber that isn't DIY that you could write about. That would probably be good. Right. In terms of driving relevant traffic, like you, It's not going to have a super high conversion rate a lot of the time, but if it's something that requires a plummeted fix, it's going to bring traffic to your site, bring awareness to your brand. And then if they're in your area, they might reach out. So.

MICHAEL: Yep. It's a nice to have once you're doing all the other stuff. Yeah. If you've got the budget to invest in creating that sort of a content.

ARTHUR: Yeah. As long as it's stuff that is relevant, that isn't going to be just junk traffic.

MICHAEL: Yeah. Which side is the hot water tap? What side is it? Left. Okay. Are you sure? I reckon like, because I know in the past, I reckon sometimes they have been swapped around in like an Airbnb or something. And it's you burn yourself in the shower. It just feels wrong. If it's on the right, right. So left.

ARTHUR: Yeah. Why didn't I didn't use like twisty taps anymore. Everything's like a. What do you call it? Like a- Mixer. Yeah, mixer. Is that what they call it? It is a mixer, yeah. But I'm trying to think now. It's to the top. It's to the left.

MICHAEL: Up, up, up is hot, down is cold. Maybe this- You're confusing me. Maybe this piece of content is amazing.

ARTHUR: On a regular mixer, it's to the left. And then on the up and down one- It's at the top. Yes. Yeah. But I don't really have any of those. It doesn't matter. Irrelevant.

MICHAEL: Yeah. At the end of the day, you don't need to be writing about that content on a plumbing site. It's probably not doing much. And the other how-to stuff, maybe dribs and drabs once you're crushing it everywhere else. The last thing, this is something that you were very excited about. Very excited. Very. Conversion. Yep.

ARTHUR: What do you say? Conversions are very important. They are. I'm very excited about them. No, I guess once you start getting traffic to your site, you want to maximize the number of people that actually reach out. And a lot of, not only just plumbers, but a lot of service-based businesses often like to brag that they're Sydney's number one or Sydney's leading or the most trusted or the best. Every plumber is Sydney's best plumber. Every plumber is Sydney's most trusted plumber. And they all love to put it on the hero banner front and center, but it doesn't mean anything. So I think rather than trying to talk about we, we, we, a lot of plumbers should focus on talking about, I guess, benefits and things that matter to someone that's going to be reaching out. Like if it's an emergency, how soon can you get on site? You know, on site within 15 minutes. Like that's a USP that's going to, I guess, resonate with someone that needs a plumber desperately. You know, price, you know, how competitive are you on price? Do you beat other quotes? Stuff like that. So I think… less of a focus on we're this, we're this, like and more like what can we do for you. And then I guess just your basic, you know, CRO stuff, you know, make sure you have your friend number, make sure you've got your forms. Most people, I don't know if they're going to be using a form. Probably some will, but I think most people that need a plumber quickly aren't going to be waiting for you to read your email and then get back to you. Yeah. Any offers that you have, all that stuff. Before and after photos.

MICHAEL: Yeah. If you're doing renovations and stuff like that.

ARTHUR: Yeah. Well, yeah. Social proof and also reviews. You have your reviews on your GMB profile, but make sure you have them on your site, because some people might not see your GMB profile. And then you need that, I guess, trust. And there's a lot of plumbers out there that can be a bit shady. So plastering all that we've got 1,500 4.9 star reviews, as much as you can on the site, it's going to help build that trust.

MICHAEL: Um, anecdotally, I am getting some work done at home. I want to say what it is, but it involves something being made and on their thing, on their quote, they're like our industry leading turnaround time of two weeks means you'll have it sooner than most others are getting back to you with the quote. That's good. I was like, that's awesome. Yeah. But then two weeks came and went three weeks and I reached out and was like, Hey, where's my thing? They're like, Oh no, well that's, for our standard while your ones being made so like the timelines longer because you're probably getting something super custom and fancy not super custom but like outside of the standard and I didn't say the standard probably made out of marble so what you are marble I don't know why I don't know what you're making you probably have to source whatever you need from somewhere far away no it wasn't it was it was Pretty standard, but like had some element of customization. What is it? It's a fence, a gate. Oh, why did you have to? Because I know, what if they're listening and they feel bad? That I was a little bit put out by.

ARTHUR: And what's so custom about your gate?

MICHAEL: Well, I wanted it to match my fence, so I gave them my powder coat, and it's got to be a certain dimensions. Well, yeah, like most gates. They just can't do off the shelf. And I want little caps on my aluminium battens.

ARTHUR: That's it. It's the caps that have really screwed you.

MICHAEL: But anyway, what I'm saying is, if you're making USPs and offers and stuff, You know what, they got my business and I don't care and I would still leave them a good review at the end. So maybe you don't need to back up what you actually claim. But in an ideal world, if you're making claims, be there in 15 minutes kind of thing. Yeah. Actually be able to do it. Yeah. Fixed price. That's always a big one. Yeah.

ARTHUR: Fixed price, like transparent pricing, like no shock when I'm a job. Um, yeah. What else can't think of anything else? I can't, I can't say workmanship guaranteeing. Yeah. Guarantee on like jobs. If you've got like, if they're fixing a leaking shower or like the like waterproofing, just guarantee the work. Yep. We'll come back and fix it.

MICHAEL: If it breaks again within X. Yeah. They're the main ones. Price shock is a big one with plumbers. People don't want to have someone turn up and be like, Oh, you know, a hundred dollar call out fee. And then it becomes 800 bucks.

ARTHUR: Or like no call out fee, for example, which a lot of them waive a lot of the time if they're trying to get people through the door. Yeah. Call out fee is ridiculous.

MICHAEL: Oh, I don't like a call out fee for their time. I can see why they do it, but like. You're out there competing against other businesses.

ARTHUR: Yeah. Okay. I get it. But I mean, a lot of the time it's a ridiculous price. Like I guess because it has to factor in the cost of missing another job, right? Like the opportunity cost.

MICHAEL: So, and if there's no call out for you, you get tired, kick is wasting your time.

ARTHUR: See, I say they're ridiculous, but if I was a plumber, I'd a hundred percent have them.

MICHAEL: Yeah.

ARTHUR: So like I can see both.

MICHAEL: Yeah. Yeah. Well, just like me, you were willing to flip it and reverse it on your point of view. Always. So that's about all we had for this one. That's actually quite a bit longer than I was expecting. Nearly 40 minutes there.

ARTHUR: Chatting planets. Is that the longest niche navigator? Could be. Could be. I can't see us doing a longer one than that.

MICHAEL: We'll probably, we do them every so often cause you know, we don't want to excite you too much with these niche navigators. So we'll be back next week with another regular style episode of the SEO show. But until then, happy plumbing, happy SEOing.

SPEAKER_00: Thanks for listening to The SEO Show. If you like what you heard, don't forget to subscribe and leave a review wherever you get your podcasts. It will really help the show. We'll see you in the next episode.

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