SEO for plumbers, builtaround the 11pm search.

Plumbing is the most search-driven trade there is, and it is two businesses wearing one name. Marketing built for one fails at the other, and most plumbing companies run a single campaign for both.

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Two businesseswearing one name.

One is emergency work: burst pipe, blocked drain, no hot water. The customer has a problem right now, searches on a phone, calls the first two or three results, and books whoever answers. The decision takes under five minutes and price barely enters it.

The other is planned work: bathroom renovations, fixture replacement, water heater upgrades. Days or weeks of consideration, quotes compared, reviews read.

The emergency side is won in the map pack and on the phone. The planned side is won with content and reviews, and it is what pays for the slow months. They need different pages, different campaigns and different follow-up, and they feed each other: the content that wins planned work builds the authority and the review base that lifts the emergency rankings.

Winning the emergency search.

01

Map pack or nothing

Emergency searches happen on a phone. The map pack fills the screen. Outside the top three you are effectively absent, because nobody scrolls past three plumbers when the basement is flooding. That makes Google Business Profile work the highest-return thing a plumber can do.

02

Answer the phone, or text back within seconds

Emergency callers ring three companies and stop at the first pickup. For a plumbing business, missed-call text-back is the difference between paying for a lead and getting the job. How to set it up.

03

Neighbourhood pages, done properly

“Emergency plumber St. Vital” is winnable. “Plumber” is not. One page per genuine service area with real content on each. A template with the neighbourhood swapped is a doorway page, named as spam in Google's own policies since the March 2015 update.

04

Say your hours in the ad and on the page

“24 hour emergency plumber, answering now” beats a generic headline by a wide margin at 2am, because it answers the only question that matters.

05

Reviews, arriving steadily

More than the three companies currently above you in the map pack, and earned on a schedule rather than in a burst. Recency counts as much as total, which is why the request has to fire automatically after every job.

06

Track calls, not form fills

Calls separated by campaign and by time of day. Booked jobs. Revenue per job by service type, which tells you whether the drain campaign or the water heater campaign deserves the budget. Most plumbing companies I audit are tracking form fills on a business where 90 percent of the work arrives by phone.

Winning the planned work.

Different customer, different content.

Cost guides: what a bathroom renovation runs, what a water heater replacement costs, what affects the number. Comparison content: tankless against tank, repair against replace. Project pages with photos.

This content does something the emergency campaign cannot. It builds the authority and the review base that helps the emergency rankings, and it produces work in the slow months.

Google Ads for plumbers.

Emergency plumbing terms are among the most expensive clicks in the trades in Canadian markets, and usually worth it, because a repipe is worth many times a drain call. Whether they are worth it for you comes out of your own job values and close rate, which is where I start rather than from a click price somebody quoted at a trade show.

Local Services Ads first, if you qualify

They sit above everything, you pay per lead, and the Google Guarantee badge does real work on a customer choosing between strangers. Plumbing is one of the categories Google screens hardest: business check, owner check, service professional checks, liability insurance and provincial licensing, roughly 3 to 4 weeks after documents go in. The customer reimbursement behind the badge is capped, so read the current terms before you quote it at anybody. Start there. More detail.

Then search ads, with the negatives built first

Without a negative list you pay emergency-plumbing click prices for “plumber salary”, “plumber apprenticeship”, “plumber near me jobs” and “how to fix a leaking tap”. That last one is the expensive one, because the search volume is enormous and the intent is the opposite of yours.

Schedule around reality

If nobody answers between midnight and 6am, do not bid then. Paying emergency rates for a call that rings out is the worst money in the account.

The two campaigns
Emergency and planned
Same business, different job

Running one campaign for both is why a plumbing account looks busy and produces the wrong work. The emergency side is judged on answered calls inside five minutes. The planned side is judged on quotes issued six weeks later. Separate them and each one can be read honestly.

Emergency decision
Under 5
Minutes, then they book
Where it is won
Map pack
Top three, on a phone
What loses it
A rung-out phone
More often than rankings

About plumbing marketing.

How do plumbers get more calls from Google?
Get into the map pack, which means a properly built Google Business Profile with the right primary category, a steady flow of reviews, and consistent details across directories. For emergency work the map pack matters more than your website.
How much do Google Ads cost for plumbers?
Emergency plumbing sits among the most expensive click categories in Canada, because the intent is urgent and every competitor knows it. Whether that is expensive depends entirely on your close rate and what the job is worth, and a click price that would ruin one plumbing business is cheap for another. Budget from your own numbers rather than from a figure someone quoted you.
Should plumbers use Local Services Ads?
If you qualify, yes, and usually ahead of search ads. You pay per lead, the ads sit above everything else, and the Google Guarantee badge helps with a customer who has never heard of you. Google puts verification at 3 to 4 weeks after your documents are in, and plumbing carries the extra service professional check.
What is the fastest way to get more plumbing jobs?
Answer the phone, or set up missed-call text-back so the caller hears from you within seconds. Most plumbing companies lose more jobs to unanswered phones than to bad rankings, and this fix takes an afternoon.
Do plumbers need a website if the map pack matters most?
Yes. Google reads your website when deciding what your profile is relevant for, planned work gets researched on the site rather than the profile, and the profile alone gives you nothing to rank organically.
How many reviews does a plumber need?
More than the three companies currently above you in the map pack, arriving steadily. Look at their counts, beat the lowest first. Recency counts as much as total, so a steady trickle beats a burst.

Works best alongside

Related service
Google Business Profile
Categories, reviews and listings, set up the way Google reads them.
Related service
Local SEO
The map pack, reviews and citations, for businesses that need the phone to ring.
Related service
CRM setup
Follow-up that runs on its own so no lead goes cold.

Sources

  1. Local Services Ads screening for plumbing, and the 3 to 4 week timeline: https://support.google.com/localservices/answer/12174778?hl=en&co=GENIE.CountryCode%3DCA
  2. The Google Guarantee, its Canadian availability and reimbursement terms: https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/7549288
  3. Doorway pages, for the neighbourhood page section: https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2015/03/an-update-on-doorway-pages

Written by Jorel Minuk, digital marketing consultant, Winnipeg. Ten years running accounts inside agencies before starting Minuk Digital. Credentials and background

jorel@minukdigital.com 204-803-8001

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Find out who is above you at 2am.

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