SEO Audit for Star Heating & Cooling: How to Improve Your HVAC Business’s Online Presence for Better Results

Sarah Wallace is the owner of Star Heating & Cooling, an HVAC (Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning) business in Indiana.

Like many small business owners, Sarah sought marketing advice in an online group. She received a flood of responses from marketers, all eager to sell her their services. It can be overwhelming, and it’s hard to know who genuinely wants to help and who’s just trying to make a quick sale. 

Our goal today is to show you how to take control of your marketing efforts, so you can confidently navigate these situations and make informed decisions that are best for your business.

People often think I speak in tech jargon when it comes to SEO and PPC. But I want to show you that these concepts are straightforward and can drive local leads.

The bottom line is, that if you don’t understand this stuff yourself, you’re at the mercy of whoever you’ve hired, and that might not always work in your favor.

Current SEO Status of Star Heating & Cooling

Upon reviewing the work done, it became clear that Sarah was not getting as many calls and was losing many jobs as a result. Her SEO efforts were not yielding significant results.

Let’s take a look at what happened to Sarah:

Limited Access to Essential Tools and Platforms

First of all, she doesn’t have full access to her accounts. So, does she need access to her website? Yes, she does. She needs access to all of it, not just bits and pieces. Limited access to essential tools prevents her from properly monitoring and optimizing performance of her business.

She must be able to either get access, or the marketing agency is going to have to admit that they’re doing things that are against Google’s terms of service. You can read it where it says the underlying client needs to have access.

To help you understand how to tackle the issue of owning your accounts and managing your marketing efforts effectively, I have a video with Marko Siplia discussing different steps to own your marketing. which will help you to put an end to these proprietary or cite customer privacy issues.

Current Ad Spend Should Be Significantly Higher

It’s important to set the right ad budget and manage online profiles effectively. Given the scale of Sarah’s business, her current ad spend should be significantly higher. Right now, she is spending $2,000 a month, but it should be around $20,000 a month considering her business size.

For example, Andy Davis’s LSA was initially a dead account, but after making changes to his Google Business Profile (GBP), we saw a massive improvement. Recently, his LSA generated 136 calls with a $5,000 spend, showing the potential of properly managed LSAs.

Backlink Profile Lacking Strong Links

Understanding the quality and source of backlinks is important for improving a website’s domain rating and SEO performance. These backlinks come from various domains and contribute to the site’s domain rating which in this case, is eight on a scale from 1 to 100.

This rating measures how much trust Google has in your site, largely based on links. Some links pass a lot of value, while others pass just a little. For example, a link from me would pass a significant amount of value to your website, given that I have a lot of authority. 

Sarah had around 400 links from 139 domains, but not all links were equal. As I reviewed these links, I noticed some good ones with decent traffic. However, there were also some that seemed spammy, like ‘HVAC-Indiana,’ which looks fake. Most of those were just directory listings.

Some of those links seemed odd, such as those about sales tax or cleaning bricks with WD-40. Google can determine if a site is legitimate just as we can. Links need to be relevant to HVAC or plumbing in Indiana. Ensuring that your backlinks come from reputable sources is crucial for improving your domain rating and, consequently, your site’s visibility in search results.

The issue here typically stems from one of two factors. First, someone might be trying to boost SEO by creating a large number of links, which can impact rankings to some extent. 

Second, spam sites might be copying her content and generating these spammy links. It’s difficult to know for sure without further investigation.

Not Ranking Well on High-Impact Keywords

Being technically ranked doesn’t provide much value unless you’re in the top three positions on the search results page. Previously, she started ranking in position 36 for ‘Mini Split Repair,’ a keyword with zero difficulty and about 250 monthly searches.

Even if she were to stop her current SEO efforts, it’s likely that her current keyword rankings would remain stable. She is ranking for many keywords, although her conversions and traffic experience fluctuations.

There was a spike in traffic in June, likely due to seasonal factors in Indiana, but overall, there has been a decline since July, dropping to less than half of its previous level.

Sarah generated $4.7 million in revenue, with half of that coming from construction. However, she is now shifting her focus to growing the residential and commercial retrofit and service areas. 

For example, during the winter season with negative temperatures, Sarah had hardly any new residential customers calling, despite the high demand for repairs.

Lack of Local Signals and Citations

Another important point is that she is missing local signals and citations from other local contractors and businesses. Local citations are online mentions of any business on directories, websites, and social platforms, which help improve its local search visibility and website’s SEO.

She needs to establish connections with other professionals in the area, like plumbers, general contractors, or real estate agents. She should consider taking pictures with them or conducting short interviews to show that she is integrated into the community. 

This kind of content can help build trust and demonstrate her local presence. To rank up on Google, you need to match the signals that Google is looking for.

Missing Tracking and Conversion Elements

Tracking elements are essential for monitoring your website’s performance and understanding user behavior. Currently, she is missing several important tracking elements, including Google Tag Manager, pixels, conversion tracking, and the conversion API. 

For example, she hasn’t even set up the Facebook pixel, which is a significant oversight. Properly setting up these tags and fixing these small issues is crucial for accurate tracking and effective marketing.

Service Pages Lacking Local Context

Local context involves including details that connect the business to the area it serves, such as local landmarks, events, weather, and community issues.

Sarah’s current service pages don’t rank well because they lack local context. Even though her site has a lot of content, these pages don’t demonstrate that her team performs these services locally.

For example, there’s no signal that shows she does this work in Fishers, Indiana. There are no pictures of her team in action, no mention of local weather events affecting her services, and no stories that connect this business to the neighborhood. Repurposing her original content in this way can get her the traffic that she is looking for.

She should have mentioned the high local electric bills or the extreme cold snaps that caused pipes to freeze. Without this local context, the pages appear generic and untrustworthy.

Missing Out on the PAA Questions

PAA (People Also Ask) is a Google feature that shows frequently asked questions related to the search query. Being included in this section can greatly boost visibility and credibility of a business.

For instance, when I search for “ductless mini split repair,” her pages don’t appear in the top results, and they aren’t featured in the “People Also Ask” (PAA) section on Google.

Sarah doesn’t answer questions like, ‘What are common signs that a ductless mini split needs repair?’, ‘How often should they be fixed?’, and ‘How do I improve their efficiency?’. Her pages don’t rank well, even though the site as a whole does, because they lack these essential elements.

Your content should provide answers to these PAA questions for every related search, ideally through brief, informative videos. This approach will help you to dominate search results on Google.

Lack Of Trust with Google: The Problem with Stock Images

Geo-tagged photos serve as a strong SEO signal to improve your ranking on Google. For example, pictures you capture through your phone of real work help pinpoint specific locations and build trust with Google for your site.

The above screenshot is taken from Star Heating & Cooling, where she has used a stock image which is already all over the place. From Google’s perspective, does this image instill trust that her business operates as claimed in the city? No, it doesn’t. 

Implementing proper E-E-A-T standards (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) is the most important SEO strategy for enhancing your website’s SEO growth.

Rather than relying on stock images, incorporating genuine pictures of team members installing mini splits, with automatic geo-information attached for locations like Indiana, would be more impactful.

Utilizing Potential of ChatGPT

I then used ChatGPT as an adviser and friend to analyze her website page by copy-pasting everything from the page. I explained that her service page for ‘Ductless Mini Split’ isn’t ranking well, and her phone isn’t ringing.

I asked for help in optimizing the page, emphasizing Sarah’s need for SEO assistance, particularly with PAA (People Also Ask) queries related to these geo-specific terms.

In the screenshots above, you can see that the AI promptly identified the issues we observed earlier and also provided some suggestions in the PAA section below.

Digital marketing needs technical SEO skills, but using ChatGPT effectively can streamline the process. Sarah can enhance her page with AI guidance, ensuring it highlights her expertise and builds trust with customers.

The Truth About Agencies

The common agency practice of continuous charging without significant ongoing work is questionable. It’s akin to charging for an air purifier installation and then adding an additional monthly fee without clear justification. They don’t want you to know the truth behind SEO. Because most marketing companies are essentially salespeople who lack the technical expertise needed to execute the strategies effectively.

As a result, clients lose more money by not getting those jobs where the phone could have been ringing this whole time exactly because of this.

Whether intentionally or unintentionally, marketing companies often deceive their clients by claiming credit for all website traffic, even the organic and referral traffic that comes naturally.

They should only claim credit for the traffic they directly drive, particularly non-branded traffic resulting from their efforts, such as increasing visibility for searches like ‘HVAC company near me’.

Build an Effective SEO and Marketing Strategy

SEO isn’t something you check day to day; it’s more of a long-term thing. So, what happened with Sarah’s HVAC company was that her current website wasn’t providing enough information to establish a strong local signal for potential customers in Fishers, Indiana, Noblesville, and surrounding areas. 

During a season with negative temperatures, hardly any new residential customers called in. Her Local Service Ads were broken, Google Ads were ineffective, and SEO wasn’t yielding results. That’s why she wasn’t receiving as many calls.

So, she needed to show signals that spammers couldn’t replicate. She had to establish trust and signal relevance to users searching for specific services in Central Indiana. That’s the essence of an effective SEO strategy.

As a good digital marketing strategy, always start by gaining access to all your accounts. And, set up your own Content Library with all the necessary and relevant materials. Then, utilize this material for the content creation process and distribute it across your website, YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Google My Business. Additionally, you can use Blogspot, Google’s free blogging platform, to set up blogs at no cost.

Once it’s out there, promote your content through various channels, including Local Service Ads, Google Ads, YouTube Ads, and Facebook Ads. This comprehensive approach ensures maximum visibility and engagement.

These actions build trust and credibility, showing that you’re an active part of the community, not just another spam site.

Remember, this process involves a six-phase strategy to drive leads and conversions and optimize your online presence.

You can hire and train virtual assistants (VAs) to manage content and videos on WordPress, allowing your core team to focus on strategy and SEO efforts.