A Google Maps listing can be a very important source of sales leads for a physical business. It’s important to be close physical proximity to your customers to provide good service and customer satisfaction. HVAC, roofing, plumbing, and other services involving physical work fall in this category.

An HVAC system is essential for every house. It is a basic need, and any issue with it can be uncomfortable and hard to ignore. If you’re an HVAC business, customers will mostly call you in an emergency. They will ask you to fix whatever is not working as quickly as possible.

People want such services to be available as close to home as possible to have their problems solved quickly. They are not going to call a team from across town to come to look at their AC. They need such skills to be accessible and available close to home.

That is why, for HVAC companies, most of the leads come from their immediate vicinity. It is where they can provide quick and effective solutions. People around them are the ones most likely to reach out to them for help.

Why focus on the Google Maps Ranking of your HVAC company?

Google is the search engine that attracts the most traffic globally. Google Maps comes in handy when you are in a place you don’t know well. When you are hungry and don’t know any restaurant around you, what’s the first thing you would do? Most people would try to find some information about local restaurants online.

The most easily accessible source of information is Google, so that’s what people always turn to. They will try to find information about businesses around them through a Google search first of all. Google maps will immediately bring up the top 3 or 4 matches for the keywords they have entered – usually sorted by proximity.

The ones at the top will be the ones that are the closest to the user’s location. That makes it obvious that proximity is the first factor that will affect your ranking, but there are other factors involved as well. Google has a very meticulous and detailed method of selecting businesses to place in the special top 3 slots of Google Maps.

How to put your HVAC business in the 3-Pack of Google Maps Listings?

The 3-pack of Google maps comprises the top 3 search results when a customer enters “HVAC companies near me” in the search bar. That is where most of the leads come from, for HVAC companies. It’s the nature of their business that makes it necessary for them to focus on local leads.

Let’s say that you are located at the same distance from a user as another HVAC company. In that case, your reputation across the web and your Google Business Profile are going to count towards your Google Maps Ranking.

If you want to move up in the rankings of Google Maps listings for HVAC companies, here are 5 tips that can help you that quickly and easily. No need to spend hours and hours trying to focus on the SEO of your company website. There are other, easier ways to go about this. Keep reading till the end to find out how to rank higher on Google Maps Listings in a few short and quick steps.

Claim and Complete your Google Business Profile

Your Google Business Profile affects your image across your locality quite a lot when it turns up in prospective customers’ search results. Claiming it and customizing it is the first step to improving the SEO of your HVAC Google maps listing. The higher you want your HVAC business to rank, the more detailed the information on your Google Business Profile has to be.

Entering your name, address, and phone number only is not enough. You will have to add pictures and as much information about your company as you possibly can. Your business description needs to be detailed and SEO-optimized to make sure that it helps your HVAC business rank higher in Google Maps Listings. It should also match the content that you have published across your website.

Worried about learning and doing this all yourself (and still not having your HVAC marketing and SEO done correctly)?  Focus on growing-your-HVAC-company (that’s what you do best), NOT dozens of hours each month ‘pulling-out your hair’ trying to do SEO and internet marketing! Outsource your marketing to a search engine optimization expert like Skyrocketresultsseo.com.

Maintain a Consistent NAP Profile Across the Web

Your NAP profile is your Name, Address, and Phone Number – the 3 basic contact details that will help your customers get in touch with you. Make sure that all 3 of these details are the same across all of your business profiles. Get listed on any website that lists the HVAC services available in the area. Provide the same link to your website there that you have added to your Google Business Profile.

That helps add more citations to the image that Google has created of your business. It collects all the information available through multiple sources across the web to create that image. That image eventually affects the ranking of your business in Google Maps Listings 3-pack. Keeping that image as consistent and well-defined as possible is the key to claiming your place in the Google Maps 3-pack of HVAC companies in your area.

Spread Out Information Across Mainstream Social Platforms

You can increase the credibility of your company for Google by spreading out information about it across the web. For example, having a well-setup social profile on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn will help you a lot in improving the local SEO of your HVAC business.

Again, it is important to make sure that the information that you are putting out there for Google to crawl is consistent. You have to use the same name, phone number, address, graphics, and other information across different social media platforms, your website, and your Google Business Profile.

The first thing that Google checks when ranking a business higher on Google Maps is authenticity. The best way to prove the authenticity of your business is to make sure that its representation is consistent across the web.

Gather Customer Reviews and Pictures Across Your Google Business Profile

Customer reviews are very valuable in proving to Google that you are running an authentic, functional business. They are proof that you are offering a service that people are buying from you and talking about. That increases the value of your business for a user in the eyes of Google.

The key purpose of Google Maps SEO rankings is to make sure that users get the right information. It is to give them useful, practicable information about legitimate, authentic, functional businesses. Gathering customer reviews across your Google Business Profile provides proof for all of that.

Reviews with images in them are more valuable than only text-based reviews. The best way to have customers start reviewing you on Google is to offer some kind of incentive for it. You can offer an incentive on your company website or physically to encourage customers to post reviews with or without images.

Optimize the SEO of Your Website

The SEO of your company website is one of the biggest deciding factors for the ranking of your Google Maps Listing. You have to make sure that you are ranking for local SEO-related keywords. For example, if you have an HVAC company in Florida, your website should be ranked against the keyword – HVAC companies in Florida. HVAC SEO is very important if you want customers to find you when they need you and for you to grow your heating and cooling company.

Following all the steps given above will help move your business up in Google Maps rankings without a lot of investment of time or money in the process.

Author Bio:

Mark Buckingham is an HVAC Plumbing SEO and Internet Marketing Expert with over 23 years of experience helping home service business get to the top of Google. As the founder of Skyrocket Result, he’s on a mission to help HVAC contractors, Plumbers and Electricians avert internet marketing mistakes, avoid wasted marketing dollars and grow their business. His free HVAC, Plumbing and Electrical company marketing blog is: www.SkyrocketResultsSEO.com/blog