The HVAC business is a competitive market. So no matter what keywords you type into Google, you’re bound to get a million results – all of them vying for that top spot. And, in a lot of cases, the difference between the first result and the tenth result is just a few links.
Backlinks have always contributed to website rankings on proprietary search engines. According to a study, backlinks are the primary contributing factor to high rankings on Google’s search engine result pages (SERP). In other words, backlinks determine whether or not potential clients in your locale will get to even see your business at all whenever they use search engines like Google. It is therefore of the utmost importance that your HVAC business gets it right with appropriate, reliable HVAC SEO strategies that will see your website stand head and shoulders above your competitors on Google’s result pages — strategies we will teach you in the remainder of this article.
Quality links have always been a big ranking factor for local businesses. But how do you build these links and authority for your HVAC business? And where should you focus your efforts?
We’ve compiled a list of the best link-building strategies to help you rank higher in Google search results and build your brand authority.
But before we get into the good stuff, let’s take a look at what link building is and why it’s crucial for your HVAC business.
What are Backlinks For HVAC Companies?
Backlinks are links that direct users from one page on a website to another page on another website. They are also referred to as hyperlinks, inbound links, one way links, or incoming links.
They are of two types: nofollow backlinks and dofollow backlinks. Nofollow backlinks are not as valuable as dofollow backlinks in terms of page rankings, but they can be used to increase your online presence and social currency. Each type has their part to play, and the best backlink strategy features a righteous mix of the two.
What is Link Building For HVAC Contractors?
Link building involves acquiring contextual and locally relevant links to your HVAC website. The goal is to drive referral traffic to your website, demonstrate its authority, and ultimately help your website rank higher on google local search results and map packs.
Why Should You Focus On Link Building?
There are two main reasons why HVAC SEO link building is important.
First, it gives your business credibility. When potential customers visit your website, they’ll look for signs of trustworthiness. Links are a sign of reliability and can help build trust among visitors.
Second, HVAC SEO links can improve your SEO ranking. According to research conducted by Moz, offsite SEO factors like backlinks from authoritative domains account for more than 50% of the ranking factor weight.
Not All Links Are Created Equally – How To Get The Best Backlinks
HVAC link building depends on three key ingredients for it to have a solid effect on your website’s rankings — local relevance, contextual relevance, and authority. You want your backlinks to be locally relevant, so it gives Google a better sense of where your business is operating from. You also want backlinks that link to pages that relate to your line of business. Links that come from an HVAC blog website, for example, will be more effective than links that come from a photography website. Lastly, you want backlinks that carry some authority on the subject matter — HVAC in this case.
While link building may sound intimidating for a business owner, it really isn’t. All you need to do is follow a few basic rules. Here are nine (9) best link-building strategies for your HVAC companies.
Top 14 Link Building Strategies Specifically For HVAC Companies:
1. Local Business Directories/Listings
Local business directories are great places to list your HVAC company. They’re free, easy to use, and most importantly, they help you build credibility and visibility within your local community.
There are different categories of local business directories you should focus on:
- General directories that include high authority platforms like Yelp, Google Places, and Yellow Pages.
- Local directory websites that are specific to your service areas.
- Niche directories like BuildZoom that target a specific industry.
- Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, and Pinterest where you can create business profiles.
Before you even consider any hardcore HVAC link building exercises, you want to first get your business on online directory listings. The first place to start is Google My Business, popularly called GMB. GMB helps you create a locally based business profile that ensures potential clients in your area find your business when they are looking for services like yours.
You also want to list your HVAC business on citation sites. The best citation websites for HVAC contractors are Citysearch, Angie’s list, Home Advisor, Nextdoor, Hotfrog, Yelp and Facebook. You simply need to go to these websites and register your HVAC company and you automatically have a backlink on these websites that redirects to your page.
While creating your business profile on these online directories, you have to stay consistent with your name, address, and phone number. Having different identities across business profiles can affect your website’s rankings. As a pro tip, you also want to include a good business description and relevant pictures. It is an open secret in the SEO community that representing content (or business profile as the case may be) with multiple mediums, like pictures and optimized text, influences website rankings.
If you’re not familiar with local business directory building, here are some tips for getting listed:
- Make sure your business listing is accurate. This includes spelling errors in the business name, incorrect phone number and address, and other outdated information..
- Link back to your website. Be sure to include a link back to your website. This ensures that if someone clicks through to your listing, they’ll find more information about your HVAC company on your website.
- Follow up. Once you submit your listing, keep checking back every couple of months to ensure your listing stays active.
2. Get Links From Same Site Linking To Your Competitor’s Sites
Note your local HVAC competitors whose websites rank higher than yours’ on Google.
If you want to rank like they do (or higher) just copy the backlink strategy, they used to get to that position. That is, use a tool like SEMRush and UberSuggest to find the link sources of your competitors. Contact those sites linking to your competitors and kindly ask for a link to your site. This strategy might work better if you offer something like a guest post or something else of value in return for the backlink you’re requesting.
3. Create Your Blog
Whether you realize it or not, you are an expert in your service area. Use that expertise to create content through infographics, articles, answers to FAQs, videos, etc., and link back to your web pages. This is not only an opportunity to develop inbound links but also to offer complementary businesses a place to host their backlinks in return for your mention.
From adding value to users to cultivating mutually profitable partnerships, a blog can unlock massive advantages for your linking and customer satisfaction services. If you do a good enough job, an answer in your blog can even win a Google SERP!
4. Guest Posting
Another backlinking outreach strategy is to offer to write guest posts on HVAC blogs. Guest posting is one of the most effective ways to establish yourself as an expert in your industry.
If you’re unfamiliar with the term, here’s a quick definition:
Guest posting is a form of link building that involves submitting content to other sites in exchange for a backlink. In addition to getting a link, you’ll likely get exposure for your HVAC company and could receive some new customers who found you through the article.
But not just any blog website, it has to be one with website authority for HVAC services. It also has to be a website with high domain authority (DA) because having too many low DA backlinks can negatively affect your rank scores on Google. So before you start pitching your content to any blog site, you have to do some investigations first.
So, how do you find the right blogs to guest post on?
Well, the easiest way is to start with sites that cover topics related to your business. You can use tools like Buzzsumo or Ahrefs to find these guest blogging opportunities.
When you find a website that looks promising, simply reach out to the owner and ask if they would like to feature your article. If they agree, then you’re all set!
Moz SEO created a free online tool you can use to check for a website’s domain authority score. The DA score is ranked over 100 and it tells you how relevant the website is, and the weight of its authority. The higher the DA, the more effective its backlinks will be on your SEO ranking. Another free tool you can use is ahrefs’ website authority checker.
One website you can consider for your guest post is ACHR news. The website contains thousands of HVAC new letters, blogs, and general articles plus, it has high domain authority.
5. Get Social Media Links
Speaking of boosting your online presence, creating social media accounts and posting valuable content is a good way to get backlinks. Bloggers link to Facebook posts all the time, and if your content is valuable and helpful, you will always get quality backlinks. To successfully implement this strategy, you want to create precise, educational content that addresses customer pain points. Leverage on your years of experience in the business to teach your target audience what they don’t even know about their HVAC systems. That is how you create value.
6. Link Roundup Outreach
Now this is where the real work begins. The three previous strategies create nofollow backlinks because you are most likely the one that created them (i.e the business profiles on associate websites, social media accounts, etc). This strategy, as well as the next three, will give you high quality, dofollow backlinks.
Link roundups are weekly, daily, or monthly curated lists of the best content in the HVAC industry. The goal here is to host your link-embedded content on these roundup articles. To do that, you need to first find top link roundups that are relevant to the HVAC industry by using the keywords: “HVAC” + “link round up” + “link round up”. Like as it is shown below:
Once you find a fitting link roundup, you can then email the owner with a simple, non-spammy email stating your intention to be featured on their next weekly or monthly roundup. If your content is a good fit for their round up, you will get high-quality, relevant, HVAC backlinks.
Template 1: For guest posts and link roundups
7. Get Guest Podcasts Links
Our last (but certainly not least) link building strategy for HVAC businesses is to utilize the power of podcasting. Podcasters love interviewing subject matter experts because it gives their podcasts more content. You can always reach out to one of them in the HVAC industry. You will not only get backlinks on their website, you will also be creating awareness about your business; essentially killing two birds with a stone.
Template 2: For podcasts
8. Create Content Worth Linking To
It takes time and effort to research and create content that is truly valuable. But, once you’ve done so, you’ll see the results. The key is to focus on producing content that provides value to readers.
To do this, you need to know what types of posts work well.
Here are 3 examples of content ideas that will help you attract traffic to your website:
- How To Find The Best HVAC Contractor In Your Area
- How To Choose A Good Heating And Air Conditioning System
- What Is The Best Way To Repair A Leaking Pipe
These posts are helpful and informative. They answer questions that potential customers might have about your services and will help you organically attract visitors to your site.
You can also expect to naturally receive backlinks and citations from bloggers, influencers, and educational websites who will cite you as an authority to support their premise.
Quick Tip: Don’t limit your content marketing campaigns to just articles. Create videos, infographics, eBooks, and white papers that help your target audience learn about HVAC. Promote these resources through email campaigns and social media.
9. Industry Outreach and Join Relevant Associations
After creating relevant business profiles on citation directories, the next thing you need to do is to boost your online presence. One way to go about that is by joining relevant associations in your industry. You can start by joining the local chamber of commerce in your state. Simply go on google and type in the keywords “your state chamber of commerce”. So if your business is operating out of Florida, you’ll type “Florida chamber of commerce”.
Other niche-specific associations you can join include:
- Plumbing-Heating-Cooling Contractors (PHCC)
- Air Conditioning Contractors of America (ACCA)
- Mechanical Contractors Association of America (MCCA)
- Sheet Metal and Air Conditioning Contractors National Association (SMACNA)
Having your business profiles on these websites automatically creates a backlink to your website from these trusted associations, thereby boosting your online presence. Moreover, some of these associations release blogs and other industry-related content. You can take advantage of your membership to
As an HVAC contractor, you are already in a good position to interact with other businesses in your local community,
You should try to reach out to businesses such as companies supplying your materials and tools (local manufacturers and retailers), companies that provide complementary services (electricians and general contractors), and industry organizations (trade associations).
This type of outreach is especially important if you don’t already have a strong brand. By connecting with others in your industry, you can establish relationships that will increase your brand authority in your locality and get referrals to your websites.
10. Competitive Link Analysis
Since your goal is to outrank your top competitors, it makes sense to learn what they are doing to achieve top rankings. This allows you to improve your Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning SEO link-building campaigns.
With tools like Ahrefs, Open Site Explorers, and Majestic SEO, you can run a report on your top competitors to see who is ranking in your service areas and see what links they have that make Google consider them a more authoritative brand. You should be getting those links too!
11. Fix Broken Links
Due to website updates, you may have had some HVAC SEO links that are now invalid. They are called broken links and often result in error messages such as “page not found” or “404 Error.”
A good HVAC SEO link-building strategy will be to find broken links on your website using tools like Ahrefs and Google Webmaster. Once you find them, contact the owners or administrators of the external domains and suggest the links to your content to replace the broken links.
This strategy benefits both websites. It allows you to recover a lost backlink while also helping the other site owner repair broken links on their website.
12. Broken Link Building
This is another air conditioning and heating seo company tactic to get high quality backlinks. This strategy involves you finding broken backlinks from HVAC websites, then reaching out to the owners to inform them that you can replace their broken links with your own content. This way, you are not just cold pitching your content, you are creating value for the website owners. Which will be very much appreciated and rewarded by a sweet backlink on their HVAC website. It is one sure way of getting highly relevant backlinks.
To implement this strategy, you will first need to download the Check My Links chrome extension from chrome’s web store. This extension crawls websites to help you find embedded broken links. The next thing you want to do is to look for HVAC websites (preferably blogs) and use the extension to find broken links. Then you email the owner of the website, telling them you have a solution to their broken link problem — which is your own content that can serve as a replacement. This strategy requires a lot of time and effort to pull off, but the end result is usually worth it.
Template 3: For broken link building
13. Claim Unlinked Brand Mentions
If you Google your brand name, you might be surprised at how many mentions your company has on other websites with no link attached.
Claiming this link is an excellent way to boost your authority. You can contact the web admins of those sites and request a link to your website in the places where you’ve been mentioned.
14. Add Internal Links
Internal links connect all of your website’s pages, making it easy for readers to navigate your website and access all the information relevant to their search.
This keeps readers on your website for an extended period, making it more likely to convert them into valued customers.
Internal links also help to send a signal to Google that you are an authority on specific keywords or topics.
For example, when you link blog posts about air conditioner units to each other and to your air conditioning repair service page, Google sees you as an authority on that topic, which is a huge ranking factor.
15. Use External Links
These are the hyperlinks that connect your website to another website. In most cases, external links reinforce the information provided in your blog post or web pages.
For example, you could use an external link to explain a case study, display infographics, or refer to an authoritative website or blog that supports a point you make in your post. Just make sure not to link to a competitor’s website, or you may lose a potential customer to them.
Google search engine result page for local queries shows that most local businesses do not require a large number of backlinks to rank. So your HVAC SEO link building should be about getting the highest quality link possible.
Top 5 Factors That Determine The Quality Of A Link And Its Impact On Your Search Engine Rankings:
1. Authority of Linking Website
The quality of your backlinks is determined by the reputation of the linking website. For example, a backlink from a government or educational website in your service area is more valuable than a backlink from a random blog.
2. Relevance of the Linking Website
The more relevant a website is to your business, the higher the quality of the backlinks. So, ensure you get links from a website with a similar audience that discusses topics related to your HVAC business.
For example, a backlink from a sporting or pet website will have less authority than a backlink from a plumbing, home maintenance, or general contractor website.
Backlinks from irrelevant or shady domains are considered spamming, and a black-hat link-building strategy puts your HVAC website at risk of getting a google penalty.
3. Anchor Text
An anchor text is the underlined text containing your link. The text you click takes you from one website page to another or from one domain to another.
Anchor texts are important in determining a backlink’s quality. And the best SEO practice is to have your anchor text contain relevant keywords to the page being linked to, rather than a phrase like “click here.”
4. Link Positioning
A link within the body of a blog that directs the reader to another page or website for additional information on the topic will have more authority and a better click-through rate (CTR) than a link located in the sidebar or at the bottom of the page.
Many industry experts also believe that the higher up a page a link is, the more likely it is to be crawled by google bots. This means your linked pages have a better chance of getting indexed on search engines faster.
5. Follow vs No Follow
Google looks at follow and no-follow links very differently. no follow links do not add much value to your website. However, they do count as hints for ranking purposes and could bring additional traffic to your website.
On the other hand, a follow link is usually built with more editorial control and will directly influence your rankings.
Ideally, you should have a healthy percentage of both no follow and follow links to your website. This is a good signal to search engines that you’re naturally acquiring your HVAC links.
HVAC Backlinking DON’Ts: Things to Avoid
First, avoid getting bad links.
Ever since Google’s penguin update in April of 2012, they have put some processes in place to reward websites that ethically earn backlinks. This reward comes as top-ranking positions in the website’s niche industry. Consequently, they punish websites that cut corners and indulge in “black hat seo” link building practices.
Here are some backlinking practices to avoid:
- Buying backlinks: Avoid buying links from link farms or other shady sources. It goes against Google’s webmaster guidelines, and it can negatively affect your website’s SEO.
- Overdoing it: Having too many of your links on the same page is a red flag to Google’s algorithm. This is something you want to keep in mind when you are submitting a guest post. You want to keep it as subtle as possible with relevant anchor texts.
- Anchor text mismatch: Anchor texts are a couple of words on your content that holds the backlink. Irrelevant and spammy anchor texts could raise a red flag.
- Excessive link exchange: This practice is also called “link to me and I’ll link to you”. This is where you ask for a backlink for the sole purpose of returning the favor with a link on your website. Google frowns at this and they have mad updates to their algorithm to spot these kinds of trends. Best to stay away.
Conclusion
If you’re just starting out with building links and authority for your HVAC business, it’s important to focus on the basics first. Be strategic and follow google guidelines.
Once you’ve established a solid foundation for your business, you can start experimenting with more creative and fun link-building tactics.
Also, keep in mind that while local link building is a time-consuming marketing process, it is by far the most effective way to give your HVAC company long-term visibility and authority on search engines.
