Table of Contents
Introduction
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.
What are Backlinks?
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.
Top 7 Link Building Strategies for HVAC and Businesses
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 and 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 and in this case.
Considering these factors, we put together seven (7) strategies for link building for and HVAC companies:
Utilize Online Directories
Before you even consider any hardcore HVAC link building excercises, 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 and businesses are citysearch, angie’s list, Home Advisor, Nextdoor, Hotfrog, Yelp and Facebook.
You simply need to go to these websites and register your HVAC and 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.
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:
- -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
Use Social Media
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 and systems. That is how you create value.
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 and 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 and industry by using the keywords: “HVAC” + “link round up” or “” + “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 and backlinks.
Broken Link Building
This is another plumber seo tactic to get high quality backlinks. This strategy involves you finding broken backlinks from HVAC or 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 and 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 and 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.
Want to get more high quality, authoritative backlinks to your HVAC website, so you’re visible to your local customers? Use the services of a HVAC SEO company like Skyrocket Result who are highly reputable and have served HVAC companies for many years.
Guest Posts
Another backlinking outreach strategy is to offer to write guest posts on HVAC and blogs. But not just any blog website, it has to be one with website authority for and 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.
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 HVAC and guest post is ACHR news. The website contains thousands of HVAC new letters, blogs, and general articles plus, it has high domain authority.
Guest Podcasts
Our last (but certainly not least) link building strategy for HVAC and 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 and 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.
Bonus Tip: Cold Pitch Emails to get Backlinks
A couple of backlink strategies mentioned above would require you to cold pitch your content to a third-party. If you are uncertain of what to write, here are some email templates you can use:
Template 1: For guest posts and link roundups
Template 2: For podcasts
Template 3: For broken link building
HVAC and Backlinking DON’Ts: Things to Avoid
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.
Author Bio
Mark Buckingham is an internet marketing expert and founder of HVAC SEO Results Expert, a firm helping heating and cooling companies grow their company.
He’s on a mission to help HVAC contactors avoid internet marketing headaches, wasted marketing dollars and helping them reach their financial goals. His free HVAC contractor marketing blog is: www.HVACSEOResultsExpert.com/blog
