In 2022, every digital marketing expert wants to tell clients what works. But with so much misinformation around the web, how can any business owner trust what they hear? At HVAC Webmasters, we’ve been working with heating and cooling companies for more than a decade and helping them get results online. Since everyone loves to talk about what works, we will switch it up and discuss what doesn’t work in 2022.
Here are three HVAC marketing strategies that do NOT work in 2022.
1) GMB-Only (Ignore Website)
There’s a growing trend among HVAC contractors to focus only on Google My Business while ignoring their primary website. While the strategy sounds good in theory, it doesn’t work in practice. The main problem is that GMB rankings rely on a solid website connected to your listing. Google uses the attached website to gauge your listing’s authority, just as it would with backlinks in their traditional algorithm.
We recently had a prospect call into HVAC Webmasters wondering why their GMB listing doesn’t rank on Google Maps despite having 160 reviews in a relatively small town. The answer lied in his lack of a robust website which Google uses to gauge a listing’s prominence. The reviews alone could not help him rank in the Local Map 3-Pack, so he focused on building a solid website, which allowed him to finally rank.
2) Blogging
It’s an open secret in the SEO industry that blogging doesn’t work. Sure, there are some industries where blogs remain relevant, but HVAC is not one of them. Nobody cares to read 100 blog posts about an HVAC problem in 2022. Furthermore, nine times out of ten, blogs are written by content writers who know nothing about the subject. Moreover, the posts typically lack word count, research, and quality sources.
Sometimes people will push back on this contention as they see posts ranking online. Those posts come from high domain authority websites that’ve already established their domain for over a decade. They also have exceedingly strong backlink profiles and author bios that notate the credibility of the writer. The vast majority of blogs in the heating and cooling industry don’t even get indexed. You are wasting your crawl budget with trash content when you should focus on service pages rather than blog posts.
3) Relying Solely on an SEO Agency
One out of five HVAC companies doesn’t do any work to grow their business. Instead, they rely 100% on the SEO agency to do all the work on their behalf. So while SEO agencies are essential, a company must do some work to establish its brand in ways that no SEO agency can replicate. For example, you must update your social media pages yourself.
Another example of ignoring your participation is failing to utilize apps like DataPins, which require you to take photos of your jobsite work. While HVAC companies might consider this extra work, it is actually one of the most efficient ways to rank online in 2022. Google looks for original content, and DataPins provides it, but contractors must be willing to participate. Of course, you don’t have to do everything, but you must participate to maximize your SEO campaign.
