SEO for HVAC Companies: 11 Tips to Attract Customers Online

Originally published in December 2023. Last updated on March 19, 2025.

With so many people searching for HVAC services online, your business needs an online presence to compete in your market.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a type of digital marketing that helps your HVAC business appear at the top of search engines (like Google and Bing) when customers search for HVAC services.

SEO for HVAC companies requires a strategic approach. With the right foundation in place, you’ll be able to generate new leads for free. To get you started, we’ll explore SEO tactics and show you how to increase visibility for a stronger online presence.

Note how some of these results are shown on a map – the three listings next to the map are known as the “local pack.” And the listings below are standard organic results, showing information from the company’s website.

All this information is displayed thanks to SEO. 

In this article, we’ll explore some helpful ways to do SEO marketing for HVAC contractors and attract potential clients to your website.

Benefits of SEO for HVAC companies

By optimizing your website and online presence, you’re helping customers find you while setting your business up for long-term success. And the benefits go way beyond just ranking on Google.

• Higher brand awareness: SEO helps you show up when people search for services like emergency heating repair or AC installation. The more you show up in search results, the more familiar your brand becomes.
• Cost-effective lead generation: Traditional ads can drain your budget, but SEO brings in leads without paying for every click.
• Long-term growth: Ads stop working when you stop paying. But with SEO, the leads keep coming long after you’ve optimized your website. It’s an investment that keeps delivering results, season after season.
• Better user experience: Nobody wants to deal with a clunky website, especially when their heat just went out in the middle of winter. SEO involves creating a faster, more user-friendly website that makes it easy for customers to book services with you.
• Get a competitive advantage: Your competitors are probably already doing SEO. But some might not be. A strong SEO strategy helps you both keep up with competitors and outrank the ones who aren’t doing it as well as you are.
• You’re building trust and credibility: If your HVAC company shows up at the top of search results along with great reviews, you’re being positioned as an authority. This makes it easier for people to choose your business over a lower-ranking competitor.
• More targeted marketing: Doing SEO for your HVAC business helps you target homeowners and property managers actively searching for services. It’s marketing that meets people at the exact moment they need you.
• Measuring results is easy: You can track exactly how many website visits, calls, and form submissions come from search engines. That means you can fine-tune your strategy and focus more on what’s working.
• SEO works around the clock: Your site doesn’t take nights or weekends off. Effective SEO means your HVAC business is showing up in searches, attracting leads, and booking appointments. Even while you sleep.

You should also pay attention to technical aspects that improve your visibility in search results, like:

• Is the website accessible to users with disabilities and compatible with screen readers?
• Have you provided quality content for every page’s title tag and meta description?
• Does every image have alt text and a description, so Google knows what’s in the image?

Regularly reviewing and optimizing these aspects of your site can attract more visitors and potentially increase conversions.

Prioritize mobile friendliness

Your website needs to work flawlessly on any device—especially smartphones. These days, when a homeowner’s AC breaks down in the middle of a heatwave, they’re probably not pulling out a laptop to look for help. They’re grabbing their phone and searching for the fastest solution.

If your site is hard to navigate or slow to load, people will just move on to a competitor. To make sure your site is mobile-friendly and supports SEO for your HVAC company, keep these things in mind:

• Use a responsive design. Your site should automatically adjust to fit any screen, whether it’s a desktop, smartphone, or tablet. A site that scales properly makes it easy for customers to read and click around without frustration.
• Keep the experience simple. No one wants to pinch and zoom to find your phone number. Make sure the navigation is clear, buttons are easy to tap, and contact information is easy to spot. The fewer steps it takes for a customer to reach you, the better.

Improve page load times

Speed matters. If your website is too slow, people won’t sit around waiting when their AC quits during a heat wave. They’ll hit the back button and call the next HVAC company. A slow site doesn’t just frustrate visitors—it can also negatively affect your search rankings.

Want to see how fast (or slow) your site really is? Drop your URL into Google PageSpeed Insights to check your load times.

Ideally, your site should load in three seconds or less. If it’s creeping past five, it might be time to work with a developer to speed things up. Fast pages keep customers happy and help with SEO for your HVAC business.

Create a website in minutes with Jobber

Don’t have a website yet? Get your business online fast with a simple, professional website in just a few minutes. All you have to do is provide Jobber with details about your HVAC business.

Your HVAC contractor website comes with:

• A quote request form to help convert visitors into leads
• Google Business Profile integration so potential clients can navigate to your site through local SEO
• A dashboard that lets you track visitors and associated work requests

HVAC service pages

Most customers looking for HVAC services aren’t just searching “HVAC company”—they need help with a specific system and problem.

That’s why you should create a page for every HVAC service you offer. This will increase your online visibility and help people find your website when they’re searching for a specific HVAC service.

For example, potential clients who search “AC repair Columbus” will find Buckeye Heat’s air conditioning repair page. Those searching “Columbus heat pump replacement” will also find a page for that service on the same website:

To strengthen SEO for your HVAC company, each of your service pages should:

• Explain exactly what problems you solve and why potential customers should choose you as their HVAC contractor
• Have a page title that contains the keyword you want to target (e.g., “furnace installation Denver”)
• Include advice that helps homeowners troubleshoot their HVAC system problems, so they contact you with the right request
• Have buttons or links throughout the page that take customers to your contact page or online booking form

HVAC software like Jobber helps you save time on scheduling by letting customers book a visit with you online. This makes it easy to schedule work and grow your HVAC business with little effort.

Location pages

If you service multiple geographic areas, having a page for each location is great for local SEO. It boosts your visibility in search engine results and helps potential customers in those locations find you.

For instance, your “Detroit AC Repair” page and “Ann Arbor HVAC Repair” page can both rank at the top of search results and attract leads from each city.

As you’re planning service and location pages, head over to Google and type in “HVAC service + [YOUR LOCATION].” See which websites show up at the top of the list of search results.

Explore the pages that are ranking on Google. Go to the top-ranking sites and try to understand why they’re ranking and how you can boost your own local SEO visibility. For results about Detroit AC repair, for instance, you might see homepages and service pages that include things like:

• Headings that include keywords
• Repair service details (e.g., compressor replacement, duct cleaning)
• Service process and what customers can expect
• Pricing ranges or factors affecting cost
• Service areas: Specific neighborhoods or suburbs in Detroit
• Information about certifications, years of experience, and local expertise
• Customer testimonials from Detroit customers
• Photos of technicians working on AC units in Detroit
• Before-and-after photos of AC projects

Contact page

Every page on your website should link to a contact page where potential customers can get in touch with your business. Provide information like:

• Your phone number and email address
• The address of your head office and links to your individual location pages
• Links to your HVAC social media profiles
• A contact form or quote request form

Use Jobber’s quote request form on your website to let potential customers request the service they want, along with preferred dates and times. Jobber will notify you as soon as the request comes in.

Your quote request form could look something like this:

The site is full of other quality content, and this article does a great job of answering the question. As such, it gets great visibility at the top of Google’s search results.

Some HVAC SEO experts advise against this approach because it doesn’t always lead to a new customer. However, this article links to the website’s services pages and invites customers to request a free estimate.

If your site provides value paired with clear next steps, like when customers should turn to the pros, customers will consider your business a trusted source of information and a trusted HVAC contractor they should hire.

READ MORE: HVAC marketing ideas to win new customers

So how do you choose which content marketing topics to write about? Start by reading HVAC blogs and looking at competitor websites to see what topics they cover. Then run your list of possible keywords through a free keyword research tool like WordStream.

When you type in “why is my furnace leaking water,” you’ll see how many potential customers are searching that exact keyword and how competitive it is:

You’ll see that “why is my heater leaking water” is a keyword that roughly 2.4K homeowners search every month, with a low number of websites competing for that term. This is a good keyword to write about.

Start by targeting keywords that have the lowest level of difficulty. Once your site has started ranking for these terms, you will have an easier time ranking for higher-difficulty keywords.

Pro Tip: Successful content marketing takes a lot of work. Consider investing in a freelancer or an HVAC SEO agency to help you create quality content that ranks and competes with more established HVAC websites.

The more complete and detailed your Business Profile is, the more likely it is to show up when customers search for HVAC companies nearby.

When you build your Business Profile, you can include your service area, hours of operation, contact details, and a link to your site. You don’t need a physical address to set up your profile.

To make your Business Profile look more detailed and professional—and improve your ranking in search engine results—you can also add: 

• A list of your HVAC services
• The number of years you’ve been in business
• Photos of your technicians and systems you’ve installed
• Special offers (like discounts on your HVAC replacement services)
• Answers to frequently asked customer questions
• A quote request form that collects new HVAC leads

From your reviews dashboard in Jobber, you can see your average Google rating and respond to reviews. You’ll also see your latest reviews, along with HVAC marketing resources to help you manage your business’s reputation.

With enough positive reviews and ratings from customers on these listing sites, your HVAC business could easily appear in a “top 15” list like this one—even if you aren’t an SEO expert just yet.

Done with those? Move on to more advanced things like:

• Implementing structured data (schema markup) to help search engines display business details like service areas
• Enabling browser caching to speed up load times for customers researching ductwork installation
• Minifying CSS, JavaScript, and HTML files to improve performance
• Regularly checking Google Search Console for crawl errors
• Optimizing for Core Web Vitals to ensure a smooth browsing experience

Social media platforms often use “no-follow” links, meaning Google won’t notice links to your website. However, Google still factors your social media presence into your overall ranking, so make sure to invest effort here.

Common SEO mistakes to avoid

A few missteps can push your website down in search rankings, making it harder for people to find you. Here are some mistakes to avoid when doing SEO for your HVAC company:

Your site isn’t mobile-friendly

A homeowner’s furnace stops working in the middle of a cold night. They grab their phone, search for “emergency HVAC repair near me,” and click on your website. If it’s hard to use on that little screen, they’ll hit the back button and call a competitor instead.

Optimizing your site for mobile devices helps keep people from becoming frustrated and turning away. Not only that, but Google assesses your site with a smartphone agent. So, a responsive design, fast loading times, and easy-to-tap buttons are essential to rank well.

Ignoring your Google Business Profile

When someone searches for “HVAC repair near me,” map listings populated by Google Business Profiles are often the first thing they see. If your profile isn’t claimed or fully complete, you’re practically handing leads to your competitors.

Make sure your business hours, phone number, and service areas are correct. Add photos of your team in action, whether it’s installing a new AC unit or doing a furnace tune-up. Respond to every customer review, whether good or bad, to help people trust you.

Paying for backlinks

It’s tempting to take a shortcut and simply pay for backlinks, hoping for a ranking boost. But if search engines catch on to spammy link-building tactics, your site’s rankings could take a hit. Or worse, it could disappear from search results entirely.

Instead, earn quality backlinks the right way. Get listed in local business directories and collaborate with home service contractors who can link to your site. You could also contribute to HVAC industry blogs. One link from a great website is more valuable than a bunch of junk links that could get you in trouble.

Keyword stuffing

Ever come across a website where every other sentence seems to be cramming in a keyword like “best HVAC repair near me”?

That’s keyword stuffing, and it’s a red flag for both search engines and potential customers. Google’s algorithms are smart enough to recognize when content is created just for the sake of trying to rank. It doesn’t work, and it could even hurt your rankings.

Instead, focus on using keywords naturally. Work them into meta tags, headings, and key sections of your website in a way that makes sense. On-site SEO is about creating useful content that helps customers while signaling to search engines what your pages are about.

Forgetting technical SEO

Technical SEO is the behind-the-scenes work that keeps your website running smoothly. If search engines have trouble crawling and indexing your pages, people won’t find your pages and content.

A few technical fixes can make a difference:

• Page speed: A slow site can tank your rankings. Use a fast web host, compress images, and minimize redirects.
• Site structure: Clear navigation and organized service pages help both visitors and search engines find information.
• Broken links: 404 “dead” links frustrate visitors and make your site look like it’s not being maintained. Regularly check on all links and fix the broken ones.
• XML sitemap & robots.txt: These help search engines understand what pages to crawl and index.

Duplicate content

Copying and pasting content from another site—or using the same text across multiple pages of your own site—can do more harm than good. Search engines want unique, helpful information. Repetitive text that doesn’t add any new insights isn’t that valuable.

If you have multiple location pages, don’t just swap out the city name and call it a day. Customize the content to reflect what matters in each area. Maybe homes in one region deal with extreme humidity that strains AC units, while another area has older homes that need frequent furnace repairs.

You don’t need a big budget to compete

Search engines level the HVAC industry playing field. You don’t need a massive digital marketing budget to compete with big companies—just a solid HVAC SEO strategy, some support from experts, and a commitment to improving your online presence.

An SEO campaign doesn’t work overnight. It’ll take time to see results, but the outcome is worth the effort. Keep at it and you’ll be getting more HVAC leads in no time.

Need more marketing tips? Get insights from this episode of Jobber’s Masters of Home Service podcast: