SEO for HVAC companies: more calls, every season

How do HVAC companies get into the Google Maps 3-pack?

Google ranks map results on three things: relevance, distance and prominence. You cannot move closer to every searcher, but you control relevance and prominence through your Google Business Profile and your reviews.

Choose the most specific primary category for the work you most want, such as HVAC contractor, then add secondary categories that match services you really offer, such as air conditioning repair or furnace repair. Fill in every service, your service area, hours and holiday hours, and add photos of real jobs and your vans. If customers never visit your address, set the profile up as a service-area business and hide the address, as Google's guidelines ask.

Should an HVAC company have a separate page for each service?

Yes. Someone searching for heat pump installation wants a page about heat pump installation, not a homepage that lists twelve services. Give each service you want more of its own page: what it includes, the brands you work on, typical prices or how pricing works, how fast you can come out, and how to book.

The homepage's first screen should say what you do and where in one line, such as heating and air conditioning repair in your city, with a tap-to-call button and two or three genuine reviews beside it.

How do you rank in several cities without a storefront in each?

Map results depend heavily on distance from your business, so towns further out are usually won with your website. Create a page for each main area you serve, but only when you can make each one genuinely different: jobs you have done there, the neighborhoods you cover, common local problems, and how quickly you can get there.

Pages that only swap the city name are what Google calls doorway pages, and they can drag the whole site down. Five real area pages beat fifty copies.

How do you prepare for summer and winter search peaks?

Air-conditioning searches climb with the first heat wave and furnace searches with the first cold snap. New pages often take weeks or months to settle in Google, so publish and refresh seasonal pages a couple of months before each season, not during it.

• Before summer: AC repair, AC tune-up and new AC installation pages.
• Before winter: furnace repair, heat pump and maintenance plan pages.
• As each season starts: seasonal offers and fresh job photos on your Google Business Profile.

How do HVAC companies get more Google reviews?

Ask every happy customer right after the job, with a direct link to your review form sent by text. Technicians are the best people to ask, because the customer has just met them and the job is fresh.

Reply to every review, good or bad. Never offer discounts or gifts in exchange: Google's policies ban incentivized reviews, and it can remove them.