Plumbers
It is 11pm and something is leaking through the ceiling.
Nobody researches a plumber. They search, they call the first two or three that look legitimate, and whoever answers gets the job.
What you are up against
You are bidding against companies that sell you your own customers.
Angi, Thumbtack and the rest rank above you for the searches your customers actually type, capture the lead, then sell it back to you, sometimes alongside three competitors. That is the fight on this page: not the plumber across town, but the platform sitting between you and them.
The arithmetic
What one more is worth.
$900
a typical customer over time
At that value a $500 monthly retainer needs about one and a half extra jobs a month to return three times what it costs.
How search works here
Three things specific to plumbers.
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Emergency searches do not scroll
Somebody standing in water is not comparing six options. The map pack holds three, and whoever is in it with reviews and a tappable phone number gets the call.
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Your service area does more work than your address
Most plumbing searches happen away from your building. The towns you list, and whether you have a page proving you work in them, decide how far your reach actually goes.
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One page per service, not one list
Water heater, slab leak, drain clearing and repipe are different searches with different urgency and different prices. A single services page competes for none of them properly.
Work it out
How many jobs would it have to bring in?
Set what one is worth to you, pick what you would actually buy, and it tells you the number the spend has to beat.
Where I would start
In this order, and for this reason.
- Profile first, because emergency searches resolve in the map pack
- A page for each service, starting with whichever brings the best margin
- Reviews on a schedule, since they decide map position and the phone call
- Ads alongside, if you need the calls before the rest compounds
Which rung that starts on depends on your market rather than your trade. Profile work runs $250/mo, and Local SEO starts at $500/mo. The full ladder is published.
Questions
The ones plumbers ask.
Is SEO worth it when I already buy leads from Angi?
Those are the same customers, bought at a markup, shared with your competitors, and gone the month you stop paying. Search work costs about the same per month and the position you earn stays yours. Most plumbers run both for a while and taper the paid leads as the rankings arrive.
How fast can I show up for emergency searches?
Profile work can move inside 30 days, which matters more here than in most trades because emergency searches resolve in the map pack rather than the blue links. Organic rankings for the bigger jobs take three to six months.
Free audit
Start with where you stand.
Your site's performance, your Google Business Profile, and whether AI can find you. It runs automatically and lands in your inbox in about three minutes.
You get the findings whether or not you hire me, and it is what decides which of the steps above is worth doing first.