HOW TO DO A FREE SEO AUDIT ON YOUR PLUMBING WEBSITE IN 15 MINUTES
You don't need to pay some agency $500 to find out what's wrong with your SEO. Here's how to audit your plumbing website yourself in 15 minutes flat.
Dear Plumber,
Every week I talk to plumbers who are paying $500, $1,000, sometimes $2,000 a month for "SEO services" and they can't tell me a single thing their SEO company actually does.
Not one thing.
They just get a fancy PDF report they don't understand and a monthly invoice they definitely do.
sounds about right
Here's the truth. You can do a basic SEO audit on your own website in about 15 minutes. For free. Right now. No technical skills required.
Will it replace a professional deep-dive? No. But it'll tell you 80% of what you need to know. And more importantly, it'll tell you if your "SEO guy" has been doing anything at all.
Let's go.
Step 1: Google Yourself (2 Minutes)
Open an incognito/private browser window. This is important because Google personalizes results based on your history. Incognito gives you a clean look at what everyone else sees.
Search for: "plumber in [your city]"
Where do you show up?
- Page 1, top 3? You're doing great.
- Page 1, bottom half? Room for improvement but not terrible.
- Page 2 or beyond? Houston, we have a problem.
- Not there at all? That's not SEO. That's a crime scene.
Now search for your actual business name. If you don't show up for your own name, something is seriously broken.
Write down where you rank. This is your baseline.
Step 2: Check Your Page Speed (2 Minutes)
Go to PageSpeed Insights (pagespeed.web.dev). Enter your website URL.
Google will give you a score from 0-100 for both mobile and desktop.
- 90-100: Excellent. Don't touch a thing.
- 50-89: Needs work. You're losing visitors.
- Below 50: Your website is actively hurting your business. Fix this yesterday.
Pay special attention to the mobile score. That's what matters most. 80%+ of your traffic is mobile.
If your mobile score is below 50, your site is loading so slowly that people are hitting the back button before it even finishes. Google sees that. And Google punishes that.
Step 3: Test Mobile Friendliness (2 Minutes)
Pull out your phone. Open your website. And be honest with yourself.
- Can you read the text without zooming in?
- Can you tap the phone number to call?
- Do buttons work? Are they big enough to tap?
- Does the menu work properly?
- Is anything cut off or overlapping?
If you have to pinch-and-zoom to read your own website on a phone, it's not mobile-friendly. Period. And Google has been using mobile-first indexing since 2019, which means the mobile version of your site is what determines your rankings.
A non-mobile-friendly plumbing website in 2025 is like a plumber without a wrench. Technically possible, but you're not getting the job done.
Step 4: Check Your Title Tags (3 Minutes)
This is the text that shows up in Google's search results as the blue clickable link. It's arguably the most important on-page SEO element.
Here's how to check: visit your homepage, right-click anywhere, and select "View Page Source." Hit Ctrl+F (or Cmd+F on Mac) and search for `
What does it say?
Bad title tags: - "Home" - "Welcome to Our Website" - "[Business Name]" - "Untitled Document" (yes, I've seen this)
Good title tags: - "Joe's Plumbing | Licensed Plumber in Dallas, TX | 24/7 Emergency Service" - "Affordable Plumber in [City] | [Business Name] | Free Estimates"
Your title tag should include: 1. Your main keyword (plumber in [city]) 2. Your business name 3. A compelling hook (24/7, free estimates, licensed, etc.)
Check your other pages too. Your "Services" page should have a title like "Plumbing Services in [City]" not just "Services."
Step 5: Check Your Google Business Profile (3 Minutes)
Search for your business name on Google. Look at your Business Profile on the right side (desktop) or at the top (mobile).
Check these things:
- Is your business name correct? No keyword stuffing. Just your actual business name.
- Is your address right? If you moved 2 years ago and never updated it, fix it now.
- Is your phone number correct? You'd be amazed how often this is wrong.
- Are your hours accurate? Wrong hours = angry customers showing up to a locked door.
- Do you have at least 20 photos? More is better.
- Do you have categories set? "Plumber" should be your primary. Add secondary categories like "Water Heater Installation Service," "Drain Cleaning Service," etc.
- Have you posted anything recently? Google Business posts are free marketing. Use them.
Your Google Business Profile is often the first thing people see. If it's incomplete or inaccurate, you're leaking leads like a bad P-trap.
Step 6: Check for Basic On-Page SEO (3 Minutes)
Visit a few pages on your site and look for these basics:
Headers (H1, H2 tags). Every page should have one H1 tag (the main heading) that includes your target keyword. You can check by right-clicking and viewing page source, then searching for `
`.
Content length. Pages with thin content (under 300 words) generally don't rank well. Your service pages should have at least 500-800 words of helpful, relevant content. Not keyword-stuffed garbage. Actual helpful information.
Internal links. Does your homepage link to your service pages? Do your service pages link to your contact page? Internal linking helps Google understand your site structure and passes SEO value between pages.
NAP consistency. NAP = Name, Address, Phone number. This should be exactly the same on every page of your website, on your Google Business Profile, and on every directory listing. Even small differences (like "St." vs "Street") can confuse Google.
Alt text on images. Right-click an image, select "Inspect," and look for the `alt=""` attribute. If it's empty, your images have no alt text. This is both an SEO miss and an accessibility problem.
What to Do With Your Results
Alright, so you just spent 15 minutes auditing your site. You probably found some issues. Maybe a lot of issues.
Don't panic.
Here's how to prioritize:
- Fix your Google Business Profile first. It's free and takes 10 minutes. Biggest bang for your buck.
- Fix your title tags. If your pages have generic titles, updating them can improve your rankings within weeks.
- Fix your page speed. This usually requires a developer, but it's worth it. Every second of load time costs you conversions.
- Fix your mobile experience. If your site isn't mobile-friendly, a redesign might be the move.
- Add content to thin pages. Flesh out those skimpy service pages.
Or... you can skip all that and let us handle it. We build plumbing websites that check every single one of these boxes from day one. No auditing required.
Get a Professional Audit (Free)
Look, a 15-minute self-audit is great for spotting the obvious stuff. But there's a lot that happens under the hood that you can't check by looking at your site in a browser.
Things like crawl errors, broken links, duplicate content, schema markup, canonical tags, redirect chains... the list goes on.
We offer a free, no-strings-attached website audit for plumbing businesses. We'll go through everything and give you a clear report of what's working, what's broken, and what to fix first.
No jargon. No confusion. Just straight answers.
P.S. If you're paying someone for SEO right now, do this audit anyway. If you find problems that should have been fixed months ago, well... now you know where your money's been going. Spoiler: not toward your rankings.