Case Study · HVAC · Local SEO

From invisible to top of the map.

A seasonal HVAC service business in the Lower Mainland with no local-SEO foundation. Eight months to a top-three map-pack position and predictable inbound through Google Business Profile and geo-pages.

Top 3
Map pack · primary keyword
+340%
GBP calls YoY
$11.20
Cost / inbound lead
8 mo
Time to top-3 ranking
TL;DR
Brief
A residential HVAC company serving the Lower Mainland (NDA). Strong referral business, no digital pipeline. Goal: own the map pack for “HVAC near me” and shoulder-season variants, so the December furnace spike isn't a referral-only event. The answer was eight months of unglamorous foundation work in the off-season.
The Situation · March 2025

A respected HVAC outfit no one could find online.

Fifteen-year-old business. Two service trucks. Reputation for honest quotes and finishing what they started. Almost zero map-pack presence for the keywords that mattered most.

What we found at audit:

The state of the foundation

One Google Business Profile, claimed but never optimised. Default category set wrong (“Heating Contractor” only; no “HVAC contractor”, no “Air conditioning contractor”). Six photos, all from 2019. No GBP posts ever. Service area defined as a 5km radius of the shop in Coquitlam — half their actual coverage missed.

Citations across 60+ directories were inconsistent: phone number changed in 2022 (still old number on Yelp, Yellow Pages, Houzz, three industry directories). Business address listed two different ways. The HVAC industry rewards consistent NAP brutally; this was bleeding rankings invisibly.

Reviews: 42 reviews, 4.6 average. Solid. But review velocity was 1-2 per month from organic word-of-mouth. We needed 8-12 per month for the algorithm to take notice.

People find us by word of mouth. We just need Google to find us the same way.

The owner's instinct was right: word-of-mouth had earned them the reputation, but Google didn't know. Our job was to teach Google what the neighbourhood already knew.

Angarum Media griffin — local SEO and Google Business Profile for an HVAC company
The work · Local SEO, eight months
The Timeline · Eight Months, Four Phases

Off-season build. Peak-season payoff.

We started in March — shoulder season, low demand, the perfect window to invest in foundation. By November's furnace spike, the map pack was working.

Month 1 · March 2025
Audit & Cleanup
GBP rebuilt: correct categories, service area expanded to actual coverage, full attribute set, fresh photo shoot (28 photos). Citations cleanup across 64 directories. NAP unified. Quality Score equivalent: from baseline to clean.
Month 2-3 · April-May
Geo-Page Foundation
Six service-area landing pages built: Coquitlam, Burnaby, Port Moody, Vancouver East, Vancouver West, North Vancouver. Each with embedded GBP map, schema.org LocalBusiness markup, and 600+ words of locally-relevant copy. First crawls show up in week 8.
Month 4-5 · June-July
Review Workflow Live
SMS-based review request workflow integrated with their dispatch software. Every completed job triggers a text 24 hours later with a one-tap link. Result: review velocity moved from 1-2/month to 9-14/month, organically. Average rating climbed from 4.6 to 4.8.
Month 6-7 · August-September
Local Link Partnerships
Three high-quality local backlinks landed: Tri-Cities Chamber of Commerce member directory, a sponsorship-driven feature in a local trades publication, and an HVAC supply partner's “Recommended Installers” page. Small in count, heavy in trust.
Month 8 · October 2025
The Map-Pack Position
Top-3 map pack for primary keyword (“HVAC contractor near me”) from postcodes V3J, V3K, V3B, V3H. Top-5 for “furnace repair”, “air conditioning installation”. November furnace spike landed with the rankings already in place.
Lifetime · March 2025 — March 2026
The Compounding Year
+340% increase in GBP calls year-over-year. +412% direction-clicks. Review count: 42 to 156 (3.7×). Cost per inbound lead from organic local search: $11.20 — pure cost of management; no ad spend on this channel.
Begin Your Royal Road

Build something made to endure.

The first charters were carved in clay to outlast the hands that shaped them. We build brands and demand systems on the same principle — clear, considered, and made to last.

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The Results · Lifetime

Year-one numbers in plain language.

+340%
GBP phone calls
YoY
+412%
Direction clicks
YoY
4.8
Avg review rating
up from 4.6 · 156 reviews
$11.20
Cost per inbound lead
no ad spend; mgmt only
Begin a conversation

Tell us your service area and the keyword you want to own.

We'll come back inside one business day with where you currently rank, what's holding the map pack, and the timeline to top-3.

Begin a Project
or call (672) 500-4444
The Playbook

What we'd do again, in any local trade.

Local SEO for seasonal trades is mostly about timing the build against the spike.

01

Off-season build, peak-season harvest

The rankings that win the November furnace spike are built in April. Launching local SEO when demand already peaks is six months late. We schedule the heavy investment in the lowest-demand quarter, every year.

02

GBP photos are content, not decoration

Google rewards fresh Business Profiles. We refresh photos monthly — trucks at job sites, before/after installs, the crew working. Twelve months of monthly uploads beats a single perfect shoot.

03

Review velocity beats review average

A 4.6 profile with 156 reviews and 12 new ones this month beats a 4.9 with 30 stale ones. The algorithm reads velocity as freshness. We wire the review request into the dispatch system, not a separate task.

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About this case study

Plain answers. Pulled from the work.

How do HVAC companies get more customers online?
The most reliable channel is local SEO — ranking in the Google map pack for searches like “HVAC contractor near me” — backed by a strong Google Business Profile and steady reviews. This HVAC company went from invisible to top-3 in eight months and grew Google Business calls 340% with no ad spend.
How long does local SEO take for an HVAC business?
Most HVAC businesses see map-pack movement in 3 to 6 months and a top-3 local ranking in 6 to 9 months. In this case it took eight months to reach top-3 for the primary keyword. Local SEO compounds, so rankings built in the off-season win the peak season.
How much does HVAC local SEO cost?
Local SEO for a single-location HVAC company typically runs $450 to $1,500 per month, depending on service-area size and competition. This engagement produced an $11.20 cost-per-inbound-lead from organic local search — management cost only, with no ad spend on the channel.
Is SEO or Google Ads better for HVAC?
Both, in sequence. Local SEO compounds and costs almost nothing per lead once you rank, but it takes months; Google Ads buys visibility instantly but you pay per click forever. For seasonal trades we build local SEO as the foundation and layer paid search on during the peak.
How do HVAC businesses rank in the Google map pack?
Map-pack ranking comes from an optimised Google Business Profile, consistent name-address-phone citations, steady review velocity, location landing pages, and local backlinks, run consistently. This client reached top-3 in eight months by doing exactly that, every month. See the Local SEO practice.