The second biggest search in plumbing is not an emergency. It is someone shopping for a hot water system with a budget and a weekend to think about it, and most plumbers have no page for it at all.
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Australian search volumes, Semrush.
Three channels, three jobs. A business usually needs all three, staggered rather than launched at once. It is the same model our Brisbane digital marketing agency runs across every industry we work in, only the numbers underneath it change.
META ADS
Nobody searches for a plumber until something breaks. Meta puts your name in front of your suburbs beforehand, so when it does break yours is the one they already recognise. It also sells hot water replacements to people whose system is old but working.
GOOGLE ADS
Catches them the moment they search, including the ones Meta warmed up. Fastest of the three to produce a booked job, and the only one working at 9pm when a pipe lets go.
SEO
Takes over the same job searches Google Ads is paying for, permanently and for free. Slowest to arrive, cheapest to keep, and the reason your paid bill should fall over time.
Google Ads tells us within about six weeks which searches actually produce booked jobs, so SEO gets aimed at those rather than guessing for six months. Meta retargeting picks up everyone who read your hot water page and did not call, which on a considered purchase is most of them. And as SEO ranks for a job type, we pull the paid spend off it and move it to the next one.
The work behind each one, so you can tell whether a proposal is describing effort or just naming a platform.
THE SLOW ASSET
A real page per job type rather than a Services list. Google Business Profile built properly, categories right, and a review process that runs after every job. Suburb pages for the areas you actually service. This is what moves the map pack and the job terms.
THE FAST LEVER
Campaigns split by job type, not one campaign called Plumbing. Negative keywords so you stop paying for plumbing apprenticeships, plumber salaries and people trying to fix a tap themselves. Call tracking above everything, because plumbing is booked by phone.
THE ONE MOST PLUMBERS SKIP
The one most plumbers skip. Best used for hot water replacement, which people put off for months, and for staying visible in your suburbs so you are the familiar name when something goes wrong.
We start from which jobs you want more of, not from which service we would like to sell you. A plumber drowning in call-outs but never quoting hot water needs a page and Meta Ads, not more emergency traffic. A new business with no reviews needs Google Ads while the SEO catches up. We will tell you on the call if one of the three is not worth running for you.
Not a strategy document. These are the three pages we would put up first for a Brisbane plumber, why those three, and the numbers behind each one.
Built around “hot water system”
The biggest opportunity in the trade and the one most plumbers ignore. Gas against electric against heat pump, what the rebates actually cover, how long each lasts. Write that properly and you win a customer who is comparing rather than panicking, at a job value well above a call-out.
Built around “emergency plumber”
8,100 a month, plus 3,600 for blocked drains and 720 for burst pipes. No deliberation at all. These people ring whoever answers, so the page needs your number enormous, your response time stated, and your after-hours arrangement made obvious. Most plumbing sites bury all three.
Built around “plumber near me”
The biggest number and the hardest to move, because it is decided in the map box on reviews and proximity. Worth doing properly, worth being honest that it is slower than the service pages, and worth not spending your whole budget on.
Tell us your suburbs and the jobs you want more of. We will come back with the real search numbers for your patch and the three pages we would start with. Fifteen minutes, no obligation, and you keep the research either way.
Your Google Business Profile, suburb pages, and local listings optimised so customers in your area find you first.
Technical fixes and service-focused SEO that make your site easy for Google to understand and trust.
Build your reputation through reviews, with monthly reports tracking rankings and leads from organic search.
Site speed, crawlability, schema markup, and Core Web Vitals sorted so Google can index and trust your site.
Service pages and suburb landing pages written to rank and convert, not just fill space.
Backlink building and on-page optimisation that compounds month over month.
Worth saying before you enquire, because it saves everyone three months.
Fast answers, clear decisions.
Spend, leads and trends at a glance.
Your data, your accounts.
Budget goes to what converts.
4+ years average client retention.
Specialists across each platform.
Because “hot water system” does 14,800 searches a month, two thirds of the biggest term in the trade, and almost no plumber has a real page for it. The customer is comparing gas against electric against heat pump, reading about rebates, and deciding over a week. That is a sale you can win on content rather than on being the closest van.
Agency fees usually work one of three ways: a percentage of ad spend, a flat monthly retainer, or a base fee plus a percentage above a threshold. Percentage models get expensive as you scale and quietly reward the agency for spending more of your money. Ask which model an agency uses and why before you ask for a number.
It is the obvious pitch and it is the most competitive, least loyal work in the trade. Emergency callers do not remember who came, they ring whoever answers first. The planned jobs, hot water and gas fitting and bathrooms, are worth more per job and far easier to rank for. Do both, but do not spend the whole budget on the panic.
For “plumber near me” they are close to the whole game, because that search is decided in the map pack. A steady trickle after every job beats a burst of twenty followed by two years of nothing.
Apprenticeships, salaries, courses, TAFE, and every variation of how to fix it yourself. On broad match a plumbing account will quietly buy all of them. We build the list before the account goes live and keep cutting from the search terms report weekly.
Google Ads produces calls within days. Organic takes three to six months to move and six to twelve to become a real part of your work. Anyone promising page one in thirty days is either targeting terms nobody searches or about to do something that risks your site.
For every suburb you actually service, yes. “Plumber near me” resolves to wherever the person is standing, and one page listing thirty suburbs ranks for none of them. Fifteen real pages beats one list.
For hot water replacement, yes, because people put that decision off for months and Meta reaches them during it. For emergencies, no, nobody scrolls Facebook with a burst pipe. Our social and paid social team handles that side.
Yes. The search behaviour is the same anywhere in Australia, only the suburbs and the competitors change. The volumes quoted on this page are national.
We look at what your suburbs actually search for by job type, your Google Business Profile, your reviews against the plumbers ranking above you, and whether your site has real pages for the jobs you want more of. You get it in writing and you keep it whether you work with us or not.
