Case Study: Pilot Heating and Cooling

Case Study: Pilot Heating and Cooling
Brand Personalization
3025 Piedmont Rd
Huntington, WV 25704
(304) 617-5586 ‎
www.brandpersonalization.com
www.fb.com/brandpersonalization

Every once in a while we come across clients that have tried to conquer their online branding themselves. While when done right, a branding campaign can be very effective, simple mistakes on the other hand can bring you back to ground zero.

A good example of this would be Pilot Heating and Cooling In Spring Branch, Texas. At first glance, it looked like they were doing everything right. They had Citations and reviews on many sites. In all of my research, I could not find one review that was not favorable, and all listings had five stars. But if you would search for anything related to HVAC or heating and cooling sales or service, they were nowhere to be found. Even when I narrowed the search to the San Antonio Texas or the Spring Branch Texas areas, even if Pilot Heating & Cooling showed it all, they were down in the list.

After reading favorable reviews on over 20 sites such as Yelp and Angie's List, I decided to dig a little deeper. At this point, the fact that they were not even ranking for less competitive keywords like air-conditioning repair or residential heating and cooling, really intrigued me. So I decided to plug some information into my monitoring tools so I could keep track of any changes over the course of a week to see if it was something that they were doing, or if maybe Google had an algorithm change. A few of the terms that I decided to monitor where:
heating and cooling Spring Branch Texas
HVAC Spring Branch Texas
Pilot air conditioning Spring Branch Texas
HVAC service and repair Spring Branch Texas
traine air conditioners Spring Branch Texas
central heating & cooling Spring Branch Texas

those are just a few of the terms that I decided to monitor and kept tabs on for the following week. I listed the last term to show you the first problem that I found. In case you didn't catch it, I will explain. If you have two term side-by-side, for example: “HVAC heating & cooling Spring Branch Texas” and “HVAC heating and cooling San Antonio Texas” the biggest difference between the two terms, surprisingly is not the city. It is the use of both “&” / “and” while making citations. While they both say the exact same thing, in Google's eyes, it is two complete different phrases. It took me a little while to figure out what was going on, but I quickly noticed that even though Pilot spelled out “and” the majority of the links and citations coming back to them used “&.”

Even though this was a major issue, I figured it was not enough to prevent it from ranking in Google Local. So I took my digging one step further, then I was shocked when the main issue was staring me right in my face the entire time. Even though Pilot’s local page seemed to be set up correctly, there was a huge inconsistency. While their contact information was formatted correctly as:
Pilot Heating and Cooling
1141 Victoria Ln, Spring Branch, TX 78070
(830) 980-2479 ‎
pilothvac.org

Their local listing was the only place that I could find this information! I was dumbfounded after I noticed that on all of the citation pages Pilot was listed as:

Pilot Heating & Cooling
PO Box 52
Bulverde, TX 78163
(830) 980-2479
www.pilothvac.org

I'm sure that you can see the issues here. Besides the name being completely different, their mailing address is in a completely different city! I saw several other inconsistencies such as the abbreviation Ln versus Lane among others, but these are the two biggies. I have no doubt, once these two issues are fixed, they will start to see the rankings that they deserve. From an outsider's perspective it looks like they set up accounts on the other sites first, then focused on Google last. With other sites it does not matter if you list a physical address or a P.O. Box. For Google on the other hand, physical is a must. This is a very good example of the phrase “failure to plan is a plan to fail.” Sometimes it's the tiniest of details that make all of the difference.

This case study points out a couple common mistakes that are easily corrected. We encourage all of the businesses to take action, and build their online brand. If you ever get stuck or have any questions, we provide free support @ www.Facebook.com/BrandPersonalization
Case Study conducted by:
Dustin Salmons
Brand Personalization