A Step-by-Step Framework for Auditing Your HVAC Website's SEO — Right Now

The word 'audit' gets used loosely. For HVAC contractors specifically, a meaningful SEO audit examines four distinct layers of your web presence — and all four need to be healthy before any single layer can perform at its ceiling.

The Four Audit Layers

• Technical health: Can Google crawl and index your pages without errors? Is your site fast enough on mobile? Are there broken links, duplicate pages, or missing canonical tags?
• Local signals: Is your Google Business Profile complete and accurate? Does your name, address, and phone number match across every directory where your business is listed?
• On-page content: Do your service pages target specific keywords (e.g., 'AC repair in [city]' rather than just 'AC repair')? Is each page long enough to signal depth of expertise?
• Backlink authority: Are credible, relevant websites linking to yours? Are there toxic or spammy links pointing at your domain that could be dragging rankings down?

Most HVAC contractors who come to us have a strong local presence (good GBP, decent reviews) but weak technical or content foundations. The GBP masks the site's problems until a competitor with a stronger site shows up — and then rankings drop fast.

Run each layer as a separate pass. Trying to assess everything at once leads to missed findings. Set aside 30-45 minutes per layer the first time you do this.

Technical problems are the silent killers of HVAC SEO. A site that Google can't crawl efficiently won't rank well regardless of how good the content is.

Start with Google Search Console

If you don't have Google Search Console set up, do that first — it's free and provides direct data from Google on how your site is being indexed. Once inside, check:

• Coverage report: Are any pages marked as 'Excluded' or 'Error'? Pages Google can't access can't rank.
• Core Web Vitals: Google flags pages that fail its speed and usability thresholds. Even a handful of failing pages can suppress your overall domain performance.
• Mobile Usability: Most homeowners searching for HVAC contractors are on a phone. Any usability errors here are urgent.

Page Speed Check

Run your homepage and your most important service page through Google's free PageSpeed Insights tool. Focus on the mobile score. In our experience, HVAC sites built on older themes or with large uncompressed images frequently score below 50 on mobile — a score that meaningfully limits ranking potential in competitive markets.

Crawl the Site

Tools like Screaming Frog (free up to 500 URLs) let you crawl your own site the way Google does. Look for broken internal links (404 errors), pages missing title tags or meta descriptions, and duplicate page titles — all common on HVAC sites that have been updated piecemeal over the years.

Red flag: If your site has more than 10 crawl errors or any page returning a 404 that was previously ranking, prioritize technical fixes before any content work.

For HVAC contractors, local SEO is the highest-use channel. Most of your revenue comes from customers within a defined service area — and Google's local algorithm has specific signals it weights heavily for service-area queries.

Google Business Profile Audit

Log into your GBP dashboard and check each of the following:

• Primary category: 'HVAC Contractor' or 'Air Conditioning Contractor' should be your primary category, not a generic 'Home Services' category.
• Services listed: Each individual service (AC installation, furnace repair, duct cleaning) should be listed separately with its own description.
• Photos: Profiles with recent, genuine photos of your team and work consistently outperform bare profiles in the Map Pack. Aim for at least 15-20 photos, updated periodically.
• Review velocity: It's not just the number of reviews — it's how recently they were received. A profile with 80 reviews all from three years ago typically underperforms one with 40 reviews spread across the last 12 months.
• Q&A section: Unanswered questions on your GBP are a missed opportunity. Seed common questions yourself and answer them.

NAP Consistency Check

Your business name, address, and phone number must be identical across your website, GBP, Yelp, Angi, BBB, and every other directory where your business is listed. Even minor inconsistencies — 'St.' vs. 'Street', old phone numbers — can dilute local ranking signals.

Use a tool like Moz Local or BrightLocal to audit your citation consistency across directories. Many HVAC businesses have old listings from previous addresses or phone numbers that have never been cleaned up.

Content is where the majority of HVAC sites underperform — not because they've published nothing, but because what they've published isn't structured to rank for the queries that bring in revenue.

Service Page Audit

Pull up every service page on your site. For each one, ask:

• Does this page have a clear target keyword in the title, H1, and first 100 words? (e.g., 'AC Repair in [City Name]' rather than just 'Air Conditioning Services')
• Is the page at least 400-600 words? Shorter pages rarely rank in competitive HVAC markets unless the query itself has very low competition.
• Does each page have a unique meta title and meta description, or are they duplicated across services?
• Is there a clear call-to-action on every page — a phone number, a booking form, or both?

Location Page Audit

If you serve multiple cities or towns, each location should have its own dedicated page — not a single page listing all service areas. Generic multi-location pages rarely rank for city-specific queries.

What to look for: If your 'Service Areas' page is a single page with a bulleted list of 12 cities and no individual city content, that structure is leaving significant local ranking potential untapped.

Content Gaps

Use Google Search Console's Performance report to see which queries are already sending impressions to your site. If you're getting impressions for a query like 'heat pump installation [city]' but you don't have a dedicated heat pump installation page, that's a content gap with a clear fix. Sort by impressions, filter for queries with average position below 20, and you have your content roadmap.

Backlinks — other websites linking to yours — function as a third-party credibility signal. For local HVAC contractors, you don't need hundreds of links. You need links from relevant, trusted sources, and you need to confirm no toxic links are actively dragging your domain down.

Running a Basic Backlink Audit

Free tools like Google Search Console's Links report show you which sites link to yours most frequently. For a deeper view, Ahrefs' free Backlink Checker or Semrush's free tier give you a sample of your backlink profile.

Look for three things:

• Source quality: Are your links coming from local business directories, industry associations, chamber of commerce pages, and local news sites? Those are good signals. Links from unrelated foreign websites or link farms are red flags.
• Anchor text distribution: If a large portion of links use the exact same anchor text (e.g., 'HVAC contractor in [city]'), this can look unnatural to Google. Healthy profiles have varied anchor text.
• Referring domain count: Industry benchmarks suggest that most competitive local HVAC markets require at least 20-40 unique referring domains to rank on page one — though this varies significantly by market size and competitor authority.

When to Be Concerned

If your backlink audit surfaces links from adult sites, gambling sites, or what appear to be link networks, these are worth flagging. Google generally filters low-quality links algorithmically, but a pattern of manipulative links can result in a manual penalty. If you see a sharp unexplained traffic drop in Search Console that coincides with a Google algorithm update, your backlink profile is one of the first places to investigate.

For most HVAC contractors, the backlink problem isn't toxic links — it's too few quality links. Focus on earning citations from local directories, getting listed on supplier websites, and building relationships with complementary local businesses (plumbers, electricians, home builders) who may link to you naturally.

After working through all four layers, you'll have a clearer picture of where your site stands. The question is: what do you do with that picture?

Self-Fix vs. Professional Help

Some findings are straightforward to address without outside help:

• Updating your GBP category or adding missing services
• Compressing large images to improve page speed
• Adding missing meta descriptions to service pages
• Cleaning up an old directory listing with an outdated phone number

Others are not worth attempting without technical experience:

• Resolving site architecture problems that cause duplicate content
• Diagnosing and disavowing a toxic backlink profile
• Rebuilding service pages that have structural keyword targeting problems
• Setting up proper schema markup for a local service business

Signs a Professional Audit Makes More Sense

Consider bringing in outside expertise if:

• Your audit surfaces more than three critical issues and you're unsure of the fix order
• You've made multiple changes in the past six months but rankings haven't moved
• A competitor recently overtook you in the Map Pack and you can't identify why
• You don't have access to historical Search Console data (meaning you can't establish a baseline)
• Your site was built by a developer who is no longer available and you can't access the backend

A professional audit doesn't replace the self-audit — it deepens it. Going through this framework first means you arrive at that conversation knowing your own site well, which makes the engagement more efficient and gives you a better basis for evaluating what the professional tells you.