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Replacing a boiler with a heat pump is a big expense, and the customer knows it. They've read glowing testimonials and worrying ones. They may have had a quote from a salesman from far away. Before signing, they look for a heating engineer in their area who will come and see the house and still be around for the servicing. My job is to make sure they find you at that moment.
15 years in SEO
4 books on SEO and GEO
200+ sites tracked every day
1M / month visits to my e-commerce site
They trusted me with their visibility
Darty
Eurofins
Cegid
EBP
CNP Assurances
Ingram MicroYour result, read by a wary homeowner
Someone is looking for a heat pump installer in Cognac. Your site shows up third, with a title about comfort and a description promising savings. Nothing says you're local. Rewrite both.
Fig. 1. Three results for a heat pump. Only one will come and fix it. (The heating engineer was ten minutes away. His title talked about “comfort for everyone”.)
What this means for you. I rewrite your page titles and descriptions so they say three things: what you install, where, and what happens after installation.
SEO for a heat pump installer means getting the business found in the searches of a homeowner who wants to change their heating: an installer nearby, a price, a comparison between systems, a question about noise or grants. It relies on the Google Business Profile, on pages by heat pump type and by type of home, on located jobs and on a clearly presented servicing offer. The goal is to get requests for technical visits from customers in your area.
The problem
Your customers have seen adverts for almost-free installations. Some were disappointed, others heard about botched jobs. They come to your site wary, and the site has to address that from the very first lines.
They have budgets you don't, and they dominate the general searches. They don't have a technician based in your area, and that's where you can beat them.
Air-to-water, air-to-air, hybrid, ground source: they mix up the terms. If they don't understand your site, they'll turn to whoever explains it, even if that firm installs less well than you.
An audit, for real
The site below doesn't exist, but its flaws do: they're the five I spot most often. Hover over a number.
Your almost-free heat pump
Make the most of grants and say goodbye to your bills.
Check my eligibilityFig. 2. Fictional site, reconstructed. Any resemblance to yours would be a good reason to call me.
What your customers type
Six example searches, chosen to illustrate the stages of the decision. They are not measurements. Your real queries come out of the audit.
What works
It's what shows up when people search for an installer near them. I set the primary category, the list of services, the towns covered and the photos. I make sure servicing and repairs are on it, because those requests come in all year round.
An air-to-water heat pump to replace a boiler, an air-to-air one for an electrically heated house, an installation in a new build: each case has its own searches. Lumping them under “our heat pumps” means answering none of them.
A house, its floor area, its old heating, the unit installed, how long the job took, the town. With the customer's consent, a few words about their first winter. This simple story is the proof the remote salesman can't provide.
More than anything, the customer dreads being left alone with a broken-down unit in January. A page describing your servicing contract, your response times and your area addresses that fear. It also attracts homeowners whose installer has abandoned them.
Customers check before signing, and current grants can depend on the company's qualifications. Yours should be written on the site, with their validity dates, next to your insurance. I ask you for the documents; I make them easy to read.
What costs dearly
It attracts the curious and drives away serious customers, who associate it with scams. Talk about assessments, visits and detailed quotes.
Coefficients and acronyms without a single sentence of explanation. The homeowner wants to know whether they'll be warm, how much it costs and who will come if it breaks down.
You do it, but the site doesn't say so. You're leaving to others customers who already have a heat pump and are looking for someone reliable nearby.
A row of manufacturer logos doesn't prove you install well. Three installations described in nearby towns do.
The method
I start with local searches, where you have the advantage, then deal with the pages that answer objections.
One-minute test
Five frank questions to find out whether support makes sense in your situation. Sometimes the answer is no, and I'll tell you.
What it brings in
A ranking doesn't pay a salary. What counts is what it brings: enquiries, customers, revenue. Move your page up and see what it could bring in.
Example assumptions, open to challenge: 800 searches a month for a heat pump installer near you, 3% of visitors make an enquiry, one enquiry in three is signed (this varies a lot from one trade to another), €12,000 per customer. Click-through rates by position are ballpark figures, and they have been shifting since Google started showing AI answers above the results. Redo the calculation with your figures
Possible revenue€0
Close to home
In Charente, housing is mostly detached houses, in villages and the countryside as well as around Angoulême and Cognac. Depending on the house, people replace an oil boiler, a gas boiler or electric heaters, and the search changes with the case. Homeowners also type the name of their town or the nearby town. So your pages need to name the heating being replaced and the area. I live between Cognac and Paris, I know the département and we can meet there.
Old Charente houses raise specific questions: thick walls, cast-iron radiators, uneven insulation. A page dealing with this case, with examples of jobs, answers the owner of an old house. They recognise their own situation, which a generic text doesn't give them.
In the two urban areas, you find detached houses and housing estates. In the villages, longhouses and village houses. Your pages can reflect both realities without multiplying copies: two or three well-filled area pages are enough.
A customer in Ruffec or Barbezieux wants to know whether you'll come out if it breaks down. State clearly how far you travel for servicing. It's sales information, and it's also what Google reads to decide where to show you.
Beyond Google
Before a purchase this size, many homeowners ask an AI such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude or Mistral, the way they'd ask a friend who knows about these things. They write: “my 120 m² house is heated with oil, near Angoulême, which heat pump should I choose and who can install it?”. The answer contains advice, warnings, and sometimes two or three names.
To give those names, the AI relies on what it reads: your website, your Google Business Profile, your reviews, trade directories, local press articles. If those sources all say you install and service heat pumps in these towns, with these qualifications, you have a chance of being mentioned. If your site settles for “thermal comfort solutions”, the AI doesn't know what to say about you. I test these questions for your area and show you the answers.
Question asked to an AIWho can replace an oil boiler with a heat pump near Cognac, and service it afterwards?
Three companies come up for this project:
Fig. 3. Reconstruction, names hidden. This is the spot we aim for: on the list, with the most precise description.
Three typical cases
The three profiles below are fictional. They show where I start depending on the situation.
He makes his living from his boiler customers and is seeing heat pump salesmen arrive in his area.
It installs well, but nobody knows it yet and it has few reviews.
It installs a lot, but its servicing department is half empty.
In practice
Pricing
The fee depends on four things. I give you a precise amount after a free first thirty-minute conversation.
Fancy a game?
Clickbait titles, fake reviews, copied pages: your market is a jungle. Grab the piece and slide it into the slot.
INSERT COINSLIDE THE COIN INTO THE SLOT
Fig. 4. Sixteen seconds. Ten snakes for one spot, as usual.
Together, let's devour your competitors.
One by one, and in order. Every spot gained makes the next one easier to take: that's why it keeps growing. See the method
Who you're talking to
My name is Kévin Papot. More than fifteen years in the job, four co-written books, and the Newp agency, co-founded in Charente. I also run my own online shops, in France and internationally: one of them went from zero to a million visits a month.
Before we talk tags, we talk margin, average basket and profitability. When you book a call, I'm the one who picks up.
FAQ
Target what they cover badly: your town, your local area, specific cases like old houses or replacing an oil boiler. On those searches, a well-described local business stands a chance. I don't guarantee you a ranking; I tell you where the effort pays off most.
It can help. An address, named technicians, located jobs, detailed reviews and copy without overblown promises take the edge off the suspicion. The rest happens during your visit.
Yes. A customer who reads that understands you're not selling at any cost. You get fewer unsuitable enquiries, and the ones that remain convert better.
Without a fixed amount in the text if you can't keep it up to date. The page explains the current grants, links to the official source, states when it was last reviewed and says what you handle in the paperwork. You approve the content; I take care of the form and the update reminder.
Partly. Searches about replacing heating usually rise as the cold approaches, and servicing tends to be searched for before winter. So the pages need to be online several months ahead. That's why I recommend starting in spring or summer.
Yes, with one page per activity. Google understands perfectly well a business that does several related trades, as long as each one has its own page and its own examples.
You can, because some customers search for a specific brand. But the page should talk about your work first: the assessment, the installation, commissioning, follow-up. The brand is a detail of the quote, not your main selling point.
It puts you behind, it doesn't stop you. In this trade, a few long reviews describing the job and the first winter count for more than a long list of ratings without text. We set up a request at every commissioning.
Fewer than you think. For many installers, a dozen solid pages cover the essentials: systems, replacement cases, servicing, price, two or three areas. We write them in order of what brings in business.
It happens. He can't copy your jobs, your address or your reviews, and those are what make the difference in the eyes of customers and of Google.
See also
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Together we look at where you stand on Google and in AI, and what should change first.
