This HVAC SEO checklist is the audit More Booked Installs runs on a company's profile and website.
The parent guide is HVAC SEO; this page is its item-by-item version.
How to run an SEO audit for an HVAC company
An SEO audit for an HVAC company works through five surfaces in order, each layer depending on the one before it.
1. The profile
Google Business Profile: name, categories, services, service areas, photos.
2. Service pages
One page per job the trucks actually run.
3. City pages
One page per place, only where something specific is true there.
4. Speed and schema
Core Web Vitals against Google's thresholds, HVACBusiness markup.
5. AI crawlers and listings
ChatGPT and Perplexity access, plus the free listings.
Google publishes no factor weights for local results, so treat any prioritized order, this one included, as practitioner judgment.
The HVAC SEO tips hiding in this checklist
In compressed form: complete and accurate profile, one page per service, city pages only where something true is there, pages that pass Core Web Vitals, crawler access left open.
The Google Business Profile checks
Start with the profile: Google says local results are based mainly on relevance, distance and prominence, and businesses with complete and accurate information are more likely to show up (Google, accessed September 2026).
- Name matches the real-world name. Adding services, locations, taglines, phone numbers or hours to the name is not permitted and could result in suspension; our illustration is "Smith Heating & Air", not "Smith Heating & Air - AC Repair Dallas 24/7".
- Categories: few and specific. Google says to pick one specific primary category and only a few more, chosen to complete "This business IS a", and that categories affect local ranking without publishing weights. The US list included "HVAC contractor", "Air conditioning contractor" and "Heating contractor" as of October 2026 (PlePer's mirror of Google's list); pick from your own dashboard, since Google changes it.
- Services listed, prices in the price field. The services editor suggests services for your category and takes custom ones, auto-rejecting names with prices or phone numbers; a matching service may be highlighted on your profile.
- Service areas: up to 20, by city or ZIP. Businesses that travel to customers should hide an address customers don't visit, set areas by city, ZIP or region rather than a radius, within about 2 hours' drive of the base; a virtual office is ineligible (Google, accessed October 2026).
- Photos that represent reality. JPG or PNG from 10 KB to 5 MB, recommended 720 by 720 pixels, no significant alterations or excessive filters, and no number of photos that Google says improves anything.
The step-by-step version of this layer, reviews included, is at local SEO for HVAC.
The HVAC website SEO audit
The website check is one page per service and one per city, each carrying something specific or not existing at all.
Google's spam policies name pages targeted at regions or cities that funnel users to one page among their doorway examples, and class "blocks of text that list cities and regions that a web page is trying to rank for" as keyword stuffing.
Google bans neither city pages nor any number of them; the practical reading, ours not Google's, is that each city page needs something true to that place, and a footer of 40 town names is a risk.
Google's people-first test asks who created the content, how, and why, and calls fabricated author profiles deception and a signal of a low-quality page.
Speed: the Core Web Vitals check
Google says Core Web Vitals are used by its ranking systems, and says in the same documentation that there is no single page experience signal and good scores do not guarantee top rankings.
The "good" thresholds, measured at the 75th percentile of page loads, are a largest contentful paint within 2.5 seconds, an interaction to next paint of 200 milliseconds or less, and a cumulative layout shift of 0.1 or less.
Origins with good Core Web Vitals, August 2026
In that August 2026 dataset of about 18.3 million origins, 55.6% had good Core Web Vitals; INP replaced First Input Delay as a Core Web Vital in March 2024, so an audit still measuring FID is out of date.
The fixes, with the honest conversion caveats, are in HVAC website speed.
HVAC schema markup
schema.org defines an HVACBusiness type under LocalBusiness, and Google's structured-data documentation says to use the most specific subtypes, several at once where that fits the business.
A combined HVAC and plumbing shop could carry HVACBusiness and Plumber together, an illustration modeled on Google's multi-type example.
Two limits, both Google's: markup makes a page eligible for rich results without promising them, and aggregateRating and review markup belong on sites that review other businesses, not your own testimonials.
schema.org also defines areaServed for service areas, but Google's LocalBusiness docs do not list it, so it is valid extra markup that Google does not document as affecting local rankings.
The AI search checks
Google's line on AI Overviews and AI Mode: the only technical requirement for appearing as a supporting link is being indexed and eligible for a snippet; that traffic counts in Search Console under the Web search type.
What Google still lists as worthwhile includes allowing crawling, internal links, important content in text form, structured data that matches visible text, and an up-to-date Business Profile.
OpenAI says blocking OAI-SearchBot keeps a site out of ChatGPT search answers, while GPTBot, the training crawler, can be blocked independently; Perplexity recommends allowing PerplexityBot; its Perplexity-User agent fetches on request and generally ignores robots.txt.
None of this requires llms.txt, special AI schema, or content chunking for Google Search; the deep version is at AI search for HVAC companies.
The listings check
Yelp, Bing Places, Apple Business Connect and Nextdoor each describe a basic listing as free (Yelp: "Every Yelp Business Page is free to claim and manage individually.")
None of the four claims a listing improves Google rankings; Google calls prominence information about a business from across the web, so the audit item is accuracy: the same name, phone number and categories everywhere you control a listing.
How long the fixes take
Google's SEO Starter Guide says some changes land in hours and others take months, with a few weeks the right window for judging a change.
In a 2017 Google video on hiring an SEO, Google's Maile Ohye said SEOs in most cases need four months to a year to implement improvements and then see potential benefit.
Neither is about HVAC or Maps, but it is the honest expectation, and why engagements here carry a 6-month minimum.
What to do with a failed checklist
Expect misses in several layers at once; the way through is the same order: profile, pages, speed, schema, access.
If you want it run for you, More Booked Installs is one person, Gabe Meierotto: the free audit returns a prioritized version of this checklist within 3 business days, no call required.
The track record behind the CRO half is Gabe's, not an HVAC result: Director of CRO at LaserAway from 2018 to 2023, where sitewide conversion went from 3% to 11% across 2,600+ tested variations.
Frequently asked questions
What is the 80/20 rule in SEO?
It is the idea that a small share of the work produces most of the results. For an HVAC company that usually means profile completeness and one solid page per service come before a blog calendar, though Google publishes no factor weights that say so.
How do I audit my HVAC website's SEO?
Work through five layers in order: the Google Business Profile, service pages, city pages, speed and schema, then AI crawlers and listings. Each section of this checklist is one of those layers, with the rule behind each item.
Do I need HVAC schema markup on my website?
It is reasonable to add: schema.org defines an HVACBusiness type and Google says to use the most specific LocalBusiness subtypes. Markup makes a page eligible for rich results without promising any, and Google recommends aggregateRating and review markup only for sites that review other businesses.
Should an HVAC website block ChatGPT and Perplexity crawlers?
Usually no: OpenAI says sites that block OAI-SearchBot will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers, and Perplexity recommends allowing PerplexityBot. That only makes you eligible to appear, since neither company documents how it picks which businesses to recommend.
What should I fix first on a neglected HVAC site?
The order in this article: profile accuracy and categories, one page per service, city pages that carry something real, speed, then schema and crawler access. That order is how this consultancy audits, not a Google-published ranking of impact.