Case study · Plumbing SEO
Plumbing franchise SEO case study: from 60K to 174.9K monthly organic visits
A plumbing SEO case study: six years of franchise SEO for a national plumbing and drain-cleaning brand — the strategy, the organic traffic and keyword growth, the AI search presence, and the fall from the 2025 peak, all stated.
Overview
From 60K to 174.9K organic visits a month
In 2020 the site drew roughly 60,000 estimated organic visits a month. Six years later the same measure sits at 174.9K — with 117.9K ranking keywords and organic search far outweighing paid.
The challenge
Where it started: a 2020 diagnosis
A well-known plumbing name whose organic traffic had slipped, in one of the most contested local search categories there is.
estimated monthly organic visits — down from about 103K in late 2018 on the same chart.
Traffic below its earlier level
The site was established, not new. Estimated organic visits had fallen from around 103K in late 2018 to roughly 60K in 2020.
Urgent searches, decided in seconds
A burst pipe or blocked drain is searched once. Whoever appears with a clear answer and a phone number gets the call.
Results crowded by directories
Plumbing searches are contested by directories, lead-generation marketplaces and other national brands, all after the same homeowner.
One brand, many local territories
A national brand and its locally owned franchises have to rank together, without location pages competing with each other.
The strategy
A franchise SEO strategy on two levels: the brand and the territory
A franchise site has two jobs that pull against each other. The brand has to rank for what plumbing is; each franchise has to rank for where it is done. We planned both on one site, so neither undercuts the other.
National pages own the service
One authoritative page per plumbing service, written once for the whole brand, so local pages never have to repeat it.
Location pages own the place
Each franchise page carries what is true only there: the areas covered, the local team, the reviews and the way to book.
Every location points up, every service points down
Internal links connect each service to the nearest franchise and each franchise back to its services, so authority flows both ways.
Homeowner advice feeds both levels
Guides on leaks, clogs and water heaters answer the first question, then hand the reader to a service page and a local franchise.
The process
How the work was sequenced: shared foundations first, territories second
On a site this size, order matters more than effort. Fixing a shared template once improves every franchise page that uses it, so the template work came before any local rollout.
Audit the whole estate
Crawl every national and franchise page; group the problems by the template that causes them.
Site-wide auditFix the shared templates
Repair titles, headings, internal links and schema at template level, so one fix reaches every location.
Template fixesStrengthen the service hub
Rewrite and consolidate the national service pages that every franchise depends on.
Service pagesRoll out by territory
Improve franchise pages in batches, starting where demand and competition are highest.
Location batchesReview by territory
Report visibility franchise by franchise, so weak territories are seen and fixed rather than averaged away.
Territory reports↻ Then the next batch of territories — with the template lessons from the last one already built in.
Implementation
What we ran, level by level
The work is easier to follow by where it sits on the site than by task type. Each row pairs a level with the number in the snapshot that reflects it.
Shared templates
Cleaned up crawl paths, canonicals and redirects, and removed the duplicate content that location templates tend to create.
National service pages
Gave each plumbing service one definitive page, with clear answers near the top and links down to the franchises that offer it.
Franchise location pages
Replaced interchangeable city copy with details specific to each territory, and tied every page to its own local listing.
Homeowner advice library
Built out practical guides on common plumbing problems, each linked to the matching service and written to be quoted.
Brand and location schema
Marked up the brand, each franchise and the services they share, so search engines read one organisation with many branches.
Links and mentions
Earned national coverage for the brand and local links for individual franchises, rather than pointing everything at the home page.
Territory reporting
Tracked rankings and traffic per franchise and per service, and used the gaps to choose the next batch.
The result
Plumbing SEO results: about 2.9 times the organic traffic of 2020
Before & after
Then vs now
The same site, measured the same way, six years apart.
— = not captured for 2020. AI answer engines were not a meaningful search channel before 2022.
Milestones read from the Semrush all-time traffic chart; values other than late 2018 and October 2026 are approximate.
The evidence
Plumbing SEO case study evidence: the Semrush domain overview
One third-party source for this study. Semrush estimates the site’s organic visibility; it is not the client’s own Search Console or Analytics data.
Domain overview: 174.9K organic visits a month
- Organic traffic
- 174.9K−6.8% on period
- Ranking keywords
- 117.9K−4.5%
- Authority Score
- 4413K referring domains
- Paid traffic
- 6.8K42 paid keywords
What it tells usAbout 60K in 2020, a long climb to a peak near 450K in 2025, and 174.9K now — roughly 2.9× the 2020 starting point, with organic search about 96% of organic and paid combined.
AI search breakdown
Where AI answers mention the brand
Total: 2.4K mentions · 2.5K cited pages · AI visibility score 33 worldwide, 58 in the United States. Pages can be cited on more than one platform.
Proof & limits
What this proves — and what it doesn’t yet
✓What it shows
- Estimated organic visibility up roughly 2.9× since 2020
- A 117.9K-keyword footprint
- Organic search about 96% of organic and paid traffic combined
- AI search presence: 2.4K mentions and 2.5K cited pages
- Authority Score 44, from 13K referring domains
–What it doesn’t show yet
- Calls, booked jobs or revenue from organic search
- Why traffic has fallen from its 2025 peak near 450K to 174.9K
- How much of the growth is recovery to the site’s late-2018 level of about 103K
- The split between branded and non-branded searches
- The effect of brand, franchise and other marketing activity over six years
That’s why we call this a visibility result, not a revenue claim — and why the peak and the pullback are on the page rather than cropped out.
FAQ
Your questions, answered
Straight answers on the numbers, the peak, and what they do and don’t mean.
01Is 174.9K real measured traffic?
No — it is a third-party estimate. Semrush models estimated monthly organic visits from ranking positions and keyword volumes. It is a reliable way to compare visibility over time, but it is not the same as sessions in Google Analytics or clicks in Search Console, which is why we label it an estimate throughout.
02Where does the 60K starting figure come from?
It is the estimated monthly organic traffic for the site in 2020, when the engagement began, on the same Semrush measure as today’s 174.9K. The site was not new: the same chart shows roughly 103K estimated visits in late 2018, so 2020 was a low point and part of this result is recovery.
03Is traffic at its highest point now?
No. On the all-time chart, estimated traffic peaked at roughly 450K in 2025 and has since fallen back; the October 2026 snapshot of 174.9K is also 6.8% down on Semrush’s previous period. Today’s figure is about 2.9 times the 2020 starting point, but well below that peak. A snapshot alone does not show why, so we state it rather than crop the chart.
04Was this growth paid for with ads?
No. The snapshot shows 6.8K estimated paid visits from 42 paid keywords, against 174.9K organic visits from 117.9K keywords. Organic search is about 96% of the two combined.
05Does 2.9× more traffic mean 2.9× more plumbing jobs?
No, and we will not claim it does. Traffic creates the opportunity for calls and bookings; how many convert depends on the pages, the offer, call handling and the mix of branded and non-branded searches. Lead and revenue claims need CRM, call-tracking and analytics data.
06How visible is the brand in AI answers?
Semrush records about 2.4K mentions and 2.5K cited pages across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode and Gemini, with an AI visibility score of 33 worldwide and 58 in the United States. These are tool estimates from a tracked prompt set, not a count of every AI answer.
07Can you do the same for my plumbing company?
It depends on where you start — your current rankings, service areas, technical health and competition. We set a measurable baseline in a free audit before any work begins, so you can hold us to the movement from it. See how we approach plumbing SEO.
Work with SDM
Want this kind of visibility for your plumbing business?
A free audit of your visibility, the pages worth fixing first, and a baseline to judge us against.