Content
Service pages, location pages, and the line between a page that earns its URL and a doorway.
Rankings reviewed
Hook Agency is our current #1 for content, as of Q3 2026.
Content is the largest controllable surface an HVAC business has, and the one most often bought by the yard. Four hundred location pages generated from one template with the city name swapped is the single most common thing an agency sells a contractor, and Google has a named policy about it.
The question this pillar asks is not how much an agency publishes. It is whether what they publish about content describes a method that distinguishes a page worth having from a page that exists to catch a city name.
Ranked on this discipline
Scored out of 100 on the five published criteria below. Orderings here can disagree with the Pos column on the homepage matrix. Measured 12 Sep 2026.
| # | Agency | Score | Breakdown |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Hook Agency hookagency.com | 86/100 | Surface 12/15 · Method 21/25 · Depth 20/20 · Practitioner 12/15 · Own 21/25 |
| 2 | Built-Right Digital builtrightdigital.com | 79/100 | Surface 11/15 · Method 19/25 · Depth 20/20 · Practitioner 10/15 · Own 19/25 |
| 3 | Plumbing & HVAC SEO plumberseo.net | 77/100 | Surface 10/15 · Method 19/25 · Depth 20/20 · Practitioner 10/15 · Own 18/25 |
| 4 | TradeOps Consulting tradeopsconsulting.com | 71/100 | Surface 9/15 · Method 23/25 · Depth 13/20 · Practitioner 10/15 · Own 16/25 |
| 5 | Footbridge Media footbridgemedia.com | 69/100 | Surface 9/15 · Method 16/25 · Depth 20/20 · Practitioner 8/15 · Own 16/25 |
| 6 | KickCharge Creative kickcharge.com | 67/100 | Surface 8/15 · Method 16/25 · Depth 20/20 · Practitioner 8/15 · Own 15/25 |
| 7 | Mediagistic mediagistic.com | 66/100 | Surface 9/15 · Method 18/25 · Depth 13/20 · Practitioner 9/15 · Own 17/25 |
| 8 | Valve+Meter valveandmeter.com | 63/100 | Surface 9/15 · Method 16/25 · Depth 13/20 · Practitioner 9/15 · Own 16/25 |
| 9 | Relentless Digital relentless-digital.com | 60/100 | Surface 8/15 · Method 16/25 · Depth 12/20 · Practitioner 8/15 · Own 16/25 |
| 10 | Rival Digital rivaldigital.com | 55/100 | Surface 8/15 · Method 14/25 · Depth 11/20 · Practitioner 8/15 · Own 14/25 |
| 11 | Leadhub leadhub.net | 51/100 | Surface 7/15 · Method 14/25 · Depth 10/20 · Practitioner 7/15 · Own 13/25 |
| 12 | HVAC Webmasters hvacwebmasters.com | 48/100 | Surface 7/15 · Method 12/25 · Depth 10/20 · Practitioner 7/15 · Own 12/25 |
| 13 | iMarket Solutions imarketsolutions.com | 44/100 | Surface 5/15 · Method 15/25 · Depth 8/20 · Practitioner 6/15 · Own 10/25 |
| 14 | Contractor Growth Network contractorgrowthnetwork.com | 41/100 | Surface 6/15 · Method 10/25 · Depth 8/20 · Practitioner 6/15 · Own 11/25 |
| 15 | RYNO Strategic Solutions rynoss.com | 37/100 | Surface 4/15 · Method 9/25 · Depth 7/20 · Practitioner 4/15 · Own 13/25 |
How this discipline is scored
Content is scored out of 100 across the five criteria below, and across nothing else. Each names its basis and its source so anyone can re-run it. Two must return evidence before an agency is ranked on content at all.
| Criterion | Points | Measurable basis | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dedicated surface | 15 | Count of URLs whose primary subject is content strategy or production for the trades. | Sitemap crawl plus page read |
| Method specificity | 25 | Named, checkable content deliverables. Search-intent classification, semantic coverage measurement and cannibalisation review count; "we write engaging content" does not. | Page read |
| Published depth | 20 | Count and recency of substantive pieces about content for the trades. | Sitemap crawl plus on-page date |
| Named practitioner | 15 | A named individual attached to content work. | URL evidence |
| The shape of their own corpus | 25 | Corpus size and structure from their sitemap, then semantic coverage of a fixed HVAC query set on their strongest content page, with variants harvested from Google’s own surfaces and then measured. Corpus size is a coverage proxy and a crude one. It counts URLs a site declares, not pages Google indexes, and it under-counts any agency whose slugs are named for outcomes rather than subjects. | Sitemap crawl plus page read plus live SERP |
Specialists listed on this discipline only
Cross-vertical, so ineligible for the overall leaderboard. Why they are listed here and not there
- Socius Marketing Home improvement, healthcare and home services. Publishes a separable SEO surface, but its published content work spans verticals rather than concentrating on the trades. sociusmarketing.com · DR 73, 478 referring domains (Ahrefs estimates, 12 Sep 2026)
Symptoms that lead here
The vocabulary this discipline runs on
- Search intent What the person actually wanted, read off the results rather than guessed from the words.
- Cannibalisation Several of your own pages competing for one query.
- Content decay A page that used to rank and now does not, without anything having happened to it.
- Topical authority Covering a subject properly, measured as structure rather than claimed as a score.
- Semantic variant The other ways people say the same thing, harvested from Google rather than invented.
- Entity salience Whether a page reads as being about the service or about the company, put on a scale.
- Thin content A page with little of its own, measured against the pages that rank rather than by word count.
- Doorway page Pages made to catch a place name and funnel people somewhere else, and Google has a policy about them.
- Location page What separates one that earns its URL from one that does not.