Septic service · Albany, Oregon · 141 towns
Personal Integrity Creates Quality Service.
Albany, and the number Google hands out (541) 924-0851 Toll free (866) 927-1156Rated 4.9 across 274 Google reviews.
DEQ 38137 · CCB #155581
Every one of these dials
Five numbers and an email address. On a phone, press any of them.
Try to tap your own Albany number on your live site right now. You can't. The only real phone link anywhere on your website is the 800 number in the header. The line at the bottom with Albany, Salem, the Coast and the fax is one plain block of text, so on a phone none of those four can be pressed. Albany is the number Google hands out, and it's the one a person with a failing tank is trying to hit with a thumb.
Your email isn't pressable either. On this page it is. Tapping it opens a message.
And I want to say this one plainly, because I think you may have been told otherwise. The Hotmail address is the right call. Keep it. Your own domain publishes a mail server at mail.aandbseptic.com, and that server doesn't exist. I checked it against three separate places on the internet and none of them can find it. Which means anything anybody sends to an address ending in aandbseptic.com bounces and never reaches you. Whoever picked the Hotmail was working around a real problem, not cutting a corner. It's the only address you have that actually receives mail, and that's why it's the one on this page.
One question I can't answer from outside. Are Salem and the Oregon Coast staffed offices, or are those numbers that ring through to Albany? It changes what should be on this page and it changes what you should have on Google. I've written them as numbers rather than as locations, because guessing wrong there is the kind of thing that gets a business listing suspended and I'm not doing that to you on a demo.
The one thing I won't guess at
This is blank on purpose, and it's the first question I'd ask you. Right now there are two answers live on the internet and they don't agree.
What your website says
“24/7 Emergency Services”
That line sits across the top of every page on your site, next to the toll free number. Your site doesn't publish a schedule anywhere.
What your Google listing says
Monday to Friday, office hours
Read live, Saturday Aug 1, 1:47 PM:
“Closed · Opens 8 AM Mon”
What actually ships here is whatever you tell me is true.
One sentence from you and this becomes one set of hours, on this page and on your Google listing, saying the same thing.
I'm not telling you your hours are wrong. I'd guess both of those are true in their own way. The office runs eight to five, and somebody's on the phone at midnight when a tank backs up. That's how most trades like yours actually work and there's nothing dishonest about it.
But only one of them is what Google shows. I looked on a Saturday afternoon and Google told me you were shut until 8 AM Monday. A septic emergency on a weekend is the highest value call in your trade, and right now the person it's happening to is being told to wait two days.
I don't know which one Google should be showing. You do. That's why this section is empty instead of filled in with my best guess. A stranger putting made up hours for your business on the internet is exactly the problem, not the fix.
If the answer is that you take emergency calls out of hours, Google has a way to say that properly, and it's worth doing right rather than leaving a claim in your header that your own listing contradicts.
Your biggest asset, and it's buried
From the coast to the Cascades, the far corners of it look like this:
Seven of 141. The other 134 go in here as a searchable list, typed straight off your own page.
I counted your service area list by hand and it's 141 towns. I want to be exact about that because I nearly wrote "about a hundred and fifty" and that would have been an overclaim. There are 140 lines on your page and one of them holds two names, Cottage Grove and Crabtree together. So 141, and it's the real number rounded down to nothing.
That list is the single most impressive thing you publish and it's at the bottom of one long page where nobody scrolls to. Almost no septic outfit in this valley can honestly say Lincoln City and Oakridge in the same breath. Somebody in Yachats searching at ten at night has no idea you'd come.
Only seven towns are printed above and here's why. Those seven are the ones I can name because I read them myself. I'm not typing 134 more town names from memory onto a page with your business name at the top of it, because if I get one wrong you've now got a website promising service somewhere you don't go. Point me at the list and it goes in whole, in one pass, with a search box on it so a person types their town and gets a yes or a no in two seconds.
Off your own services page
Five jobs, your words for them.
Pumping & Drain Cleaning
The call that comes in at the worst possible moment.
Septic System Evaluations
Before a sale closes, or before a problem gets expensive.
Maintenance Contracts
The work that keeps the first line on this list from happening.
Septic System Repairs
When it isn't just full.
Pump Repair & Replacement
Covered by the Limited Pump Installation license below.
The five names are yours, straight off your own page. The one line under each is mine. Change any of them, or strike them all and the list still works.
There are no prices anywhere on this page and that's on purpose. You don't publish any, and I'm not going to put a number in front of your customers that I've never seen you set. Even a "starting at" on a pump out gives somebody a reason to call instead of scrolling on, so it's worth a conversation, but it's your number and not mine.
The part a nervous customer looks for
Verbatim off your own site, moved up where somebody sees it before they call rather than after.
“Limited Pump Installation Contractor | DEQ Certified Operation & Maintenance Provider | DEQ 38137 | CCB #155581.”
This line is doing more work than anything else you publish and it's sitting low on your site. A homeowner about to let a stranger dig near their house wants a license number they can type into a state website. You have two. Most of your competition makes people go looking.
I haven't reworded it. That's your sentence, pipes and all. Certification claims are the last thing anybody should be paraphrasing.
274 people already did this
A button belongs here. It's blank, and the note explains exactly why I left it that way.
Your real review link goes here.
One short link from your Google dashboard and this becomes a working button.
Go to your own website and click your WRITE A GOOGLE REVIEW button. It doesn't go to a review form. It drops the person on a page of Google search results for the words "A AND B SEPTIC google reviews" and leaves them to work out the rest.
The Yelp button right next to it works fine, which is how I know somebody meant to do this properly and the Google one just got pasted in wrong. It's still carrying the browser session junk from whoever copied it out of their address bar, and there's a date buried in that junk: January 29th, 2024. So it's been like that about two and a half years, which means it predates me and it predates this letter and nobody's fault is anywhere near it.
The fix is free and it takes thirty seconds. Search your business name while you're signed in to whatever account manages the Google listing and look for the Ask for reviews button. Google hands you a short link. Put that behind your button instead of the search page. Do it whether or not you ever write back to me.
Why this page has a blank instead of a link I made up. I could have generated something that probably works and dropped it in here. I didn't click it, so I'm not putting it on your page. That's the exact thing that happened to your live button two and a half years ago and I'm not going to hand it back to you in a nicer font. Send me the short link Google gives you and it goes in the same day.
4.9 across 274 reviews is better than anything anybody could sell you, and it's the reason this matters. You're clearly chasing reviews on purpose, you built a button for it, and for two and a half years that button has handed people a search page. Some of them figured it out. You'll never meet the ones who didn't.
Empty, and honestly labelled
Four frames, all blank. Each one says what belongs in it.
There's one big photo on your current homepage and I'm not taking it. I can't tell from outside who shot it or who owns it, and I'm not going to use somebody else's picture to win your business. So the frames stay empty until you hand me photos you own, or tell me the ones on your site are yours to give.
These four cost you a phone and ten minutes. Nothing here needs a photographer. A septic company that shows a real truck and real people beats one that shows a stock photo of a green lawn, every time, and the stock photo is what most of your competition is running.
There are no customer quotes on this page either. Your rating and your count are public and they're on this page as a number, but I haven't read a single one of your reviews and I'm not going to write a sentence, put quote marks around it, and pretend a customer said it. Point me at the ones you're proudest of and I'll quote them properly.