A homeowner with sewage coming up through the basement floor drain does not browse. They grab their phone, type something desperate, and call one of the first three results. That is the whole game in plumbing, and it is why a plumbing website has to be built differently than a remodeler's.
This is a real plumbing website case study. TJM Sewer and Plumbing is a family owned company in Elgin, Illinois, and their site has been live since July 2026 at tjmsewerplumbing.com. Open it alongside this page. Every page named below is live.
Who TJM is
TJM Sewer and Plumbing has been family run since 2005. The owner, Todd Mendoza, still works jobs himself. They rod drains, repair and replace sewer lines, re-pipe old galvanized and cast iron homes, install water heaters and sump pumps, and they run their own excavation equipment across Kane, Cook and DuPage counties. Every sewer rodding comes with a free camera inspection, so the customer sees the problem on a screen instead of taking a plumber's word for it.
They answer the phone 24 hours a day, seven days a week. On a sewer job that is not a nice touch, it is the entire product.
What we built
A custom built, hand coded site. No WordPress, no theme, no page builder. It loads fast on a phone with one bar of signal in a flooded basement, which is the only load speed test that actually matters for this trade.
Fourteen services, fourteen pages
Plumbing is not one search. It is dozens of very different, very specific searches, and each one is a different customer with a different level of panic. TJM has a full page for each:
- The emergencies: emergency plumbing repair, drain cleaning, hydro jetting, sump pump installation
- The sewer work: sewer line repair, sewer camera inspection, sewer line trenching
- The water side: water heater installation, water line replacement, repiping
- The water problems: drainage service, basement drainage solutions
- The heavy equipment: excavating contractor, utility trenching
Look at how far apart those customers are. "Sewer camera inspection" is somebody calm, doing research, maybe buying a house. "Emergency plumbing repair" is somebody standing in water. If both of those land on one generic services page, the page cannot speak to either of them, and the call goes to whoever built a real page for it.
In most trades a customer compares three quotes. In a plumbing emergency they call once. Showing up first on that one search is worth more than every brochure page on your website combined.
Sewer and plumbing are split on purpose
This is a detail most agencies miss. TJM does sewer work and they do plumbing, but they deliberately do not do HVAC and they do not do septic systems. Sewer lines yes, septic tanks no.
So the site says that clearly. It does not pad the service list with work they will not take, and it does not blur sewer and septic together the way a template would. That keeps the wrong calls off Todd's phone, and it keeps Google from filing the business under a category it does not belong in.
Honest boundaries are an SEO tactic. A site that claims fourteen trades ranks for none of them.
Five town pages across three counties
TJM works out of Elgin and covers the Fox Valley. Each nearby town has its own page:
- South Elgin
- Streamwood
- Bartlett
- Hoffman Estates
- Carpentersville
These pages are written about the actual plumbing reality of those towns, not just the name. Old housing stock with clay and cast iron sewer lines. Mature trees whose roots find every joint. Heavy rain events that back up basements. A homeowner in Streamwood reading that page recognizes their own house, and that recognition is what turns a page view into a phone call.
What real customers say, on their own site
TJM's own Google reviews are published on the site, with names and jobs. One of them says the quiet part out loud about why speed wins:
"Called TJM on a Saturday due to a sewer line breaking in our home. TJM staff came out the same day and explained exactly what had happened and what was needed in order to fix the problem." Mary and Tristan Diaz, sewer line repair
Notice what sold that job. Not a slogan. Same day on a Saturday, and a clear explanation. So the site leads with availability and the free camera inspection, because those are the two things the reviews prove they are good at.
The system running behind the site
The website is one part. For the same flat $297 a month, TJM also has:
- Google Business Profile optimization. For emergency plumbing the map pack is almost the whole opportunity. Three results, above everything else.
- Automatic review requests after every job, because review count and recency are what move you up that map.
- AI lead follow up that answers a form fill in seconds, day or night, and keeps following up until somebody books.
- Hosting, security and updates handled, so Todd can stay in the trench.
What we are not claiming
There is no traffic graph on this page and no lead count. The site is young, local SEO takes months to compound, and we are not going to hand you a number you have no way of checking.
Here is the honest version instead: the site is live, it has 26 real pages, 14 of them are service pages aimed at specific searches, and you can verify every sentence above in about two minutes. Then hold your own site up next to it.
The playbook, if you run a plumbing or sewer company
- Build a real page for every service, especially the emergency ones. One page per search.
- Say plainly what you do not do. It keeps bad calls off your phone and sharpens what you rank for.
- Build a page for every town you cover, written about that town's actual pipes and problems.
- Put your hours and a tappable phone number at the top of every screen. If you answer 24 hours, say so everywhere.
- Ask for a Google review after every single job. In plumbing, the map pack is the business.
That is the structure. If you want it built for you, done right the first time, that is our whole job.