By Surinder Ahitan · Independent SEO Consultant · United Kingdom Most SEO for tradesmen comes down to three slots on a map. Someone stands in a kitchen with a leak, types the job and the town into a phone, and picks from the businesses Google pins at the top. Everything else on this page is about getting into that box and staying there.
01The search What your customer actually types.
Not "quality plumbing services". Real trade searches are short, local and slightly panicked. "Emergency electrician near me". "Boiler repair Slough". "Flat roof leak". "Locksmith open now".
Two things follow from that. The search almost always carries a place, spoken or implied, which is why a page per town beats one page covering everywhere. And the person searching has already decided to hire somebody, so you are not persuading them to buy, only to pick you.
That second point is the one most trade websites get wrong. They are written to convince a stranger that they need a plumber. The stranger knows. They want to know whether to ring you or the next one down.
02The map Why the map pack decides most of it.
Google answers a local trade search in two places: a small map with three businesses pinned to it, and the ordinary blue links underneath. For a trade, the map is where the calls come from, by a distance.
Google describes local ranking as three things: relevance, distance and prominence. Relevance is whether your profile plainly says you do the job being searched. Distance is how close you are. Prominence is how the rest of the web treats you, which for a trade is mostly reviews.
You cannot change your distance. You control relevance and prominence almost entirely, and both live on a free profile rather than on your website. That is the unglamorous part nobody selling you a redesign wants to lead with.
03The levers The four things that actually move a trade phone.
- One page per job, per town Not a services page listing nine things. A page for boiler repair, and another for boiler repair in the next town over. That is how you show up for "boiler repair Slough" instead of hoping a home page covers everything, which it never does.
- A Google Business Profile that is actually finished Verified, set up as a service-area business, the most specific category rather than "Contractor", real photographs of finished work and the van. Most trade profiles are half-done, which is exactly why this is the highest-return hour you will spend.
- Reviews, earned slowly, replied to A text with the Google link after each finished job, and a human reply to every review including the bad ones. Rating, count and how recent they are all feed both the ranking and the decision a nervous homeowner is making.
- A phone-first path from page to call Your visitor is standing in a wet kitchen holding a phone. Your number needs to be where a thumb lands, the page needs to load in under two and a half seconds, and the form needs three fields, not ten.
In that order, and the order matters more than the speed. Most trades try the fourth one first because a new website feels like progress, then wonder why the phone is unchanged.
04Your trade What changes from trade to trade.
Everything above is true for all of them. What differs is what a job is worth, when the phone rings, and which single thing moves it fastest. A roofer lives on storms and a nervous homeowner with a stain on the ceiling. A locksmith lives on the ten minutes after somebody is locked out.
Those differences change what is worth building first, so the detail sits on the trade pages rather than here:
- SEO for roofers, the biggest search of the lot, and the most seasonal.
- SEO for electricians, where scheme registration does real work.
- SEO for plumbers, emergency and planned pulling in different directions.
- SEO for builders, long decisions and large deposits.
- SEO for locksmiths, the most urgent search on this site.
- SEO for landscapers, a seventeen-fold swing between winter and summer.
The full list of trades is here, and construction firms bidding commercial work want this instead.
05The price What it costs.
£297 a month, the same as everything else on this site. That is the website with the on-page SEO built in, missed-call text-back, a review funnel, follow-up on every enquiry, one inbox and a business number. The full breakdown is on the pricing page.
No build fee, no minimum term. The site runs on my hosting, which is what makes the no build fee possible, and after three months you can buy the code outright for £1,000 if you ever want to take it elsewhere.
Worth saying plainly: the profile work and the reviews in the list above are things you can do yourself, for nothing, this week. I would rather tell you that than let you find out later.
06The awkward ones Common questions from trade owners.
01 How long before any of this shows up?
Google Business Profile fixes can move inside 7 to 14 days, because the profile is the quickest thing Google re-reads. The fuller lift that holds, the one built on pages and reviews, usually takes 2 to 6 months. Anyone promising you the top of the map this week for a competitive trade search is overselling, and you should treat that as the tell it is.
02 Is SEO worth it if I only cover three towns?
It is usually worth more, not less. A tight patch means fewer competitors, less to write, and a map pack you can realistically own rather than fight over. The trades that struggle with SEO are the ones claiming half the country from a single van, because Google can tell and so can the customer.
03 I already pay a directory for leads. Should I stop?
Not on day one. The honest sequence is to keep paying while your own channel gets going, then decide with numbers rather than feelings. What is worth knowing now is that the directory leads stop the same day you stop paying, and the rankings do not. One is rent, the other is yours.
04 Do I need to write a blog?
No. For almost every trade the blog is the thing people do instead of the work that matters. Your service pages, your town pages, your profile and your reviews carry nearly all of it. I stopped writing one on this site for the same reason.
05 My trade is not listed on this site. Can you still do it?
Yes. The pages here cover the trades with enough search volume to justify writing about them separately, which is not the same as the trades I can build for. The underlying work is the same whoever you are: jobs, towns, profile, reviews, speed. Ask on the call and I will tell you straight whether your trade has anything worth chasing.
06 What is the difference between this page and the one for my trade?
This one is the general version, what is true for every trade. The trade pages go into what is true only for yours: what a job is worth, when your phone actually rings, which accreditation your customer checks, and which single lever moves it fastest. If your trade has a page, read that one instead of this.
Send me your website and the towns you cover, and I'll tell you which searches you could realistically rank for and which are already taken. If the answer is that you need an hour on your Google profile rather than anything from me, I'll say so. Book a call. Tell me what's going on.