Local SEO for tradespeople: a plain guide

SEO has a reputation for being a dark art sold by people who will not explain it. For a local trade it is not complicated. This is the whole of it.

What Google is trying to do

Someone in Reigate types “roofer”. Google wants to show them roofers who work in Reigate, are good, and are open. To do that it reads two things: your Google Business Profile, and your website. Local SEO is making both of those say clearly what you do and where.

What it is not

It is not keywords stuffed into a footer. It is not paying for links. It is not a monthly report full of graphs. It is not something a plugin does. Anyone selling you those is selling you the 2012 version.

The four things that matter

A page for each service

Google ranks pages, not businesses. A page called “Roof repairs” that talks about roof repairs ranks for roof repair searches. A home page that mentions roof repairs in a list does not. Every service you want work for gets its own page, written for a customer, not for Google.

A page for each town

Same logic. A page about your work in Dorking, written properly, with the villages named and something specific about the place, ranks for Dorking searches. A page that is the Reigate page with the word swapped does not. Google can tell. So can people.

This is the part most tradespeople miss, and it is where most of the enquiries come from. We wrote more on it in do I need a page for every town.

A Google Business Profile that is right and active

Correct category, all your services listed, the towns you cover set as your service area, real photos, correct hours, and a post now and then. This is what gets you into the map at the top of the results. Our guide on the map pack goes through it step by step.

Reviews, steadily

Recent reviews are the biggest single factor in the map results. Ask after every job, make it a one-tap link, reply to every one. One or two a week beats twenty in a month.

The things that help a bit

Your name, address and phone number written the same way everywhere. A fast site. Business details marked up so Google can read them, which is technical and your web person should do it. Being mentioned on a few local sites, such as a trade body, a supplier or a local directory.

How long it takes

Your home town, weeks. The towns around it, a few months of steady work. It is not instant, which is why it is worth having: once you rank, you keep ranking, without paying per click.

Doing it yourself or having it done

You can do the Google Business Profile yourself in an afternoon, and you should. The service pages and town pages take writing, and the site has to be built to hold them. That is what we do, and it is included in every site we build and kept up every month on the care plan.