SEO for tradesmen
Most tradesmen are invisible three streets away.
You show up when you search your own name, so it feels fine. But the people who don't know you exist are searching your trade, and a few streets out you quietly disappear. This is about finding out exactly where, and fixing what can actually be fixed.
The problem
Your van covers twenty miles. Your listing covers about two.
Most trade businesses will happily drive half an hour for a job. Google doesn’t care. When somebody searches “roofer near me’ or “emergency plumber”, more than half of what decides who gets shown is simply how far that person is standing from your door.
So there’s a gap between the area you’ll work and the area you actually appear in. Most tradesmen have never seen that gap measured. They just notice the phone is quieter than it should be and assume it’s the market.
A geogrid measures it. Forty-nine searches run from forty-nine points across your area, each one asking what a customer standing in that street would actually see. Put together, they show the shape of the problem instead of a guess about it.
What moves it
Four things, in the order they matter.
Where Google thinks you are
The pin. If it’s in the wrong place, you’re competing for the wrong streets and nothing else you do will fix it. This is a ten minute job and it is the single most common thing I find wrong.
What Google thinks you do
Your primary category is the most powerful field you control. A roofer listed as a “construction company” is fighting with one hand tied. Pick the category for the work you want, not the work you drifted into.
Whether your details agree with each other
Name, address and phone number, matching across your listing, your website, your van and the directories. When they disagree, Google trusts you less. It’s dull and it works.
Reviews, earned honestly
Reviews carry real weight, and in trades they carry extra because people are letting a stranger into their house. A simple system for asking beats buying fakes, which is the one thing that can end your listing entirely.
Pick your trade
It works differently depending on the job.
An emergency call-out and a planned rewire are searched in completely different ways. These go into the detail for each.
Not on the list? It doesn’t matter. The work is the same for any business that gets its jobs from people nearby.
Being straight with you
What I can’t do for you.
I can’t move you closer to the customer.
Proximity is more than half of the map results and there is no setting for it. You will not be top three across a whole city, and any agency promising that is selling. What I can do is make sure that everywhere you could reasonably show up, you do, and hand you the same map twice so you can judge it yourself.
I can’t promise you jobs or money.
I don’t price your work, write your quotes or answer your phone. More of the right people finding you is my end. What happens after they ring is yours.
Questions
Worth asking.
I already come up when I search my own name. Isn't that enough?
No, and it's the most common false comfort in this trade. Google served you that result standing where you were standing, and it knows who you are. The question is what somebody two miles away sees when they search for your trade and don't know you exist. That's usually a different answer, and nothing tells you.
Do I need a website, or just the Google listing?
Often just the listing, at least to start. For a lot of trades the fastest wins are in the Google Business Profile: the pin in the right place, the right main category, your name and number matching everywhere. If your existing site loads fast and says how to call you, keep it and spend the money on the listing.
How long before it does anything?
Some of it moves in days. Fixing a pin or a wrong category can make you eligible to appear almost immediately. Earning a strong position takes months. The sixty-day map is how you check whether it was worth it, rather than taking my word for it.
Are you only working with roofers, plumbers and electricians?
No. Those are the trades that search for this most, so they have their own pages. I work with any local business that gets its work from people nearby. If your trade isn't listed, it isn't a problem, just ring me.
I'm not near Paisley. Can you still help?
Possibly, and I'll be straight about the trade-off. I'm in Paisley and I work across the west of Scotland in person, which means I can come and stand in your yard and see the job. Further afield the work is the same but it's done on a screen, and that suits some businesses and not others. Tell me where you are and I'll tell you honestly whether it's worth it.
Related
Have a look at these too.
Where you stand
Find out where you actually rank.
Send me your business name and the areas you cover, and I’ll check where you’re showing up across your patch and where you’re not. There’s no charge for it, and if you’re already doing well I’ll tell you that.