Local SEO has a reputation for being complicated and full of jargon. For a trade business it mostly comes down to three questions Google is trying to answer: what do you do, where do you do it, and can people trust you?
Answer those clearly and consistently across your website and your Google Business Profile, and you will be ahead of many competitors in your area. Here is how to go about it.
None of it needs a big budget. It does need a little time each month and the patience to let it build.
How Google decides who to show locally
Google says local results are based mainly on three things: relevance, distance and prominence. In plain terms:
- Relevance: how well your business matches what the person searched for.
- Distance: how close you are to the searcher, or to the place they typed.
- Prominence: how well known and trusted you are, from reviews, links and mentions around the web.
You cannot move your base, but you have a lot of control over relevance and prominence. That is where local SEO effort pays off.
Distance is also why a business based a few miles away can struggle to appear in the map results for a town, even if it works there every week. That is where your website comes in. Pages about the towns you cover can appear in the normal results even when the map favours businesses closer by.
Start with your Google Business Profile
For most local searches, the map results appear first, and your Google Business Profile is what gets you into them. Claim and verify it, choose the most accurate main category, such as Plumber or Electrician, and add secondary categories for the other work you do.
Fill in your service areas, opening hours and services. Add real photos of your work regularly. Ask happy customers for reviews and reply to every one, good or bad. A complete, active profile tells Google you are a real business that is open and busy.
Keep the business name exactly as it appears on your van and paperwork. Adding towns or services to the name to try to rank better goes against Google's guidelines and can get a profile suspended.
Give each service and each town its own page
A single page listing everything you do is hard for Google to match to specific searches. A page for each main service, such as boiler installation, fuse board upgrades or flat roofing, gives it something clear to rank.
The same goes for areas. If you want more work in particular towns, create a page for each one you genuinely cover. Make each page useful: the jobs you do there, local details, a relevant project or review, and your contact details. Pages that just swap the town name into the same text rarely help and can do harm.
Start with the services and towns that matter most to your business, and add more over time. Five good pages beat thirty thin ones.
Get the basics right on your website
- Put the service and the town in each page title and main heading, in natural words.
- Show your business name, phone number and area in the same format on every page and on your profile.
- Make the site fast and easy to use on a phone, since most local searches happen on one.
- Link your service pages and area pages to each other so people and Google can move around easily.
- Add structured data that tells search engines your business type, area and contact details.
Your homepage should also make clear, near the top, the main area you cover. A line such as "Electrician in Reading and the surrounding villages" tells customers and Google where you work in a few words.
None of this needs to be clever. It needs to be clear and consistent, page after page.
Build trust beyond your own site
Prominence comes partly from what the rest of the web says about you. Useful places to be listed include the trade bodies you belong to, such as Gas Safe or NICEIC, local business directories, your suppliers' installer lists and local community sites.
Make sure your name, phone number and address or area match everywhere. Old listings with a previous number or address confuse customers and Google alike, so it is worth tidying them up.
Reviews matter here too. A steady stream of recent, genuine reviews does more than a burst of them once a year. Make asking for one part of how you finish every job.
Make it easy for them. Send a direct link by text or email the same day you finish, while the job is fresh in their mind. Customers who mention the job and the town in their review give Google extra clues about what you do and where.
Keep it going
Local SEO is not a one-off task. The businesses that do best keep adding real photos to their profile, collecting reviews, writing up recent jobs and adding pages as they move into new work or new areas.
A simple routine helps. Once a month, add a few photos to your profile, write up one recent job for your website and check you have replied to every new review. It takes an hour or so, and over a year it adds up to a real advantage.
It builds up over time. Each review, page and listing adds a little more weight, and unlike paid ads it keeps working when you stop spending. If you want a site with this built in from the start, use the Quick Quote button and tell us your trade and the towns you cover.
