Tradespeople · SEO
SEO for tradespeople
Most homeowners hunting for a plumber, electrician or builder check the map first and the websites underneath second. Arête's SEO for trades works on both. The aim: when someone nearby searches for what you do, your business is there to be found.
From £349 per month, fixed fee
The situation
Why your customers are searching.
The map and a handful of directories dominate local trade searches. So a firm with a great local reputation can still be hard to find by anything but its own name. Frustrating, and common. The fix is less about churning out content and more about the basics, done properly: a well-kept Google Business Profile, strong service pages, steady reviews and a site search engines can read easily.
What sends them looking
- Referrals have slowed and there are gaps in the diary two or three weeks out.
- You've taken on a new van, apprentice or engineer, and they need a full week of work.
- You want to rely less on pay-per-lead platforms, where the same enquiry can go to several competing firms.
- You want fewer small call-outs and more of the bigger planned jobs: boiler replacements, rewires, extensions.
- A competitor keeps turning up above you on the map for your own trade, in your own town.
The problem
What costs tradespeople work.
Where the work slips away
- Urgent work is won in minutes by whoever picks up. Miss the call while you're up a ladder and the customer is probably ringing the next name.
- Rewires, boiler replacements and extensions get compared on reviews, photos and how well you explain the quoting process.
- Your patch is defined by drive time, but most websites and ad accounts treat a whole county as one flat area.
- Your reviews are scattered across Google, Facebook and trade directories, so new customers rarely see the whole picture in one place.
- Enquiries for work you don't do, or jobs below your minimum, eat into the evenings you spend returning calls and pricing up.
What makes customers hesitate
- Nobody wants a cowboy in the house. Homeowners look for a named owner, a base town and proof of insurance before they ring.
- Customers dread a vague price that grows once the job starts, so they want to know how your quotes and site visits work.
- Someone with water on the kitchen floor wants to know if you can come today. A generic contact form doesn't tell them.
- For gas and electrical work, customers want proof of registration before they let anyone through the door.
How it helps
What SEO changes.
- Your Google Business Profile gets the right categories, service area and photos from your own jobs.
- Each core service gets its own page. Boiler replacement and emergency plumbing stop fighting over one generic page.
- Town pages only go up where you have work to show and something useful to say. No dozens of copies with the place name swapped.
- A quick review routine after each job builds the local signals that map rankings take into account.
What you get
Google Business Profile clean-up
Categories, services, service area, opening hours and photos checked and updated. If you work from home, your home address stays hidden.
Service page structure
A page for each main service, written around the words customers type into Google.
Town pages backed by local jobs
Location pages only for the towns you work in regularly, each with jobs, reviews and detail from that area.
Review request routine
A short link and message to send after each job, so reviews keep arriving week after week.
Technical and speed fixes
Mobile speed, indexing, local business structured data and broken pages checked and fixed.
Directory listing check
Your business name, address and phone number made consistent across the main trade directories.
Measurement
The enquiries that count, tracked properly.
What counts as an enquiry
- A call from a mobile search, traced back to the ad, map listing or page that sent it.
- A quote request with the job type, the postcode and a photo of the problem.
- A WhatsApp or text with photos, asking for a quick first price.
- A booked site visit for a rewire, boiler replacement, extension or other planned job.
What gets tracked
- Where you appear on the map for core services, town by town.
- Calls and direction requests from the Google Business Profile.
- Organic enquiries by service page.
- How many reviews you're getting, and how often.
Worth knowing
What customers check, and the rules to follow.
What customers look for before they call
- Your Gas Safe registration number, NICEIC or NAPIT membership, or other scheme details that match the work you advertise.
- Recent Google reviews that name the job and the town, which say far more than a star rating on its own.
- Photos from your own jobs with the work and the area named. Stock shots of tools and vans prove nothing.
- Your public liability insurance and the guarantee you give on workmanship, stated plainly.
- A name and a face behind the business: the owner on site, or the van outside a job.
Rules worth knowing
- Gas work must be carried out by a Gas Safe registered engineer, so your ads and pages should only offer the gas work you're registered to do.
- In England and Wales some domestic electrical work is notifiable under Building Regulations. That's why NICEIC, NAPIT or similar scheme membership is worth showing wherever it applies.
- Claims like 'fully insured', 'guaranteed' or 'same-day' need to be true and provable, because UK advertising rules expect claims to be backed by evidence.
- You can only be in one place at a time, so campaigns need to be easy to narrow or pause when the diary's full.
Straight answer
Is it right for you?
Best for trades that plan to work the same patch for years, ideally with ads running while rankings build.
Made for
- Established trades with good reviews who are hard to find beyond their own business name.
- Businesses that want to lean less on lead platforms and paid clicks over time.
- Multi-service firms that need each service to be found separately.
Not for
- Trades that need enquiries this month. Google Ads is the faster route while SEO builds.
- Businesses unwilling to ask customers for reviews or share photos of work, since both feed local rankings.
Starting price
From £349
per month, fixed management fee
What moves the price
- How competitive the market is
- The current site's technical health
- How much content is planned each month
- Whether local search and maps are in scope
Your ad budget is separate. It goes straight to the platform and is never marked up.
Questions
SEO for tradespeople: your questions answered
Can a trade business rank on the map without a shop or office?
Yes. Google Business Profile supports service-area businesses, so you can hide your home address and list the areas you cover instead. Rankings tend to be strongest near your verified location. Your website and reviews help stretch that reach into surrounding towns.
Should a trade website have a page for every town it covers?
Only where you've got work there and something useful to say. A handful of well-built town pages, with jobs and reviews from each place, does more good than dozens of near-identical ones, which search engines tend to ignore. Start with the towns that bring your most profitable work.
Start a conversation
Tell Arête about the business and what currently feels missing.
You will receive a direct reply with the most sensible next step, even if that means recommending that nothing needs changing yet.
A direct reply
A personal reply, usually within one working day. No sales script, no chasing.
A short conversation
A look at the business, your current website and what a good result would look like for you.
A clear recommendation
The leanest sensible next step, with fixed scope and a fixed price. Sometimes that's nothing yet, and you'll be told so.
Prefer email? Write to info@aretemarketing.co.uk.