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SEO resources
Local SEO for the trades is not the same as SEO for an e-commerce shop. Roughly eighty per cent of the result comes from your Google Business Profile, your reviews and a handful of properly built pages.
- No lock-in contracts
- Month to month after the first 90 days
- You own every account and asset
- Reported in booked jobs, not impressions
In short
What is the most important local SEO task for a trade business?
Completing the Google Business Profile: the correct primary category, every relevant secondary category, each service listed individually, accurate service areas and opening hours, regular photographs and the rarely-used Q&A section. It is free, takes an afternoon, and outperforms most paid work available in the first month. Review generation is the second priority and compounds for years.
“Prominence means how well-known a business is. Prominent places are more likely to show up in search results.” — Google Business Profile Help
Prominence is the only one of Google's three local factors you can move quickly, and reviews are the fastest lever inside it.
Start here
If you do nothing else from this page, do the first three items on the checklist below. They are free, they take an afternoon, and they will outperform most paid work you could commission this month.
The order matters. Getting your Google Business Profile right before writing content is the difference between a fast result and six months of frustration.
The checklist
Work down it in order. Each item is worth more than the one below it.
- Claim and complete your Google Business Profile. Primary category exactly right, every relevant secondary category, all services listed individually, service areas set properly, opening hours accurate including holidays.
- Get reviews, continuously. Recency matters as much as volume. Ask every customer, the same day, with a direct link. This single habit outranks most technical SEO work.
- Add photographs regularly. Real job photographs, added monthly, geotagged where possible. Profiles with recent photographs consistently outperform dormant ones.
- Use the Q&A section. Post the questions customers actually ask and answer them yourself. Almost no competitor in your market is doing this.
- Build one page per service. Not one page listing all services. One page each, titled the way customers search, with a clear call to action and a phone number visible without scrolling.
- Build real service-area pages. Genuine local detail for each town you cover. Never two hundred templated pages with the place name swapped — that has been penalised for years.
- Answer the cost question. “How much does X cost” is searched far more than any brand name in your sector. Answer it with honest ranges and the variables involved.
- Fix the technical basics. Loads in under three seconds on a phone on mobile data, works one-handed, phone number is a tappable link, no intrusive pop-up before the content.
- Add LocalBusiness schema. Structured data for your business, services and reviews, so search engines and AI assistants can read you properly.
- Keep your name, address and phone number identical everywhere. Across your site, your profile and every directory. Inconsistency quietly suppresses map pack rankings.
Questions
How long does local SEO take?
Map pack movement from around month three, meaningful organic enquiries between months six and nine. Anyone promising faster is guessing.
Do I need to blog to rank?
Not to rank locally. Your Google Business Profile, reviews and service pages do most of the work. Content helps you win the cost and comparison searches, which is a separate and worthwhile job.
Are citations still worth building?
For consistency, yes. As a growth tactic on their own, no. Fix the inconsistent ones and move on to reviews and pages.
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