How to Get Your Trade Business Found on Google (Local SEO, Plain English)
Word of mouth is great until it dries up. These days the jobs go to whoever shows up first when someone types 'plumber near me.' That's local SEO, and it's not black magic — it's a handful of things done right and kept up. Here's the honest version, from someone who does this for trades.
Your Google Business Profile is the whole game
Before your website, before anything, sort your Google Business Profile. It's free. Fill it out fully — services, area, hours, photos of real jobs — and it's what puts you in the map pack when someone searches locally. Most tradesmen half-fill it and wonder why they're invisible.
Get reviews, and reply to them
Reviews are the single biggest lever for local ranking and trust. Ask every happy customer — a quick text with the link is enough. Then actually reply to them, good and bad. Google sees an active, reviewed business and pushes you up.
A simple site that says where you work
You don't need a fancy site. You need a fast one that clearly says what you do, where you do it, and how to reach you — with your town and services in the words on the page. That's what Google matches to local searches. Click-to-call and a form so enquiries actually land.
Keep it alive
SEO isn't 'build it and forget it.' A bit of fresh content, new photos, new reviews, kept up month after month — that's what holds the ranking. It compounds. The tradesman who keeps at it beats the one who did it once and stopped.
Or get it done for you
If that all sounds like time you haven't got, that's literally the job I do — build the site, sort the profile, keep it climbing, so the phone rings while you're on the tools. Either learn it or hand it over; just don't leave the work on the table.
Start the climb — free.
Get The Grafter's Blueprint — five steps to get your energy and drive back.