Local SEO for the trades: get the call, win the quote
Trade searches come in two shapes. The 2am leak, where the customer rings the first firm that looks real and answers. And the considered project — the extension, the rewire, the new garden — where they shortlist three firms off the map and read every review. Your profile has to win both, and it has to do it from a van, with no shopfront to help it.
What local SEO means for a trade
It means being one of the three firms Google shows on the map when someone nearby searches for your trade — sometimes urgently, sometimes after weeks of comparing. For a business without a shopfront that comes down to four things: a service-area profile set up correctly, hours and a phone number that are true, a steady flow of recent reviews with photos of finished work, and listings that agree with each other.
Where the job goes to somebody else
Six things we find on trade profiles, in rough order of how much work they cost.
Your home address is published on Google
If you work from home or from the van you are a service-area business, and the address should be hidden with the areas you cover declared instead. Publishing it is a suspension risk, and it puts your house on a map for every customer you have ever had.
You only show up in your own postcode
The most common complaint in the trade, and it is proximity: Google ranks you from your pin, not from the edge of the area you say you cover. Declaring twenty towns does not make you rank in twenty towns — it makes you eligible in them. Prominence is what closes the gap.
Your hours say one thing and you do another
Listed nine to five while you take call-outs all night, so the 11pm searcher never sees you. Or listed as 24 hours when nobody answers at 3am, which earns you the one-star review that starts "rang six times".
Two of the firms above you do not exist
Emergency trade searches attract more map spam than any other category — lead-generation listings at accommodation addresses, keyword-stuffed names, a "24 hour emergency plumber" that is a call centre selling your job on. These can be reported, and we report them.
You pay per lead for work Google would send free
Checkatrade, MyBuilder, Rated People — a directory lead costs money every time and the customer belongs to the platform. Reviews on your own profile cost nothing per job and compound. Most firms should be running both — but not in that proportion forever.
Three hundred jobs a year and eleven reviews
Every one of those jobs ended with a satisfied customer holding a phone — or, at the project end of the trade, standing in a finished extension or a transformed garden that nobody photographed. Nobody asked them, because you were already driving to the next one.
What we do for a trade business
Set up for a business that has no shopfront, no reception and no time.
A service-area profile, set up properly
Address hidden, service areas declared to match where you will genuinely travel, and categories chosen for the work you want: emergency plumber, boiler installer, electrician, roofing contractor, HVAC contractor, painter, landscaper, general contractor — not one generic category doing all the work.
What profile optimisation covers →Hours that match who answers
Whatever is true: proper out-of-hours if you take night call-outs, honest daytime hours if you do not, and special hours set before bank holidays rather than after them. We would rather you appear in fewer searches than appear in one you cannot service.
Credentials where customers look for them
Gas Safe registration for gas work, NICEIC or NAPIT approval and Part P for electrical, NFRC for roofing, TrustMark or FMB for building work, plus insurance and guarantees — in the description and the services, where a homeowner checking you out will actually see them. All verifiable, because customers do check.
The jobs you would rather have, listed as jobs
Not just "plumbing" or "building". Landlord gas safety certificates and EICRs are recurring, bookable and searched by name; boiler, consumer-unit and roof replacements are the high-value ones; extensions, garden rooms, patios and EV chargers are searched as projects. Each is a separate service entry and a separate search.
A text after every completed job
Fired from your job management system when the job is signed off, while the customer is still standing in a room that works again — the highest-converting moment in any trade. One follow-up, then it stops. Photographs of finished work go on the profile too, which is allowed here in a way it is not in every trade.
How the review requests work →Your details identical everywhere
Google, Yell, the trade directories you already pay for and the ones you forgot you joined — same trading name, same number, same coverage. Where a directory has your old mobile on it, that is a lead going to a number you stopped answering in 2019.
How the citation clean-up runs →The systems we connect to
The review request fires off the job, not off somebody remembering. These are the ones we see most in UK trade firms.
Common with one-to-five van firms. Job completion is a clean trigger for the request.
Quoting, scheduling and invoicing in one; requests go out when the job is marked complete.
UK-built, strong on gas and service contracts, so certificate renewals are visible too.
Popular with smaller firms and straightforward to work alongside.
Still on a paper diary or a WhatsApp group? That is fine and more common than the software companies admit — we work from a weekly list of completed jobs instead, and the customer sees no difference.
How it runs
One call, one login handover, and nothing that needs doing from the top of a ladder.
A 15-minute audit
What you rank for and where, which of the firms above you are real, and whether your profile is set up as a service-area business or quietly broadcasting your home address.
Profile, areas, credentials
Address hidden and areas declared, categories and services filled in job by job, hours matched to who actually answers, registrations added, listings corrected.
Reviews start arriving
Call-out trades see the fastest movement of any vertical we work with, because you finish several jobs a day and the request goes out the same afternoon. Project trades move slower and that is fine — one detailed review per finished extension or garden still compounds. The back catalogue is worked in batches so the curve stays believable.
Calls, not impressions
From Growth up, a tracked number tells you how many calls came from Google, alongside rank movement on your terms and the review count. For a trade, the call is the only number that matters.
What we won't do for a trade
Emergency trade searches are the most spammed category in local search. Doing it their way works briefly, then it does not.
The full policy, and the law behind each rule, is published.
Read the full compliance policy →What it costs
Less than a single emergency call-out, and it is the plan with call tracking that most trades end up on.
Proof that reviews come in — cheaply, and with no risk.
Where "trust us" becomes "here are the calls you got."
- Everything in Foundation
- Weekly profile posts + photo updates
- Rank tracking on 10–15 local search terms
- Call tracking — calls from Google, counted
- Full citation clean-up included
Priced on your market, your ad spend and how fast you want to move.
Foundation covers the profile and the review engine. Growth adds the tracked number that tells you which calls came from Google — for a business that converts on the phone, that is the difference between marketing you can judge and marketing you have to believe in. Per business, ex VAT, no contract. No contract — cancel any month. Compare all three plans in full.
Questions we get asked
AddressShould I hide my address on Google?
If you work from home or out of the van, yes — and Google requires it. You register as a service-area business, the address stays on file with Google but is not published, and you declare the areas you cover instead. Practices that leave a home address visible risk suspension, and the address is on a public map until they fix it.
ProximityWhy do I only show up near my own house?
Because Google ranks you from your pin, not from the boundary of your service area. Declaring a town makes you eligible there; it does not make you close to it. What closes the gap is prominence — reviews, consistency, a complete profile and links — and it closes slowly and unevenly. Anyone promising you the map pack three towns over is guessing.
DirectoriesAre Checkatrade and MyBuilder better than doing this?
They do different jobs. A lead platform charges you for each introduction and the customer relationship belongs to it; your Google profile costs nothing per job and the reviews compound into an asset you own. Most firms run both, and the sensible move is to shift the balance as your own reviews build — not to cancel anything on day one.
Project workI do a handful of big jobs a year, not five call-outs a day. Does a review engine work for me?
Yes, on different maths. A general contractor or landscaper completing ten projects a year will never match a plumber's review count, and does not need to — the customer choosing a £30,000 extension reads every review in full, so one detailed review per finished job, naming the work and carrying photographs of it, outsells fifty one-liners. The request still goes out at sign-off; the pace is just the honest one for the volume you do.
SpamA firm above us is using a fake address. Can anything be done?
Yes. Listings at addresses the business does not trade from, keyword-stuffed names and duplicate listings all breach Google's guidelines and can be reported with evidence. Some come down in weeks, some do not come down at all, and we will tell you which yours looks like rather than selling it as a certainty.
Honest answerWe are on the tools all day and miss calls. Is this worth doing?
Not until the phone gets answered. More visibility with an unanswered phone is money spent generating voicemails, and the missed call goes to the next firm on the list within about ninety seconds. Sort the call handling first — a divert, a shared answering service, or a callback promise you keep — and then let us turn the visibility up. We will say so on the audit call.
Related services
Fifteen minutes on your patch
Where you rank across the towns you cover, which of the firms above you are real businesses, and whether your profile is set up the way a service-area business should be. Free, and yours either way.