SEO for trades and home service businesses

What wins the call for a tradesperson

For most home service businesses, the Google Maps listing brings in more calls than the website does. When someone searches for a roofer, a plumber or an electrician nearby, Google shows a map with three businesses before anything else, and those three take most of the calls. The rest of the page gets a fraction of the attention.

Google picks those three mainly on three things: how relevant your profile is to the search, how close you are to the person searching, and how well known and trusted your company looks. You cannot move your office, but you can control almost everything else: the categories and services on your profile, the steady flow of reviews, the photos of your work, the consistency of your details across the web, and the pages on your website that confirm what you do and where.

Why trades are different from other local businesses

Home service work has patterns that shape how we do the job:

• Urgency. A burst pipe, a dead boiler in January or a roof leak in a storm means the homeowner calls fast and rarely compares. Being visible and showing you are available decides those calls.
• Big, considered jobs. New roofs, new boilers and extensions are compared carefully. Reviews, photos and proof of experience decide those.
• Service areas. Most trades work at the customer's home across a wide area, so ranking well in one spot is not enough. Your position changes street by street.
• Seasons. Winter storms, cold snaps and spring projects all move demand, and your profile should be ready before each one.
• Bought leads and franchises. You compete with national brands and with lead platforms selling the same homeowner to several companies. The map is one of the few places a well run local company can beat both.

The trades we work with

Each trade has its own searches, seasons and competition, so each gets its own approach:

• Roofers: storm calls and new roofs
• Heating engineers: winter breakdowns and new boilers
• Plumbers: emergencies, leaks and bathrooms
• Electricians: rewires, consumer units and EV chargers
• Builders: extensions, renovations and repairs
• Painters and decorators: interiors, exteriors and kitchens
• Locksmiths: lockouts and lock changes
• Landscapers and gardeners: regular rounds and big projects
• Tree surgeons: storm damage and big removals
• Pest control: rats, mice, wasps and contracts

If your trade is not listed, we very likely work with it already. The fundamentals are the same.

What we do for trades

We manage your Google Business Profile, push your rankings on Google Maps across your service area, build a steady flow of reviews, keep your listings consistent across the web, make sure your website turns visitors into calls, and get you named in AI search. Every month you see your rankings and the calls they bring in a plain report.

Everything stays inside Google's rules: no fake addresses, no stuffed business names, no bought reviews. Those tricks work for a few weeks and then get profiles suspended.

Where to start

The free Maps audit shows where your company ranks across your service area today, which competitors are taking the calls you are missing, and what it would take to become the first call.

Questions owners ask

What is SEO for trades?

It is everything that decides whether homeowners nearby find your company on Google and in AI search: your Google Business Profile, your rankings on Google Maps across your service area, your reviews, your listings across the web and your website. Done well, it brings calls without paying for each lead.

Is SEO better than paying for leads from Checkatrade or MyBuilder?

They do different jobs. Bought leads arrive fast but are usually shared with other trades and stop the day you stop paying. SEO takes a few months to build, and the calls it brings come to you alone and keep coming. Many trades use both while their rankings grow, then rely less on bought leads.

How long before I see more calls?

Most trades see movement on Google Maps within one to three months. It keeps building after that as reviews grow and the profile strengthens. Competitive trades and big cities can take longer.

We work across a wide area. Can we rank everywhere?

Google ranks map results largely by distance from the person searching, so nobody ranks first everywhere. We track your position across your whole area and push hardest in the towns and neighbourhoods where the work is worth most to you.