local seo for tradesmen
Local SEO for Trades: Get on Google Maps Without an Agency
You don't need an agency to rank on Google Maps. You need a complete Google Business Profile, geotagged job photos added regularly, a steady flow of answered reviews, and consistent contact details across the web. That's it - the whole game for a local trade, and every part of it is free. Agencies mostly charge £200+ a month to do the six steps below slowly.
Why the Maps pack beats your website
When someone searches 'electrician near me', Google shows three map results above everything else - the local pack. Most callers never scroll past it. Your Google Business Profile, not your website, decides whether you're in it, which makes the profile the highest-leverage free asset your business has. Here's how to build it properly.
Step 1: Claim and verify your Google Business Profile
Search your business name. If a listing exists, claim it; if not, create one at google.com/business. Google will verify you own it - by postcard, phone or a short video showing your van and kit. It can take a week or two, so start today. Until you're verified, nothing you edit is published. And if a rogue duplicate listing already exists for your business, get it merged or removed - duplicates split your reviews and confuse the rankings.
Step 2: Complete every single field
Google rewards complete profiles, and customers trust them. Fill in opening hours (including whether you answer out of hours), every service you offer with a short description, your website, and a business description written the way a customer would say it - trade plus town, not marketing waffle. Most local competitors filled in a name and phone number in 2019 and never came back. This is the gap you walk through.
Step 3: Pick precise categories and honest service areas
Your primary category is the strongest signal on the profile, so make it as specific as the list allows, then add secondaries for other services - a plumber who does bathrooms should carry both. For service areas, list the towns you actually want work in. Over-reaching dilutes your relevance everywhere and wins you jobs you don't want to drive to.
Step 4: Add geotagged before-and-after photos every week
This is the step almost nobody does, which is exactly why it works. Keep location services on for your phone camera, snap a before and after on every job, and upload a few each week. Google reads the freshness and the location data; customers read the workmanship. A profile with 80 real job photos beats a profile with one van picture from 2021, every time.
Step 5: Gather steady reviews and reply to every one
Reviews are the biggest ranking and conversion lever after the profile itself. Send the direct review link by text on the day you finish, while the customer is still delighted. A steady drip - a couple a month - looks healthier to Google than twenty in one week. And reply to every single one: thank the good ones by name, and answer the rare bad one calmly with facts. Future customers read your replies as closely as the reviews.
Step 6: Keep your name, address and phone consistent everywhere
Google cross-checks your details across the web. If you're 'J. Smith Electrical Ltd' on Google, 'John Smith Electrician' on Yell and an old mobile number on Checkatrade, trust leaks away. Pick one exact format for name, address and phone, then spend an evening correcting every directory listing you can find.
From the tools: the plasterer who subs to my brother had no website, no listings, nothing - all word of mouth. Last year he spent one evening setting up his Business Profile and started uploading before-and-after photos, two or three a week, straight from the job. Around week ten he cracked the top three on Maps for plastering in his town. He reckons the profile now brings in about a third of his enquiries, and the before-and-afters do the selling before he's even quoted. Total spend: nothing. Total time: maybe two hours' setup and five minutes a week since.
What to expect, and when
Local SEO compounds slowly. Typically you'll see movement in four to twelve weeks, faster in smaller towns and slower in cities with heavy competition. The trades who win are simply the ones still uploading photos and collecting reviews in month six, when everyone else has drifted off. Do the six steps, then keep steps four and five running forever.
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