SEO stands for search engine optimisation. If that already sounds like something you do not want to read about, stay with me — because everything that follows is in plain English, and it directly affects how many people find your business when they search Google.
As a tradesperson, you do not need to become an SEO expert. You do not need to understand algorithms or read marketing blogs. But you do need to understand the basics of how Google decides which businesses to show when someone searches for a plumber, electrician, roofer, or builder in your area. Because right now, that decision is being made dozens of times a day in your county — and if you do not understand how it works, someone else is getting those calls.
What SEO actually means in plain English
SEO is the process of making your business easier for Google to find, understand, and recommend to people who are searching for what you do.
When someone types “electrician in Bristol” into Google, the search engine has to decide which businesses to show. There are dozens, maybe hundreds, of electricians in Bristol. Google cannot show all of them. So it uses a set of rules to pick the ones it thinks are most relevant, trustworthy, and helpful.
SEO is the practice of making sure your business ticks those boxes. It is not a trick or a hack. It is simply the work of presenting your business online in a way that helps Google understand what you do, where you do it, and why you are worth recommending.
The three things Google looks at
When deciding which local businesses to show, Google weighs three main factors:
Relevance
Does your online presence match what the person searched for? If someone searches “emergency plumber Guildford” and your Google Business Profile lists your trade as “Plumber,” your website has a page about emergency plumbing, and your service area includes Guildford, you are highly relevant.
If your Google profile just says “Home Services” and your website has one page that vaguely mentions plumbing alongside other trades, you are far less relevant. Google has less confidence that you are the right match.
Relevance is about being specific. The more precisely your online presence matches the searches people make, the more relevant Google considers you.
Distance
How close is your business to the person searching? For “plumber near me” searches, Google uses the searcher’s location and shows businesses that are nearby. You cannot control where the searcher is, but you can influence how wide your visible area is.
A plumber with location pages targeting twenty individual towns across their county will appear relevant to searches from a wider area than a plumber whose website only mentions one town. The pages signal to Google that you serve those areas.
Prominence
How well-known and trusted is your business online? This is the factor you have the most control over, and it is where most of the SEO work happens. Prominence is built through:
- Google reviews — the number, the average rating, and how recently they were posted
- Directory listings — your business appearing consistently on trusted sites like Yell, Thomson Local, and FreeIndex
- Website quality — a well-structured website with useful content
- Google Business Profile activity — regular posts, photos, and updated information
- Overall online presence — the sum total of everywhere you appear online
A business with sixty reviews, forty directory listings, and a thirty-page website has far more prominence than one with five reviews, three directories, and a four-page site. Google sees the first business as more established and trustworthy.
The four pillars of local SEO for tradespeople
Everything in local SEO falls into four main areas. Think of them as the four legs of a table — all four need to be there for the whole thing to be stable.
Pillar 1: Your Google Business Profile
This is the free listing that controls whether you appear in the map results at the top of Google. It is the single most important thing to get right.
Your Google Business Profile includes your business name, phone number, opening hours, categories, photos, reviews, and posts. When someone searches for a tradesperson in your area, Google pulls from this listing to decide whether to show you in the local map pack.
An incomplete or inactive profile is one of the most common reasons tradespeople do not appear in local searches. Our complete Google Business Profile setup guide walks through every step.
Pillar 2: Your website
Your website is where Google goes to understand the full breadth of what you do and where you do it. While your Google Business Profile is a snapshot, your website can have dozens of pages — each one targeting a different search.
The key principle is simple: one page per service, one page per location. If you offer ten services across fifteen towns, that is potentially twenty-five or more pages, each one catching a different search query that a potential customer might type in.
A website with four or five generic pages will not rank for much. A website with thirty targeted pages will rank for dozens of different searches. Our article on why most trade websites do not rank explains exactly what separates the websites that work from the ones that do not.
Pillar 3: Reviews
Google reviews serve two purposes. First, they directly influence your ranking in the local map pack. More reviews, better ratings, and recent reviews all push you higher. Second, they convince potential customers to actually call you once they find you.
The key to reviews is consistency. A steady flow of one or two new reviews per week is far more powerful than a burst of twenty followed by months of silence. The simplest method is to ask every satisfied customer at the end of the job. Our guide on how to get more Google reviews covers the exact process.
Pillar 4: Directory listings (citations)
Directory listings are mentions of your business name, address, and phone number on other websites — Yell, Thomson Local, FreeIndex, Yelp, Bark, and many others. When Google sees your details listed consistently across dozens of trusted websites, it gains confidence that your business is real and established.
The emphasis is on consistency. Your business name, address, and phone number must be identical across every directory. Even small differences — “J. Smith Plumbing Ltd” on one site versus “J Smith Plumbing” on another — can create confusion for Google and weaken the signal.
Building listings across forty or more directories is tedious work, but the cumulative effect on your Google visibility is significant.
How long does SEO take to work?
This is the question every tradesperson asks, and the honest answer is: it depends, but expect to start seeing meaningful movement in four to eight weeks.
SEO is not like Google Ads, where you pay and immediately appear at the top. It is more like planting seeds. You do the work now — build the website, set up the listings, start collecting reviews — and the results grow over the following weeks and months.
The timeline roughly looks like this:
Week 1-2: Website goes live, Google Business Profile is optimised, directory submissions begin. You are essentially invisible to Google at this point for most searches.
Week 3-4: Google starts crawling your new pages and indexing them. You might start appearing in results for very specific, low-competition searches — particularly in towns where there are few competitors.
Week 5-8: Rankings begin to move as Google processes your directory listings and new reviews come in. You might move from page five to page two for your main target searches.
Month 3-6: This is where compounding kicks in. More pages indexed, more reviews accumulated, more directory listings processed. Rankings continue climbing. Leads start becoming consistent.
Month 6+: For tradespeople who maintain consistency, this is where it gets good. Your website is established, your reviews are strong, your directory presence is solid. You are competing for — and often winning — the top positions in your area.
The important thing to understand is that every month builds on the last. Unlike ads, where the benefit stops when the spend stops, SEO compounds. The work you do in month one is still generating leads in month twelve.
What can you do yourself vs what needs a specialist?
Some parts of local SEO are straightforward enough to do yourself:
Google Business Profile setup and maintenance — this is free and manageable. Claiming your profile, filling in your details, posting photos of completed jobs, responding to reviews. Our Google Business Profile guide can walk you through the whole process.
Asking for Google reviews — this is simply a habit. Ask every happy customer. Send them a link. It costs nothing and makes a real difference over time.
Basic website content — if you have a website builder and some patience, you can create service pages and location pages yourself. It takes time, but it is doable.
The parts that typically need specialist help:
Website architecture and technical SEO — ensuring your site is structured in a way that Google can crawl efficiently, with proper title tags, schema markup, and internal linking. Most web designers do not handle this well.
Directory submissions at scale — building and maintaining listings across forty-plus directories with consistent information is tedious and time-consuming. It is one of those jobs that is simple in concept but painful in execution.
Rank tracking and strategy — knowing where you rank for which searches, across which locations, and using that data to make decisions about what to focus on next. Tools like GeoGrid mapping show your visibility across your county, but interpreting the data takes experience.
Ongoing management — keeping your Google Business Profile active with regular posts, monitoring your reviews, updating your website with new content, and adjusting your strategy as rankings change. This is where consistency matters most, and it is where most tradespeople fall off because they are busy doing their actual job.
The choice
You have two paths. You can learn the basics, do what you can yourself, and chip away at it over time. Many tradespeople do this successfully, and the articles linked throughout this guide will help you get started.
Or you can hand it to someone who does this every day. If you want the website, the directories, the Google profile management, the review system, and the rank tracking handled for you — so you can focus on the trade — that is what Localengine does. Everything is included for three hundred pounds per month with no setup fee. We work with one tradesperson per county, so your competitors are locked out of your area from day one.
Either way, the worst choice is doing nothing. Every month that passes without building your online presence is another month your competitors are pulling ahead. The sooner you start, the sooner the compound effect works in your favour.
If you are curious whether your county and trade combination is still available, check here. If it is, you are looking at the biggest head start you will get — because once it is claimed, it is gone.