How to do SEO for a trade business

1. Most trade searches are won on the map

Look at what people type: "handyman near me" gets about 8,100 Australian searches a month, "concreter near me" about 9,900, "roofer near me" 5,400 and "painter near me" 4,400. Google answers almost all of them with a map and three businesses under it. Most people ring one of those three. Google says local results lean on relevance, distance and prominence, so that's where the work goes.

2. Get the Google listing right

This is the single most valuable hour you'll spend on marketing this year.

• The primary category that matches your main trade, and secondary ones only for work you actually do
• A service area you genuinely cover, instead of a whole capital city
• Hours someone answers the phone, including weekends if you take weekend work
• Photos of real jobs, your ute and your team, never stock
• The services you offer, written in the words customers use

If you work from home, hide the address and show a service area. Don't list an address you don't work from: that's the quickest way to a suspended profile.

3. Ask for a review after every job

Recent reviews are what the customer reads, and they help the map. Ask on the day you finish, when the customer is happiest, with a direct link sent by text. Don't pay for reviews, don't offer a discount for a good one and don't write your own: the ACCC treats fake and hand-picked reviews as misleading. Reply to every review, briefly, and never argue in public.

4. One page for each job you want more of

A single "Services" page listing everything you do won't rank for any of it. Give the jobs you want more of a page each: what's involved, how long it takes, what pushes the price up or down, photos of ones you've done and how to book. Write it the way you'd explain it on site. "Roof leak repair" and "gutter guard installation" are different searches and different customers.

5. Be honest about your service area

This is where tradie sites go wrong most often: a page for every suburb within an hour's drive with the suburb name swapped and nothing else. That's a known spam pattern, and it can hold back the pages that would otherwise rank. A suburb page is worth having when you've done enough work there to show it, with your own photos and something true about the area. Otherwise, list the areas you cover on one page and let the map do the rest.

6. Need the marketplaces less

On hipages, customers get multiple quotes, and on the business side a subscription buys credits that each accepted lead uses up. So you pay for the lead, then compete on price with other tradies who paid for the same one. Fine for filling a quiet week. Expensive as a whole business. Every job on there started as a search you could answer yourself, and a job that rings you directly doesn't have to be shared.

7. Google Ads, used carefully

Ads put you at the top straight away, which suits urgent jobs and quiet periods. They're dear in some trades: roofing clicks run about US$17.63 and air conditioning about US$17. Keep the area tight, block searches for jobs you don't do, send each ad to the matching service page, and count calls and booked jobs rather than clicks. Plenty of tradies waste their first budget on "diy" and "salary" searches.

8. Know which searches turned into jobs

Ask every caller how they found you, and write it down. Better still, use a call tracking number on your website so you can see which page or ad made the phone ring. After three months you'll know which jobs and suburbs are paying, and which marketing you can drop.

9. Be easy for AI answers to describe

People now ask ChatGPT and Google's AI Mode who to call and what a job should cost. Nobody can promise a mention. What helps is plain statements of where you work and what you do, straight answers on price ranges, your licence number, consistent details across the web, and reviews that mention the job.

Your first 30 days

1. Week 1Claim your Google Business Profile, pick the primary category that matches your main trade, set a service area you actually cover, and add your licence number to your site and listing.
2. Week 2Take photos of the next five jobs you finish and add them to the listing with the suburb. Ask each of those customers for a Google review the day you finish.
3. Week 3Write one page for the job you most want more of: what it involves, how long it takes, what drives the price, photos of ones you've done and how to book.
4. Week 4Check your business name, phone number and address match everywhere you're listed, and set up call tracking or at least ask every caller how they found you.

When to get help

Done all that and the phone's gone quiet again? Or you're up against bigger operators with ad budgets? That's about when getting help pays, and it's what our SEO for tradies service does. Here's what it costs. We'll check your site for free too, and if the honest answer is "keep going on your own", we'll say so.

Common questions