Local SEO for trades — get found in your own town
The beautiful thing about local SEO — you don't have to beat the whole country, only the handful of businesses in your radius. And since most of them leave their visibility to chance, doing the basics consistently is often enough to win. Here they are.
"Local SEO" sounds like jargon but means something very concrete: showing up for searches with local intent — "emergency electrician Leeds", "tiler near me", "boiler service + your town". These searches play out in two arenas: the map box at the top (the "local pack" with three listings) and the normal results below it. Both can be worked on deliberately — with five levers.
Lever 1: Town + service in plain words on your website
Google can only assign you to a town if the town is written on your website — in the page title, the main heading, the copy. "Master craftsmen since 1998" tells Google nothing; "Electrical installation in Leeds and surroundings" tells it everything. It feels banal, and it's still the most commonly missing building block.
Lever 2: Maintain your Google Business Profile
For the map box, the profile matters more than the website itself. Correct hours, real photos, the right category, answered reviews — we've written up the 7 most common profile mistakes here. If you only want to invest one afternoon: invest it there.
Lever 3: One page per core service
A single "services" page listing everything from bathroom renovation to emergency callouts can't win any individual search. Google rewards pages that answer one question completely. Three to five subpages — one per core service, each naming your town — beat any catch-all page.
You don't have to convince the internet. Only the Google search of your town.
Lever 4: Collect reviews systematically
Reviews are the strongest local ranking factor you can directly influence — and the only one that also sells. The trick isn't a trick: actively ask after every completed job, ideally with a direct link or a QR code on the invoice. Happy customers are glad to review; they just don't think of it on their own. And: reply to every review, including the good ones.
Lever 5: Consistent details everywhere
Name, address, phone number — identical everywhere: website, Google profile, directories, trade-association page. Diverging spellings ("St." here, "Street" there, an old number in a directory) dilute Google's trust in your details. Clean it up once, then just maintain it.
What you do NOT need
Honesty saves money: a local trade business needs no weekly blog about world affairs, no purchased backlink packages, and no four-figure monthly SEO retainer. The five levers above, applied consistently, beat almost any expensive campaign in a local market — because the competition usually doesn't do them.
The realistic timeline
Profile improvements often show within weeks; website rankings take months — why that is, and what else might be the issue, is covered here. Anyone selling you faster guarantees is selling guarantees, not results. Whether your website already uses the five levers — and which one to pull first — is what we'll clarify in the free intro call, concretely and without jargon.
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