SEO for Tradies: A Plain-English Guide
The short version of SEO for trades: get found for your services in your area, in the right order.
SEO gets sold to tradies as something mysterious and expensive. It isn't. For a trades business it comes down to one job: when someone nearby searches for the work you do, your business should be on the first page. Here's what actually moves that needle, roughly in the order I'd do it.
Step 1: Google Business Profile
For local trades this is the biggest single lever. Claim it, get the categories right, add your service areas, upload real job photos regularly, and ask every happy customer for a review. The map results sit above the normal results — being there matters more than any keyword tweak.
Step 2: Service pages
People don't search "electrician". They search "switchboard upgrade", "ceiling fan installation", "EV charger install". Each of those deserves its own page with a few hundred words of real explanation — what's involved, what it typically costs, how long it takes, what you need from the customer.
Step 3: Area pages
A page per town or major suburb you genuinely service, each with local detail — the sorts of homes there, jobs you've done nearby, travel and callout notes. Thin pages with the suburb name swapped don't work and can hurt you; useful local pages work very well.
There's a fuller explanation in do location pages help SEO.
Step 4: Reviews, continuously
Reviews affect both rankings and whether someone picks you once they see you. A steady trickle beats a burst — five a month forever is better than thirty in one week. Ask by text with a direct link, right after you finish the job.
Step 5: The technical basics
- Fast loading, especially on mobile data.
- Unique page title and description for every page.
- Compressed images with proper alt text.
- A sitemap submitted in Google Search Console.
- Consistent name, address and phone number everywhere online.
What to ignore
Buying backlink packages, keyword stuffing, blog posts written by a robot about nothing, and anyone promising "#1 in 30 days". Local trade SEO is normally a three to six month build, and then it holds.
How long it takes
New pages usually get indexed within days to a few weeks and start moving over the following months. See how long SEO takes for realistic timeframes.
Tradie SEO checklist
- Google Business Profile claimed, categories and service areas correct
- New review requests going out every week
- One page per service, each with real detail
- One page per area you actually cover
- Unique titles and descriptions on every page
- Site loads fast on a phone
- Sitemap submitted in Google Search Console
If you'd rather it was handled, my SEO for tradies service does exactly this list every month, and marketing for tradies covers where SEO fits against everything else.
Want to Improve Your Google Visibility?
SEO varies enormously depending on your website, your market and who you're competing against, so there's no fixed package. Tell me what you do and where you work, and I'll tell you honestly what's realistic.
Talk to Mike About SEOCommon questions
- Can I do tradie SEO myself?
- Yes — the Google Business Profile work and review chasing are the highest-value parts and cost nothing but time. Building out service and area pages properly is where most people run out of hours.
- Do I need to blog to rank?
- No. Good service and area pages matter far more. Articles help once those are in place, mostly for answering questions customers ask before they enquire.
Written by Mike — Web Guy Mike
I build and look after websites for Australian tradies and small service businesses. Every site is built by me — no outsourcing, no account managers. More about Mike.