If you're a plumber, electrician, cleaner or any trade working a local area, most of your customers are searching Google for something like "[your trade] near me" or "[your trade] in [town]." Ranking for that search matters more than almost anything else your website does. Here's what actually affects it, and what's mostly noise.
What matters most
Your Google Business Profile. This is not optional, and it's free. Full business details, correct category, service area set properly, and photos of real work. Most trades either haven't claimed it properly or haven't touched it in a year. A profile that's actively maintained (posts, updated hours, responses to reviews) is treated more favourably than one left dormant.
Reviews, and asking for them. Google weighs recent, genuine reviews heavily, and so do customers deciding between you and a competitor. The businesses that ask every satisfied customer for a review, right after the job, consistently outrank the ones that hope reviews happen on their own.
A website that actually names your area. A homepage that just says "professional insulation services" ranks for nothing specific. A page that says "insulation services in Bournemouth, Poole and across Dorset" gives Google (and the customer) something concrete to match against a real search.
Consistent business details everywhere. Your name, address and phone number should be identical on your website, your Google profile, and any directory you're listed in (Yell, Checkatrade, Trustpilot, etc). Inconsistency between these confuses Google about whether it's even the same business.
What matters less than people think
Keyword stuffing. Repeating "Bournemouth electrician" fifty times across a page does nothing useful anymore and reads badly to an actual visitor. Write naturally, mention your area where it's genuinely relevant, and move on.
Having a blog with no local relevance. A blog only helps local SEO if it answers questions your actual customers search for. Generic industry content that could apply to any country doesn't do much for a search happening in Dorset.
A flashy website with none of the above. A beautifully designed site with no Google Business Profile activity, no reviews, and no location-specific content will still lose to a plainer site that has all three.
The realistic starting point
If you do nothing else this month: claim and fully complete your Google Business Profile, and ask your next five happy customers for a review. Those two things alone move the needle more than most paid advice.
If you want your website itself properly set up to support this (structured correctly, naming your actual service areas, with the technical groundwork search engines look for), that's exactly the kind of thing I build in. Get in touch and I'll take a look at what you've got.
Want a hand with this?
Get in touch →