Where do trade enquiries from Google actually come from?
From three places, and the phone is nearly always how they arrive. The map pack, where the three pins get the urgent calls. The ordinary results underneath, where the page written for boiler repair Huddersfield or EV charger installation Halifax gets the considered ones. And increasingly the AI answer above both, which names two or three firms it has read about. A trade that is present in all three has no shortage of work; one that relies on a directory listing is renting space in one of them.
Search Console will show you which searches currently bring you clicks. Most trades find they are getting found for their company name and very little else, which is the gap this guide is about.
Should a tradesperson pay for SEO or use a directory?
Use the directories your customers use, and build your own presence alongside, because only one of the two compounds. A directory listing brings work while you pay and stops the day you leave, and you share the page with every competitor in the postcode. A page on your own site that ranks for the service and the town keeps bringing work for years and belongs to you.
RB Electrical in Halifax is the plainest case we have. Their own pages have averaged around two organic leads a week for five years, at roughly a 5:1 return on what the work has cost, and every one of those leads came to them and nobody else.
Which searches are worth a trade going after?
The specific job, with the town, and one page for each. Emergency electrician Bradford. Boiler service Wakefield. Flat roof repair Doncaster. Bathroom fitter Harrogate. The general term, electrician Leeds, is worth having and hard to win, while the specific ones are less contested and closer to the moment somebody rings, so start there.
RB’s EV charging page is the example. Electric vehicle charger installation was a small search a few years ago and it is now a steady source of enquiries, because the page was there, specific and detailed, when people started looking. Look at your own trade for the job that is growing and give it a page now.
What should each service page contain?
Enough for a stranger to ring you with confidence. What the job involves in plain words, what it typically costs or what decides the cost, the towns you cover and how quickly, photographs of jobs you have actually done, the accreditations that apply (Gas Safe, NICEIC, NAPIT, OZEV), and reviews that mention that job. Then the phone number where a thumb lands on it, and a short form for the people who would sooner not call.
- The service in the customer’s words, with the town
- What decides the price, and a guide figure where you can give one
- Photographs of real jobs, taken on your own phone if need be
- Accreditations and registrations that apply to that job
- Reviews that mention the service
- Phone number and a short form, both visible without scrolling far
How important are Google reviews for a trade?
As important as the website, and cheaper. They decide the map pack, they decide whether the person looking at three firms rings you, and the words in them tell Google and the AI tools what you do and where. Ask at the end of every job while the customer is pleased, send the direct link by text, and reply to every review, including the rare bad one, in a civil sentence or two.
Dolphin Heating’s site is a single clear page built around the phrase customers use, female gas engineer Huddersfield, with Fay’s 25 years in the trade and the Gas Safe registration stated plainly. It is first on Google for that phrase and named in the AI answer, and the reviews are a large part of why the customers it brings are the ones she wants.
How do you know the SEO is paying for itself?
Count the calls and forms, and know which page they came from. Call tracking on the website number and a form that records the page it was sent from are cheap to set up, and most trade sites have neither, so the owner is guessing. Once you can see that the EV page produced nine enquiries last month and the general page produced one, you know where to spend the next hour of your time.
That is the number we report to RB and Dolphin, and it is the only one worth paying attention to.
