You’re good at the work. The problem is usually the twenty seconds before anyone knows you exist, when somebody with a leak or a dead consumer unit picks up a phone and searches.
Most of what decides that happens before your website gets a look in. This page is about what I’d check, what it costs, and how to work out whether it’s worth doing at all.
You’re not only competing with other trades
When I checked trade searches across several North West towns, the businesses holding page one often weren’t businesses at all. In Crosby every organic slot on the first page was a directory or a social platform: Yell twice, Nextdoor twice, a trade directory, a Facebook post and an Instagram post. Not one independent firm’s own website appeared.
That changes where your money should go. Trying to outrank Yell with a small service page is a hard way to spend a budget. Being the business Yell, Nextdoor and the map listing all point at is a more realistic aim, and it usually costs less.
It also means your entries on those platforms are working for you or against you whether you look at them or not. If the listing on the directory that already ranks is thin, out of date or has the wrong coverage on it, you’re losing calls somewhere you didn’t know you were competing.
Your town might be the opposite
That’s the part worth checking before anyone sells you a plan.
In Maghull the same kind of search returned four independent firms ranking on their own websites, alongside the usual directories. In Widnes, one firm’s own town page was the top result, above Yell. In St Helens the organic field was weak enough that a single well-written page about one service sat above most of the directories.
So the honest answer to “should I invest in content or in my profile” is that it depends on which of those your town looks like, and it takes a couple of minutes to find out. The rest of the towns I’ve checked are on the locations page.
Your Google Business Profile does the heavy lifting
For “near me” searches the map listing sits above everything else, which makes the profile the first thing I’d look at.
Google says local results depend mainly on relevance, distance and prominence. Distance you can’t change. Relevance is whether your categories and services describe what you actually do, in the words customers use. Prominence is where reviews sit, and it’s the part you can build deliberately.
Worth knowing: categories get read loosely. On one search I looked at, an auto electrical business turned up for a general electrician query. If a business can turn up for something it doesn’t quite do, yours can be missed for something it does perfectly, because the profile doesn’t spell it out.
How far will you actually travel?
The area you’d genuinely travel to and the area your website claims are rarely the same list, and the gap costs you in both directions.
Claim too much and you get calls you don’t want, from too far away, and a reputation for not turning up. Claim too little, or bury it in a footer list of postcodes, and somebody five minutes away assumes you don’t cover them.
In Skelmersdale there’s a version of this that catches people out: the town sits in Lancashire with a Wigan postcode, so businesses end up describing their address three different ways across their site, their profile and the directories. Every version is arguably right, which is exactly why nobody notices.
What I’d do about it: one version of your details everywhere they appear, one page that’s specific about where you’ll go, and no list of place names pretending to be coverage.
What I’d look at first
The sequence depends on what’s already broken. If the site can’t be indexed, the contact form fails, or nobody can tell which jobs came from search, that comes first. There’s no point writing service pages while the route to a call is broken.
After that, roughly:
- Which jobs you want more of. Emergency work and planned work are different searches and usually different money.
- The Google Business Profile, categories first, then services, coverage and a review habit somebody owns.
- The listings that already rank, checked and corrected, because they’re doing something either way.
- One or two proper service pages, if your town is one where independent sites rank at all.
- The measurement, so a change in visibility can be tied to a change in the phone ringing.
That isn’t a fixed package. If you’re busy but the jobs are the wrong ones, the work is about attracting different searches rather than more of them.
Would Google Ads help?
Often, for emergency work, because somebody with water coming through a ceiling isn’t going to scroll. Less often for planned work where people take their time and ask around.
Before spending, I’d want to know what a job is worth to you and whether calls and form submissions are being recorded properly. Otherwise you’re buying clicks and guessing. My Google Ads service covers how I approach that.
What about AI answers?
People do ask assistants who to use, and the answer gets built from whatever those systems can read about you.
It costs nothing to check. Ask a couple of them how somebody would find a tradesperson in your town, run it more than once, and note whether you appear and whether the description is accurate. Where a business is missing, it’s usually because nothing online states plainly what it does and where it goes. That’s the same job as everything above it, not a separate invoice. There’s more under AI search visibility.
Who this suits
Plumbers, electricians, roofers, joiners, builders and anyone else working in people’s homes, where a search on a phone and a call decide the job.
Trades with a specialism, whether that’s EV chargers, wet rooms, period properties or heat pumps, where far fewer businesses compete and the jobs are usually worth more.
Small firms with a van or two, who are competing with directories rather than with big companies, and need the map listing working before anything else.
If you’re booked out for months, more visibility isn’t your problem, and I’d say so rather than sell you something.
What does it cost to work together?
No figure I could give you from a trade name would be honest. It turns on the size of the site, what’s wrong with it, and how many towns you’re really trying to cover. I’d look at all three, along with who’s actually taking the work near you, and come back with the first job and the cost of it.
Nearly all of it is remote. I’m near Liverpool, so a conversation in person is easy enough when it’s useful.
Questions people ask
Should I pay for Checkatrade, MyBuilder or Rated People?
Check what your free listings already say before paying for anything, because an inaccurate one costs you calls for nothing. Whether a paid one pays depends on the price and on whether you can tell which jobs came from it, which is why tracking matters before spending does.
Can I outrank the directories?
In some towns, yes. When I checked, independent firms were ranking on their own sites in Maghull and Widnes, and barely at all in Crosby. Worth checking your own town before you commit a budget either way.
Do I need pages for every village I cover?
Usually not. One page that’s clear about where you’ll actually travel tends to do more than several near-identical ones with the names swapped, and those can weaken each other.
How many reviews do I need?
There’s no number I could honestly give you. What matters is how yours compare with the businesses appearing above you in the map listing, which you can see for yourself in a couple of minutes on a phone.
Do you work with trades outside the North West?
Yes. Almost all of it is remote and most clients are nowhere near me. This page is about trades because the search behaviour is its own thing, not because you need to be nearby.
Start with an assessment
Tell me what you do, where you’ll actually travel and which jobs you want more of. I’ll check whether independent firms rank at all where you are, because that single answer decides whether to spend on content or on the profile. Then you’ll get the first change worth making. Request a free assessment, or get in touch. Other trades are on the industries page.