Most tradespeople approach this in the wrong order. They build a website, wait, see nothing, and conclude that Google is a mystery or a racket. The website is step three. Doing steps one and two first is what makes the difference between enquiries in a fortnight and enquiries in a year.
Step 1: Claim your Google Business Profile
Free, an afternoon, and the highest-return thing available to a local trade. When someone searches "plumber near me", the map and the three listings above the ordinary results are Business Profiles. No website appears there. If you have no profile, you cannot be in the part of the page where most local decisions are made.
Set a service area rather than publishing your home address, choose the most specific category available for your trade, state your hours honestly, and add at least ten photographs of your own work. The detailed setup covers the four mistakes that hold most profiles back.
Step 2: Get reviews on it
Reviews do two jobs at once: they move you up in the local results, and they are what a customer reads before ringing. Ten genuine reviews on a profile will out-perform a beautiful website with none.
Ask in person while you are packing up, then text the direct link before you drive off. Never offer anything in exchange — incentivised reviews breach Google’s policies and can cost you the ones you already have. More on asking properly.
Step 3: A website with real service pages
Now the website matters, and its structure matters more than its design. This is where most trade sites quietly lose: one combined "Services" page competes for nothing, because there is no page for Google to match against "boiler repairs" or "emergency electrician" or any of the other specific things people actually search.
The cost of getting it wrong is invisible, which is why it persists. A handsome site with one services page does not look like it is failing — it looks finished. Our checklist of what a trade website needs is the standard worth judging yours against.
Step 4: Make your details identical everywhere
Your business name, address and phone number should be written exactly the same way on your website, your Google profile, your Facebook page and every directory you are listed on. "Ltd" versus "Limited", an old mobile number on a listing you forgot about, two spellings of your street — each small inconsistency makes it slightly harder for Google to be confident the listings are the same business.
Spend an hour finding your old listings and correcting them. It is dull and it works.
Step 5: Wait, and know what you are waiting for
The profile can produce enquiries within days. The website is slower: indexed in a week or two, appearing for specific long searches within a month, competing for the valuable ones in three to six. That is normal rather than a sign something is broken, and the timeline is worth knowing in advance so you do not panic in month two.
If nothing is happening
- No profile, or an unverified one. By far the commonest cause, and the one that costs the most while it goes unnoticed.
- No reviews. The second commonest.
- No page for the thing being searched. You cannot rank for "emergency electrician" without a page about emergency electrical work.
- The site was never indexed. Check Search Console, and check the build did not leave a "discourage search engines" setting switched on. It happens more often than anyone admits.
If step three is the one you have been putting off, we’ll rebuild your homepage free in 48 hours so you can see what a properly structured version of your site looks like before spending anything.