Local SEO for tradespeople: a site that earns enquiries
A trade business does not need much website. It needs the right six or eight pages, built honestly, pointed at the towns where the work actually is.
The shape of trade demand
Trade searches split in two. Emergencies (“emergency plumber Lewes”) are won by proximity, reviews and answering the phone; your Google Business Profile does most of that work. Planned work (“bathroom fitters Lewes”, “rewire cost Victorian house”) is researched on websites, compared, and booked weeks later. The site’s job is the second kind, and it is where service-area pages pay for themselves.
What to build, in order
- One strong page per service you want more of: what is included, how you price, how long jobs take, photographs of your own work.
- A handful of service-area pages for the towns where you already work, each carrying real local substance. Start with the towns your van visits weekly, not the edge of the map.
- A proof page or section: reviews, accreditations (Gas Safe, NICEIC, TrustMark), guarantees, insurance.
- A contact page that takes ten seconds to use on a phone.
Your site and your Business Profile do different jobs
The Business Profile wins the map pack for searches near your base; it cannot cover eleven other towns. Area pages on your site are how the towns without your address find you, and the profile links to the site for everything a profile cannot say. Reviews belong on both: collected on Google, quoted on the relevant service and area pages.
Photographs of real jobs beat everything stock
One photo of your scaffold on a flint cottage in the town the page is about does more than any paragraph. It is evidence, it is unique by definition, and it makes the local paragraph easy to write because it gives you something true to describe. Build pages where you have photographs and the defensibility question answers itself.
A first ninety days
Month one: service pages and the proof section. Month two: the first five area pages, written with real jobs in them. Month three: measure impressions and enquiries, fill the gaps the data shows, and only then decide whether the next tranche of towns is justified.
Where Townsmith fits
Townsmith generates the area pages from one blueprint as real WordPress pages, leaves a slot for the local paragraph on each, and refuses its top score until you fill it. The free plugin covers one service across five areas, which is precisely a sensible first tranche for a trade business.