Local SEO for a trade business comes down to a short list of things done consistently. Here's the list we work through for every client, split into what to do once and what to do every month. Check your own business against it; most owners find three or four items they've never touched.
Google Business Profile
- Primary category matches your main service exactly (e.g. "Roofing contractor," not "Contractor").
- Every honest secondary category added.
- Business name is your real name, with no added keywords.
- Service area set to the cities you actually serve, address hidden if you work from home.
- Every service listed with a one-paragraph description.
- Business description written around your trade and your main city.
- Hours accurate, including holiday hours.
- Phone number matches your website exactly.
- Website link points to your homepage (or a city page if you have multiple locations).
- At least 20 real photos: crew, trucks, finished work, before-and-afters. Add more monthly.
- Questions and answers seeded with the five things customers always ask.
- Booking or quote link added if you have one.
Reviews
- Direct review link saved and in every request.
- Automated text request fires when every job closes.
- Every review replied to, including the bad ones.
- Review count and rating checked against the top three competitors monthly.
- Best review quotes used on the website's service pages (real ones only).
The full system is in how to get more Google reviews.
Website
- A dedicated page for each service you want calls for, with its own title, heading and content.
- A page for each city you serve, with genuinely different content, not the same page with the city name swapped.
- Name, address and phone in the footer of every page, matching the profile exactly.
- Click-to-call phone number visible on mobile without scrolling.
- Loads in under three seconds on a phone connection.
- LocalBusiness (or your trade's specific type) schema markup on the homepage; Service schema on service pages.
- Title tags follow the pattern: Service in City | Business Name.
- Real project photos with descriptive alt text.
- Reviews embedded or quoted with a link to the profile.
- Internal links from the homepage to every service and city page.
- Sitemap submitted in Google Search Console and no indexing errors.
If the site can't support most of this, it's usually faster to rebuild than retrofit. That's the case we make on the website design page.
Citations and consistency
- One exact version of name, address and phone chosen and documented.
- Listed and matching on the big directories: Yelp, Bing Places, Apple Maps, Facebook, BBB, Angi, Nextdoor.
- Listed on your trade's directories (manufacturer "find an installer" pages, association member lists, supplier directories).
- Old or duplicate listings claimed and fixed or removed.
Authority
- Links from local sources: chamber of commerce, sponsorships, local news, charity work, suppliers.
- Manufacturer certifications listed on their sites with a link to yours.
- One useful article a month on your site answering a real homeowner question.
- Spam competitors in your map pack reported through Google's edit tools.
The monthly routine
- Post on the profile weekly (finished jobs are enough).
- Upload new photos.
- Reply to new reviews and check your count against competitors.
- Check rankings for your main services in each city from a phone in that area, or with a rank tracker that does it for you.
- Review Search Console for pages losing clicks or errors.
- Publish one article.
- Pursue one new local link.
What to expect
Profile and review work moves the map pack within weeks in most markets. Website pages and authority take a few months and then keep compounding. The business that does this list every month for a year is very hard to displace, because it has built an asset instead of renting attention. If you want the list run for you, with rankings reported by city every month, that's the local SEO service.