Very few people search for "plumber". They search for "plumber in Salford", "roofer near me" or "kitchen fitter Guildford". If your website only says you work "across the region", you are invisible for most of those searches.
Here is how to give Google what it needs to show you in the places you actually work. No tricks, just the basics done properly.
1. Be clear about where you work
Write down the towns and villages you genuinely cover and are happy to travel to. Be honest: listing places 60 miles away brings calls you will turn down and does not help you rank.
Group them. Most trades have one or two main towns and a ring of smaller places around them. Your main towns deserve their own pages; the smaller places can be listed on those pages.
2. Say it on your home page
Your home page heading and the first lines underneath should name your trade and your main area: "Roofing in Maidstone and across Kent". Then list the areas you cover further down the page. Short, plain, and the same wording every time.
3. Give your main areas their own pages
An area page tells Google, and the customer, that you really work there. A good one includes:
- A heading with your trade and the town ("Plumbing and heating in Salford")
- A few sentences about the work you do there, in your own words
- The nearby places you also cover
- The services you offer, linking to their own pages
- Your phone number, a quote form and a WhatsApp button
What not to do: copy the same paragraph twenty times and swap the town name. Google recognises thin, duplicated pages and they do little or nothing. Fewer, genuinely useful area pages beat dozens of copies.
4. A page for each service
The same logic applies to what you do. "Roof repairs", "Flat roofing", "Chimney repairs" and "New roofs" should each have a page that explains the job, what it involves, roughly what affects the price, and the areas you do it in. Searches for a specific job land on the page for that job.
5. Keep your business details identical everywhere
Google cross-checks your details across the web: your website, your Google Business Profile, Facebook, directories such as Checkatrade, Yell or Houzz, and your invoices. Use exactly the same:
- Business name
- Phone number
- Service areas (and address, if you show one)
If your website says "J Smith Roofing" with one number and your Google profile says "Smith Roofing Ltd" with another, you are making Google's job harder.
6. Set up and complete your Google Business Profile
The map results at the top of local searches come from Google Business Profile, not from your website. Set yours up as a service-area business, choose the right category, add your service areas and link it to your website. We cover it step by step in our guide to Google Business Profile for trades.
7. Collect real reviews that mention the job and the place
Reviews help you rank and help people choose you. When customers write something like "Great job on our flat roof in Bearsted", that tells both Google and future customers what you do and where. Ask every happy customer, every time. Our guide to getting your first Google reviews the honest way has a simple routine.
8. Make the site fast and easy on a phone
Most local searches happen on phones. A slow site, or one where the phone number is hard to find, loses people before they ever see your work. Check your own site on your phone over mobile data. If it takes more than a few seconds or you have to pinch and zoom, fix that.
How long does it take?
Be patient. A brand new website can take weeks or months to settle into local results, especially in busy areas. The trades that win are the ones that set things up properly, keep their details consistent, and keep adding real reviews and photos over time.
The short version
- Name your trade and main town on the home page
- One genuinely useful page per main area and per service
- Identical business details everywhere
- A complete Google Business Profile linked to your site
- A steady flow of real reviews
- A fast, phone-friendly site
Every SiteForTrades website is built this way from the start: a page for each service and the areas you cover, your details on every page, and call, WhatsApp and quote buttons always one tap away.