Written by the person who does the work
Local SEO, explained for tradesmen
Short reads on getting found in your own town. Every number on this blog comes from a real account and says where it came from.
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From no website to 136 calls from Google, in six months
A Liverpool joiner started with no website at all and customers telling him they could not find him online. Six months later, between January and June 2026, his Google listing was seen 4,194 times, turned up in 1,014 searches and produced 136 calls, with no ads running at any point.
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Why isn't my trade business showing up on Google?
Usually because Google has nothing to rank you on, not because it is punishing you. The six common causes are no Google Business Profile, an unverified one, the wrong categories, no reviews, a service area that does not cover where you work, and a website that never says which trade you do or which towns you cover.
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Checkatrade or Google, where should a joiner get his next job?
They are different machines. A directory rents you a place in somebody else's list, where the customer is choosing between you and the trades either side of you. A Google listing is yours, it sits in the map results for your trade and your town, and the person tapping it is ringing you rather than picking from a shortlist.
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How long does local SEO take to work for a tradesman?
Weeks for the map, months for the website. On the Liverpool joinery account, visibility doubled inside the first 30 days and every key search term was in the top three within 90. The website is slower: its monthly clicks went from 5 to over 70 across twelve months, with no ad spend.
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Seven things costing joiners jobs on Google, and the fix for each
The seven we find most often are an unclaimed or unverified listing, a vague primary category, a service area drawn round the wrong place, no recent reviews, a phone number that rings out, a website that never names the towns, and nothing on the page that tells Google which trade you actually do.
Who writes this
Scott Kemp runs Digital Media Launch and does the client work himself. Everything here comes out of accounts he is in every week rather than out of a content plan.
If a post quotes a number, the page says which account it came from and when it was read. If we cannot source it, we do not print it.
Would you rather we just looked?
We will check your Google listing and your search results and tell you what we find, before anybody talks about working together.