Local SEO, explained for tradesmen
Why isn't my trade business showing up on Google?
The short answer
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.
First, check it the way a customer would
Searching for your own business name and seeing yourself proves very little. You have been to your own website, Google knows it, and the result is shaped around you.
Search for what a customer types instead. Trade, then town. On the Liverpool joinery account we run, the searches that actually produced calls were "joiners liverpool" and "joiner liverpool", not the business name.
If you are not in the map results for that, work down this list. They are in the order they usually bite.
1. You have no Google Business Profile
A website on its own does not put you on the map. The map results come from a separate thing, a Google Business Profile, and if you have never made one you cannot appear there at all.
The check. Search your business name plus your town. If there is no panel on the right with your hours, photos and a call button, you have not got one.
2. You have one, but it was never verified
An unverified profile can sit there looking finished and still not show to anybody. Verification is Google confirming you really do trade where you say you do, usually by post, phone or video.
The check. Sign in and look for a verification prompt or a "not verified" notice at the top. If you cannot get in at all, somebody else may hold the account, and that is a job in itself.
3. Your main category is not the one people search
Google leans hard on the primary category. A joiner listed as "Construction company" is competing in a different race from the one his customers are running.
The check. Open your profile and read the first category. If it is not the plain word for your trade, that alone can keep you out of the map results.
4. You have no reviews, or none for months
Google names prominence as one of the three things it weighs for local results, alongside relevance and distance. Reviews are the part of prominence you control.
Two lads with the same van and the same categories will not rank the same if one has forty recent reviews and the other has three from 2023.
The check. Look at the date on your newest review. If it is older than your last invoice, asking has stopped being a habit.
5. Your service area does not cover where you work
Distance is measured from where Google thinks you are to where the searcher is. If you work out of a village and serve the city ten miles away, a search from the city centre may never reach you.
The check. Ask somebody in the town you want work in to search trade plus town on their own phone, and tell you who comes up. Do not search it yourself from your own kitchen.
6. Your website never says which trade, or which towns
Plenty of trade websites say "quality workmanship" and "over 20 years" and never once name the job or the place. Google has nothing to match against, so it does not match you.
The check. Read your homepage out loud. If the words a customer would type are not in the first paragraph, they are probably not anywhere.
Is Google punishing me?
Almost never. Penalties exist, but they are rare for a small trade business and they usually follow something deliberate, like buying links or filling a page with hidden text.
The ordinary answer is duller. Google has not been given enough to work with, so it ranks somebody who has.
That is worth knowing because it changes what you do next. You are not appealing against a decision. You are filling in gaps, and each one you fill is visible in weeks rather than years.
What if you cannot get into the listing at all?
This is common enough that it is worth its own answer. An old web designer, a former partner or a lapsed email address can leave a profile that is clearly yours and completely out of reach.
Google has a process for it. You request access, the current owner gets a few days to respond, and if they do not, you can ask Google to transfer it to you.
It is slow and it is worth starting today rather than after everything else, because nothing you do to the website will make up for a listing you cannot edit.
What should you fix first?
In this order, because each one is worth more than the one after it.
- Claim and verify the profile. Nothing else works until this does.
- Set the primary category to your trade, in the plainest word for it.
- Set the service area to the places you will genuinely drive to.
- Start asking every finished job for a review, the same day.
- Put the trade and the towns on your website, in the first paragraph.
On the Liverpool joinery account we run, the first month alone doubled how often he was seen, and nothing clever was involved. Items one to three above were most of it.
We cover Manchester and the North West, and this is what the work involves. If you would rather somebody just looked, we will run these checks on your business and tell you what we find.