SEO for Tradespeople

A trade does not get found by being good. It gets found by being visible at the moment someone needs a plumber, an electrician or a roofer. Those moments are local, urgent, and they happen on a phone in a hurry. The first three results take most of the calls. This page is about how a Norfolk trade gets into that list.

Where the calls come from

Two places, and they are not the same.

The Map Pack. Google shows three local businesses above the normal results, with a map and a call button. For a trade, that is the whole game. Profile signals and reviews make up over half of local ranking weight (Whitespark 2026 via The Right Crew).

AI assistants. Across Norfolk, around half of consumers now ask ChatGPT or Gemini for a local recommendation (BrightLocal).

Here is the useful part for trades. Searches like "emergency plumber near me" still show the Map Pack, not an AI answer. Local SEO has not been replaced. It has been joined by a second front. The businesses with strong signals now win both.

What a customer actually does

Someone's boiler fails on a Tuesday morning. They search. They see three names. They call the first one that looks real.

They are not reading your copy. They are checking three things, fast.

• Does this look like a real business?
• Do other people trust it?
• Can I call it right now?

Everything below serves those three questions. If a change does not help one of them, it is not worth doing.

Where Norfolk trades lose work

The same failures come up again and again.

• A profile that is half-filled. Services missing. Service areas wrong. No new photos since 2023.
• Reviews that stopped. Ten or twenty old reviews is the norm. Fifty recent ones is the threshold that wins.
• No replies to reviews. Replying to 75% of reviews is linked to ranking around two places higher. It is free, and almost nobody does it.
• One page for the whole trade. Nothing for "boiler repair Dereham" or "extension builder Wymondham".
• A site nobody can read. Content loaded by script. No schema. No clear list of services.

None of this is unusual. All of it is fixable, and most of it is fixable quickly.

What we would check first

Five checks, in the order that pays.

1. Your Map Pack position for three realistic searches. Not vanity terms. The three searches that lead to a booking in your trade.
2. Whether you appear for town-plus-service searches. "Plumber Dereham" matters more than "plumbing services".
3. Your review count, age and response rate. All three, not just the count.
4. Whether your profile lists every service and every town you cover. Missing towns are missing jobs.
5. Whether an AI assistant names you. We ask, and we record who it names instead.

You get the findings whether or not you hire us.

"I already pay for Checkatrade"

Directories rent you visibility. A website owns it. That is the short answer.

The longer one is this. Checkatrade works for people already on Checkatrade. It does nothing for someone typing "emergency plumber Dereham" into Google. And it gives an AI assistant very little structured information to work with.

Keep the directory. Add the thing you own. The two are not in competition.

One page per job, not one page per trade

A trade usually sells five to ten things. Most have a single page.

Each service deserves its own page, with the town in it. "Boiler repair in Dereham" is a page. "Bathroom fitting in Dereham" is another. "Emergency callout" is a third.

That is not padding. It matches how people search. Someone with a leak does not search for "plumbing services". They search for "leak repair near me".

Service-area pages do the same job for geography. If you cover six towns, you have six sets of searches to appear in.

Reviews: what to actually ask for

Most trades ask for a review. Few ask well.

Ask on the day, while the job is fresh and the customer is pleased. Send one link. Do not send a form.

Ask for detail, not stars. A review that names the job ("replaced our boiler in Dereham, same week") is worth more than five that say "great service". It mentions the service, and it mentions the town.

Then reply. Every time. A short reply is enough. It shows the next customer that someone is there.

Speed matters more than you think

Most trade sites run on a template that loads a lot of scripts. On a phone, on 4G, at the side of a road, that is slow.

Visitors leave. Crawlers do too. A plain, fast page beats a heavy one for both, and it is usually cheaper to maintain.

How we work

Four steps, in this order.

1. Audit. Where you appear now, for the searches that bring jobs.
2. Profile and reviews. The fastest wins in this sector, and the cheapest.
3. Pages. One per service, one per town you cover.
4. Monitor. Monthly. Calls, positions, review count.

What good looks like

Six months in, a trade should see three things.

More calls from the Map Pack. A review count that grows without chasing. And a page that appears when someone searches for the job you want more of.

Rankings are the middle of that list. Calls are the point.

Emergency work and planned work

Trades sell two kinds of job, and they are searched differently.

Emergency work is searched in the moment. "Leak repair now". "No heating". Speed, proximity and a phone number decide it.

Planned work is searched over days or weeks. A new bathroom. A rewire. A garden wall. Price, proof and reviews decide it.

Both matter. But they need different pages. An emergency page should be short, fast and click-to-call. A planned-work page should carry photos, prices and timescales.

What a good profile looks like

A complete profile is not complicated. Most are simply unfinished.

• Every service listed, with a one-line description.
• Every town you cover, set as a service area.
• Ten recent photos: work, van, team, finished jobs.
• Opening hours that reflect emergency availability.
• A description that says what you do and where.
• A call button that works on a phone.

That is an hour of work. It is also the highest-return hour in this sector.

Across Norfolk

We work across the county, including Norwich, Dereham and Wymondham.

For larger jobs that involve a research phase before the quote, see SEO for home improvement businesses. The search behaviour is different and so is the content.

Book a free local SEO audit for your Norfolk trade. We will show you where you rank in the Map Pack today, and the fastest route to the top three.

Sources: Whitespark 2026 Local Search Ranking Factors via The Right Crew; BrightLocal; Unity SEO Local SEO and Google Business Profile guides.