SEO for Sydney tradies: what actually works

Trade businesses get sold more marketing rubbish than almost anyone, because the leads are valuable and the owners are too busy to audit what they bought.

Here is the short version of what works, roughly in order of return.

1. Your Google Business Profile, finished properly

For a tradie this outranks the website in importance. It is the map listing, it is free, and most of your competitors have half filled it in.

• Primary category chosen to match what people search, not what you call yourself.
• Every service listed separately. If you do fifteen things, list fifteen.
• Service area set to the suburbs you actually drive to, with your home address hidden.
• Photos from real jobs, added as you go. Two a week beats fifty once.
• Hours correct, including public holidays — which is when emergency work pays best.

2. Reviews, asked for every single time

Reviews drive both whether you appear in the map pack and whether someone rings you after they find you. Forty reviews at 4.6 beats six at 5.0 on both counts.

The only system that works is asking at the moment the job finishes, while you are standing there and they are happy. Not an email three weeks later.

1. 01Get your review link from your Google profile and shorten it.
2. 02Save it in a text message template on your phone: “Thanks again — if you’ve got 30 seconds, a review really helps a small business: [link]”
3. 03Send it from the van before you drive off.
4. 04Reply to every one that comes in, including the bad ones.

3. A page for each thing you do

One “Services” page listing everything will not rank for any of it. Someone searching “hot water system repair” should land on a page about hot water system repair.

Write them in your own words. You know more about this than any copywriter, and the pages that rank best tend to be the ones that sound like someone who has actually done the job — including what it costs, how long it takes, and what usually goes wrong.

4. Suburb pages, but only real ones

“Electrician Marrickville” is a far easier search to win than “electrician Sydney”, and the person searching it is closer to booking.

The trap is generating forty pages with the suburb name swapped. Google handles that exactly as you would expect. Make a suburb page only if you can write something true about working there — the housing stock, the parking, the common jobs, the fact that half the terraces have original wiring.

Five genuine suburb pages beat forty generated ones, and take about the same evening to write.

5. A website that works on a phone

Your customers are standing in a laundry looking at a leak. They are on a phone, on mobile data, in a hurry.

• Loads in about a second. Test it on your own phone with wi-fi off.
• Phone number at the top of every page, tappable.
• A form with three fields, not nine.
• Your service area in writing so people can tell if you cover them.
• Prices or price ranges if you can bear it. Most of your competitors will not, which is exactly why it works.

What is not worth your evening

• Directory submission packages. A handful of directories matter. Three hundred do not, and the packages selling them are mostly automated.
• Buying links. Fastest way to a penalty on the listing you depend on.
• Blogging for the sake of it. Unless you will keep it up, three posts from 2023 is worse than none.
• Social media, for most trades. It is not where the leads are. A profile that exists and looks alive is plenty.
• Anyone guaranteeing page one. Nobody controls Google’s results. This is the oldest tell there is.

How long it takes

Profile changes can show within days. Website changes take weeks. Competitive suburb searches take months. Anyone promising faster is guessing.

If you need the phone ringing this week, that is what Google Ads is for — you buy the position instead of earning it. Most trades do best running both: ads carrying the load while the free traffic builds underneath.