The order matters more than the tactics
Most trade businesses doing their own local SEO work on the wrong thing. They buy links before their service pages exist, or write forty suburb pages before their Google profile has a correct primary category.
Work through this in order. Each step is worth more than everything below it.
One: Google Business Profile
For most trades the map pack takes the majority of local clicks, the work costs nothing, and it moves faster than anything else on this list. Get the primary category right, add every relevant secondary category, list your services individually, define the service area honestly, and get photos in that were taken this year.
Then build a habit of asking every satisfied customer for a review, because review velocity and volume both matter and neither can be bought safely. The full method is in Google Business Profile for tradies, and it is the one piece of this you should do this week regardless of everything else.
Two: one page per service
If you offer six services and your website has a single page listing all six, you have told Google you are vaguely about all of them and specifically about none.
Give each service its own page, with the service name in the title, a real description of how the job is done, what it costs or what drives the cost, what you will not take on, and photos of that specific work. Six substantial pages beat one long one comfortably, and they give you somewhere sensible to send an ad click.
This is also where most trade sites lose enquiries rather than rankings. A page that ranks and does not convert has failed, which is what websites for trades is about.
Three: location pages, carefully
Location pages work when they are real and hurt when they are not. Forty pages with the suburb name swapped are doorway pages, Google treats them as such, and they can pull the whole site down with them.
Write one for each area you genuinely work in, and make it specific: the council, the housing stock, the actual local conditions that affect your trade, jobs you have done there. If you cannot write four hundred honest words about working in a suburb, do not make a page for it. Six good ones beat thirty thin ones, and that is not a stylistic preference — it is how the pages get judged.
Four: technical basics
Fast on mobile data, because that is how tradie customers browse. HTTPS. A sensible URL for every page. Business name, address and phone identical everywhere they appear, including on your profile and in every directory.
Add LocalBusiness structured data and mark up your FAQs. None of this will make a bad site rank, but a slow site with inconsistent details will underperform a good one for no reason worth accepting.
Five: links, last
Links still matter and they are the hardest thing on this list to get honestly. Worth pursuing: local sponsorships, suppliers who list installers, industry associations, genuine local press, and the businesses you subcontract with.
Not worth pursuing: purchased packages, guest post networks, and anything sold by the hundred. They are easy to detect, and the cleanup costs more than the links did.
What to expect, honestly
Profile work can move in weeks. Service and location pages typically take three to six months to settle. Competitive metro rankings take longer than that and sometimes do not arrive at all in the most crowded trades, which is a real risk you carry and one nobody should pretend away.
That risk is precisely the argument for renting enquiries while you build. The trade-off between the two approaches is in pay-per-lead versus a retainer agency, and the mechanics of renting are in how pay-per-lead works.
If you would rather not do it yourself
Our local SEO service is this list, run consistently, with everything registered in your name. To have your profile and site looked at, contact us or call 0468 062 773.
Frequently asked questions
How long does local SEO take for a trade business?
Google Business Profile improvements can move within a few weeks. Organic rankings for a neglected or new site usually take four to nine months in a competitive metro trade, and longer where the domain has no history and no links. Anyone promising results in thirty days is describing the profile work and calling it SEO.
Do I need to blog?
Almost certainly not in the way agencies mean. Weekly posts about seasonal tips do very little for a trade business. What earns rankings is a proper page for each service you offer and genuinely distinct pages for the areas you work in. Write ten good pages once instead of fifty thin ones forever.
Are citations and directory listings still worth doing?
The big ones are worth an afternoon: the main Australian directories, your industry associations, anywhere your customers actually look. Buying a package of two hundred obscure listings is not worth doing. Consistency of name, address and phone across them matters more than the count.
Should I hire someone or do it myself?
Do the Google Business Profile work yourself regardless. It is free, it is the highest-return item on the list, and nobody knows your services better than you. Consider hiring for the technical work and the ongoing content, which are the parts that need consistent hours rather than special knowledge.