SEO for Tradies More calls from local searches.

SEO for tradies is the work that puts your business in front of people searching for the jobs you do, in the suburbs you cover. On a results page that means three places: the map pack, the normal results under it, and the AI answers that now sit above both.

Most tradie searches are local and urgent. Someone types "electrician Joondalup" or "blocked drain near me", looks at the three businesses in the map and calls one. You're competing for those few spots in your area, not page one of the whole internet. The work to get there is specific:

• Google Business Profile: the right categories, service area, hours, photos and a steady flow of reviews.
• A page for each service: so Google can match "switchboard upgrade" to your switchboard page, not your home page.
• Area pages that say something real: the suburbs you cover, jobs you've done there and how fast you get out.
• Clear answers on every page: prices, licence, warranty and what happens after someone calls, written so a person or an AI tool can quote it.
• Tracking: calls and quote forms counted, so you know which searches bring in jobs.

Ongoing SEO for tradies with Source Digital starts from $950 a month + GST, with no lock-in contract. If your current website can't rank because it's one page for everything or painfully slow, a new site is the first job, not SEO.

Be careful with tradie SEO packages at a couple of hundred dollars a month. At that price nobody has time to write a single proper service page, so you're usually paying for a report.

The map pack is decided mostly by three things: how close you are to the person searching, how well your profile matches the job, and how much proof you have. You can't move your yard, but you can fix the other two.

1. Pick the right primary category. It carries the most weight, so choose the one that matches the work you want most, then add secondary categories for the rest.
2. Set your service area to where you actually work. Listing 60 suburbs doesn't help. Listing the ones you want more work in, and having pages for them, does.
3. Add every service with a plain description, using the same names as your website.
4. Upload real job photos every month: the van, before and after shots, the crew on site.
5. Keep your name, address and phone identical everywhere, on your site, Facebook, directories and quotes.
6. Ask every happy customer for a review by text, the day the job is done.

If your profile has never been set up properly, our Google Business Profile setup is the cheapest place to start.

For services, yes. For suburbs, only where you have something real to say. A page per service is the single biggest fix for most tradie websites, because people search for the job, not the trade.

A good area page names the suburbs you cover, shows jobs you've done there, says how quickly you usually get out and answers what locals ask. That's the difference between a page that ranks and a page that gets ignored.

Reviews help twice: they're one of the signals Google uses to order the map pack, and they're what customers read before picking who to call. The total matters, but so do how recent they are and what they say.

A review that says "fixed our burst pipe in Wanneroo within an hour" does more than "great service". It names the job and the suburb, which are the words people search. You can't write reviews for customers and you shouldn't pay for them, but you can make leaving one easy:

• Text the review link when the job is finished, while they're still happy.
• Ask them to mention what you did. Most people will if you ask.
• Reply to every review, good and bad, in plain words.

Omega CS, our CRM, asks happy customers for a Google review automatically, so it doesn't rely on you remembering at 6pm.

By having pages that answer the question clearly, and business details that are easy to check. ChatGPT, Google's AI Overviews and Perplexity pull from pages with a direct answer, then cross check against reviews, directories and your Google profile.

For a tradie that means:

• A plain answer near the top of each service page: what it costs, how long it takes and which areas you cover.
• FAQs written the way people ask out loud, such as "how much does it cost to replace a hot water system in Perth?"
• Structured data (schema) that tells search engines your services, area, hours and licence.
• The same business name, number and details everywhere AI tools look.

This is answer engine optimisation, or AEO. It's part of every plan we run for tradies, not an add-on.

The basics are the same, but each trade's customers search differently, so the pages and priorities change. Here's the short version, with a full guide for each trade below.

Read the full guides: SEO for plumbers, SEO for electricians, SEO for roofers and SEO for builders.

Perth Ceiling Contracting came to us with a new name, a parked domain and zero organic keywords. We built a 12 page custom site where every page maps to a real search from live keyword data, across their area from Yanchep to Rockingham. Prices are published, 79 questions sit in FAQ schema, every enquiry is tracked in GA4, and it scored 98 to 99 for Lighthouse performance in testing. It launched in September 2026. Read the Perth Ceiling Contracting case study.

Honest timing: a well built site usually starts picking up local searches within 2 to 3 months, and bigger city-wide searches take longer. We don't promise rankings.

SEO for tradies isn't for everyone. If you're booked out for months on referrals, or can't take on more work, spend the money elsewhere. If you need calls this week, Google Ads gets you there faster while SEO builds underneath.