How Tradesmen Can Rank on Google in Their County

"How do I get to the top of Google?" is the question I hear most from tradesmen. Nobody can promise you the top spot, and anyone who does is selling something. But there's a lot you can do to give yourself the best chance of showing up when people in your county search for what you do.

Local search has two parts. There's the map results (the three businesses with the pins), and there are the normal website results underneath. You want to show up in both.

Part one: the map results

These come from your Google Business Profile. Google decides who to show using relevance, distance and prominence. Relevance is how well you match the search, so the right categories and services matter. Distance is how close you are to the person searching, which you can't change. Prominence is how well known you look, and reviews, photos and mentions across the web all feed into it.

The practical steps: fill the profile in completely, pick the right categories, add real photos, and collect reviews steadily.

Part two: your website

For the normal results, Google reads your site to work out what you do and where. A few things make that easy for it:

• A page for each main job. "Roof repairs", "fuse board upgrades", "bathroom fitting". One page, one job, written in plain language.
• A clear statement of where you work. Name your counties and the main towns. A page that says you cover "all of Ireland" doesn't match anyone's search for "plasterer in Wexford".
• Your name, address area and phone number in the same format everywhere.
• A fast site that works on a phone. Most local searches happen on mobile.
• Proper page titles. Each page's title should say the job and the place, for example "Electrician in Galway | Fuse Boards and Rewires | Your Business".

Covering more than one county

If you work across a few counties, or north and south of the border, don't try to cram every place name onto one page. Give your biggest areas their own pages, each with real content: the towns you cover there, the jobs you've done, and any local detail that shows you actually work there. A thin page that only swaps the town name won't help and can do harm. Write fewer pages and make each one properly useful.

That's how we approach it on our own site, which has a page for each trade and for the biggest trade and county combinations, and covers all 32 counties of Ireland, north and south. You can see the idea on our electricians page.

Be patient

A new website usually takes a few months to build up search traffic. Ads or word of mouth bring in work while that happens. If someone promises page one in two weeks for a competitive search, be careful.

A simple monthly routine

1. Ask every happy customer for a review.
2. Post a photo of a finished job to your Google profile.
3. Add one new job photo or short write-up to your website.
4. Check Google Search Console (it's free) to see which searches you appear for.

It's not glamorous, but doing it every month, for a year, puts you ahead of most of the competition. If you'd like us to set the foundation for you, drop us a message.