If you run a trade business in Northampton, most of your new work probably comes from two places: word of mouth and Google. Word of mouth looks after itself if the work is good. Google needs a bit more attention. This checklist covers what we look at first when a tradesperson asks why a competitor keeps appearing above them.
1. Get your Google Business Profile category right
Your primary category is the single most important setting on your profile. It should describe your main service as precisely as possible. "Electrician" is better than "Contractor". "Roofing contractor" is better than "Builder" if roofing is most of your work. You can add secondary categories for other services, but do not add ten loosely related ones. It dilutes the signal.
Check what categories your best-ranking competitors use. You cannot see them directly on the profile, but free browser extensions will show them, and the pattern is usually obvious.
2. Set a realistic service area
Service-area businesses can hide their address and list the places they cover. Choose towns and districts you genuinely work in: Duston, Kingsthorpe, Weston Favell, Wootton, Moulton, and so on. Listing the whole of the East Midlands does not help you rank further away. Proximity to the searcher is still a large factor, and Google knows where you are based.
3. Make your name, address and phone consistent everywhere
This is the dull part, and it matters. Your business name, address and phone number should appear identically on your website, your Google profile, and directories such as Yell, Bing Places, Apple Business Connect, Checkatrade, TrustATrader and any trade body listings. If you have moved from a unit in St James to one in Brackmills, the old address will still be floating around. Citation cleanup means finding and fixing those old records.
4. Build a page for each main service
A single "Services" page listing everything you do gives Google very little to work with. If you do boiler installation, boiler repair, bathroom fitting and underfloor heating, each deserves its own page. Explain what is involved, typical timescales, what affects the price, the brands you fit, and the questions people ask before booking. Add real photos of jobs you have done.
5. Add location pages, but only good ones
Location pages are useful when they contain real local detail. A page about working in the older terraced streets around Abington, with notes on access, parking and typical property types, is useful. Twenty identical pages with only the town name swapped are not, and can drag the whole site down. Start with the three to five areas that bring you the most work.
6. Ask for reviews in a routine way
Reviews influence both rankings and whether people call you. The trades who have lots of reviews are not lucky; they ask every time. Send a short text with a direct review link when you finish a job. Reply to every review, including the occasional bad one, calmly and briefly. Never pay for reviews or write them yourself. Google removes them and can suspend profiles.
7. Show photos of your actual work
Profiles with recent, genuine photos tend to attract more clicks. Take before-and-after shots on every job, with permission from the customer. Photograph your van, your team at work and finished results. Stock images do nothing for you here.
8. Make your website fast on a phone
Most trade searches happen on mobile, often in a hurry because something has gone wrong. Test your site on your own phone using mobile data, not office wifi. If it takes more than a few seconds to load, or the contact button is hard to find, you are losing jobs. Common culprits are huge image files, sliders and too many plugins.
9. Make contacting you easy
Put a clear call to action at the top of every page. Keep the contact form short: name, contact details, postcode and a description of the job. Every extra field reduces the number of people who complete it. Tell people when they can expect a reply.
10. Track enquiries, not just rankings
Rankings move around and vary across the town. What matters is calls and form submissions. Set up conversion tracking in Google Analytics and check the calls and website clicks reported on your Business Profile each month. If enquiries are rising, the work is paying off even if a particular ranking has dipped.
Where to start
If you only have an hour this week, spend it on points one, two and three. They are free, quick and often make a visible difference within a few weeks. Points four and five take longer and are where professional help can save time, but nothing here is beyond a determined business owner.
A worked example
Take a typical case: an electrician based in Kingsthorpe who mostly works in the northern half of town and the villages beyond. Their profile lists "Contractor" as the primary category, the service area is "Northamptonshire", there are eleven reviews from three years ago, and the website has one page called "Services" listing everything from rewires to EV chargers.
Working through the checklist, the changes would be: switch the primary category to "Electrician"; set the service area to the districts and villages they actually cover; add services such as consumer unit replacement, rewiring, EV charger installation and electrical inspection to the profile; build a page for each of those services on the website, with typical costs, timescales and photos; and start sending a review link after every job. None of this is complicated. Most of it is a weekend's work, and the effect on calls is often visible within a couple of months.
The checklist in one table
| Task | Time | How often |
|---|---|---|
| Check primary and secondary categories | 15 minutes | Once, then yearly |
| Set service area to real districts and villages | 15 minutes | Once, then when it changes |
| Check name, address and phone across main directories | 2 to 3 hours | Once, then yearly |
| Build one page per main service | Half a day per page | Once, then refresh yearly |
| Ask every happy customer for a review | 2 minutes per job | Every job |
| Reply to reviews | 5 minutes a week | Weekly |
| Add new job photos to the profile | 10 minutes | Monthly |
| Check enquiries and profile actions | 15 minutes | Monthly |
When to get help
If you work through the list and still do not appear, the problem is usually prominence: competitors have more reviews, more links and more history. That takes longer to fix, and is where local SEO support and link building can help. If your site has deeper problems, such as pages not being indexed, a technical SEO check is worthwhile. For trades working beyond Northampton, see our notes on Wellingborough and Daventry.
If you would like a second pair of eyes, we are happy to look at your profile and website and tell you honestly what we would fix first.