How to boost your SEO as a tradesperson

Deciding how to boost SEO is a multi-billion pound industry, focused on improving websites against hundreds of different factors. It’s a complex process and often one where those with the biggest budgets get the best rewards.

How to compete without spending a fortune

Well, by joining Checkatrade we offer some great solutions to improve your rankings and gain new customers from search engines.

Below, we’ve outlined how this is done as well as some top SEO advice for tradespeople and we take a look at what are the best local business SEO strategies.

We have our own SEO strategy too, which all Checkatrade tradespeople benefit from. After all, you found this blog didn’t you? A job well done to the Checkatrade SEO team!

What is SEO?

SEO stands for “search engine optimisation”. This term covers any activities done to help a business (usually their website, social media pages or directory listing) rank higher in search engines, such as Google.

When your potential customer searches for a service or product you provide, you want to appear on Google, right? Well then you need SEO.

The elements of SEO include:

• On page: Improving the content on your site and making sure it’s relevant for keywords you’d like to rank for. A key part of this is keyword research.
• Content: There’s no SEO without content. Google’s little bots read content to understand what the page is about and then rank it if it makes the cut. Also, content is the difference between a customer staying or leaving your website, socials or business listing.
• Link building: Asking other sites to link to your website. This sends extra traffic and improves the authority of your site.
• Technical SEO: Improving the way your site works. For example, you could make it more secure or load faster.

By covering these areas and working to improve them, you can attempt to boost the rankings of your website.

You’ll need to create content that’s relevant for users, and provide a better experience for visitors to your site, so there are additional benefits as well.

The below graphic shows some of the key areas:

What is local business SEO?

In addition to the above three areas, you can also deploy local SEO tactics to improve your rankings in a specific region of the UK. This helps reduce the area you’re focused on so you can find more locally relevant customers.

Instead of trying to rank for “builder”, which is highly competitive and will include many customers in regions you can’t serve, you would try and rank for “builder in Chichester” for example.

This helps you reach a more targeted audience and is going to be easier to rank for.

You’ll still be competing with other Chichester builders who also do local SEO, or have websites that rank well, and this is an area where Checkatrade can help – more on this later!

What is a local SEO strategy?

Some of the best local SEO tactics include:

• Creating content that’s relevant to the local area.
• Get your company added to high-quality directories, such as Checkatrade.
• Ensuring your locations and contact details are mentioned on your website and elsewhere (also known as local SEO citations).
• Getting local reviews.

Why is SEO important for tradespeople?

It’s never been easier to create a website and appear in search results, leading to a wealth of new businesses.

This increased competition also means it’s harder to stand out in a crowded market.

After all, only one site can rank number one on Google for each term.

For this reason, SEO is important for tradespeople as it gives you the best possible chance to rank for the terms your prospective customers are searching for.

Aren’t all websites SEO-fied?

It’s a myth that websites are automatically optimised for SEO. You have to put time and energy into SEO in order to get the best results.

That’s why people search for how to boost SEO. Because it’s an ongoing process and there’s always new content you could create, local SEO additions to make, or other ways you could optimise your site.

It’s worth noting that SEO for tradespeople, and any sector, is a long-term process. It takes time to make the improvements, for them to be accessed by search engines and for results to change.

This process is well worth it in the long run but if you need a quick solution, you could consider running paid adverts on search engines, which is also known as pay per click marketing.

Our guide on how Google and PPC works is a great place to start.

How does Checkatrade boost SEO?

As we’ve established SEO for tradespeople is hard. It takes a lot of time and you’ll need a budget for SEO.

If you don’t have the resources to do your own SEO, or funds to pay for an SEO agency, you could consider partnering with another site instead.

But how can you leverage top sites to appear on Google search results?

One approach is barnacle SEO. Much like how barnacles attach to bigger creatures and ships, you can place your brand on a larger site that does their own SEO.

So instead of trying to rank for terms with your site, your aim is that the larger site will rank for the terms instead. It’s a fantastic solution for small businesses that don’t have the time or budget to compete.

Benefit from Checkatrade’s SEO strategy and team

One way you can do this is by joining Checkatrade and creating a profile. We have a highly skilled SEO team internally and work with other agencies to create hundreds of articles every month.

As a result of this work, we currently rank for over 450,000 keywords* so reach customers in all sorts of regions and niches.

So, when people search for how to guides, cost guides, design inspiration, landlord advice, expert advice pieces and industry news, there’s a good chance they’ll see a piece of Checkatrade content.

From those pieces they can search our database of tradespeople, helping our members to get more business thanks to our SEO efforts. It’s no wonder our team were shortlisted for the UK Content Award in 2021.

In addition to our content, we have category pages for different regions (e.g. plumber in Southampton). These pages help our members with local SEO, as we target regional terms and put Checkatrade members in the results when people are in need of help.

Lastly, all our member pages are optimised in line with SEO best practice, increasing the chance you’ll appear for the terms people are searching for. Sound good? Then why not start your profile today?

FAQs

What are local SEO citations and the benefits of service reviews?

Local SEO citations are a key part of SEO for trades, as well as any good local SEO strategy. They include all of the times when another website mentions your contact details and company name. These citations help show you’re a real business and give you added authority.

Service reviews are also known as review snippets, a type of rich snippet. They are reviews of your services that can appear directly in the search results. These can be taken from your own site (with the right markup), your Checkatrade profile, or other sources. For more details read our rich snippets guide.

Will you do SEO on my website?

Whilst we can help your business get known on search engines through our content and profile pages, we can’t do SEO on your website. We do however have details on excellent web designers in the UK that you can browse here in our directory.

Will you replace my SEO agency?

No, we wouldn’t recommend you stop other existing SEO work even if you add a Checkatrade profile. It’s still important to optimise your own website where possible, especially if you already use an agency and are happy with them.

How can I learn more about SEO?

We highly recommend the learn SEO guide from Moz who’ve been helping people learn about SEO for over 15 years. Best of all, it’s absolutely free.

How can you leverage top sites to appear on Google search results?

With barnacle SEO, if you can get listed on another site that already ranks well you can appear when people are reading their content. By appearing on Checkatrade you’ll gain the benefit of our strong performing site, increasing the chance your Checkatrade listing will appear in search engines.

Useful checklist to boost your SEO with Checkatrade

• To boost SEO, you need to improve your content, link building, and technical SEO.
• Local SEO is an excellent way to improve your rankings locally.
• By joining Checkatrade you get a well optimised profile page and the chance to receive new customers from our content.
• We won’t replace your SEO agency but are a great low cost way for you to get more customers from search engines with Checkatrade acting as an intermediary.

* SEMrush data 8th Nov 2021