Local SEO for tradespeople: GMB, citations, reviews

Local SEO is a different game from "regular" SEO. It's less about backlinks and clever content, and more about proving to Google that you're a real local business that customers like.

The three pillars

1. Google Business Profile (GBP) — primary category, full hours, services list, photos, posts.
2. Citations — your business listed consistently across Yell, Bing Places, Checkatrade, Yelp, Apple Maps, and trade-specific directories.
3. Reviews — recent, consistent, varied. 25+ reviews is the threshold where Google starts trusting you.

The site signals

• Address on every page (footer is fine).
• LocalBusiness schema markup with correct NAP.
• Service pages per service (not one generic "Services" page).
• Service-area pages for the towns you actually cover — with genuinely different content per town, not doorway pages.
• Fast load time on mobile (under 3 seconds).

What doesn't matter as much as you think

• Number of keywords on each page (Google figures out intent from context).
• Exact-match anchor text on backlinks (this stopped mattering a decade ago).
• Submitting to 200 random directories (a few major ones do far more than a bulk submission).

For a personalised local-SEO audit, request a free audit.