Industry specialisation
SEO for Tradies: Get the Phone Ringing With Work Worth Taking
The phone goes quiet for a fortnight. You start checking it at traffic lights. Then you take three jobs you'd normally walk away from, because quiet is worse than annoying. Two weeks later you're flat out, knocking back the good stuff, and it starts again.
SEO for tradies is about flattening that line. Not "brand awareness". A steadier flow of people in your suburbs finding you, ringing you directly, and not being handed to three of your competitors at the same time.
You'll get a straight answer here, including the part where we tell you not to bother.
- $990
- Entry price, published in full
- 30 days
- Notice to leave. No lock-in
- 1pm to 6pm
- AEST, senior-led, contactable
Most of the calls go to three businesses in a box
Search "emergency plumber Blacktown" on your phone. Before a single normal website result you get a map with three businesses under it, and that box takes roughly 70% of the clicks. Everyone below it fights over the leftovers.
Google picks those three on three things, none of them mysterious.
How close you are to the person searching. Someone in Frankston at 9pm gets Frankston businesses, not yours in Dandenong, unless you've done the work.
How well known you are. Reviews, how many other sites mention your business, how consistently your name and number appear across the web.
How obviously you do the thing they asked for. If someone searches "switchboard upgrade" and your profile just says "electrician", Google has to guess.
The first one you can't change. The other two are the whole job.
Your Google Business Profile is almost certainly set up wrong
With no shopfront you're what Google calls a service area business, which works differently from a shop. Most tradies never get told that, so they fill the profile in like a shop and wonder why they're nowhere.
What wrong usually looks like:
The address
You work from home and left it showing publicly, or you hid it and never added service areas. Both hurt.
Service areas set to a whole state
"New South Wales" tells Google nothing. Twenty named suburbs you actually drive to tells it plenty.
One category, or the wrong one
"Contractor" instead of Plumber, with secondary categories for drainage, hot water and gas fitting.
Photos from 2021
Eleven shots taken the week you set it up, none of finished work.
No services listed, no hours, no messaging, nothing posted since
Fixing that properly is usually the biggest single jump a trade business gets, and it shows in four to eight weeks. Not clever. Just nobody's done it.
Try it
What the page looks like when someone in your suburb searches
Three businesses get the map pack. Everyone else sits under a “more places” link almost nobody taps. Pick your trade, type your suburb, and see the difference the work is meant to make.
- 1Blacktown Plumbing Co.4.8 ★ · 127 reviews · Blacktown
- 2A1 Plumbing Blacktown4.6 ★ · 89 reviews · Blacktown
- 3Blacktown Plumbing Group4.7 ★ · 64 reviews · Blacktown
- More places › (Your plumbing business, and everyone else who does not get the call)
- example1.com.au › blacktownPlumbing services in Blacktown
- example2.com.au › blacktownTop rated plumbing near Blacktown
- example3.com.au › blacktownBlacktown plumbing directory
The lead maths, with real numbers
The only part of this page that matters, so here are figures off your own invoices.
| Job | Typical Australian ticket |
|---|---|
| Emergency hot water callout | $450 to $1,200 |
| Switchboard upgrade | $1,800 to $3,500 |
| Bathroom renovation | $18,000 to $35,000 |
Say we get you six extra calls a month. Not sixty. Six. At a 55% close rate, normal for calls where the person found you themselves and rang you directly, that's three jobs.
Three small jobs at $700 each is $2,100 against a $990 retainer. Worst realistic month, and it still clears. One switchboard upgrade at $2,400 covers the retainer for two months. One bathroom at $22,000 covers close to two years.
Compare that to buying leads. On hipages or Airtasker you're typically paying $25 to $90 a lead depending on the trade and the job size, and it goes to you and three or four others at once, so you're quoting against blokes who already know your price is one of four. Close rates on shared leads sit closer to 25%.
Six shared leads at $60 is $360 and maybe one and a half jobs. Next month you pay again. You never own anything.
The six SEO calls are yours alone, and the profile and rankings stay yours. Stop paying hipages and the leads stop that day. Stop paying us and your position holds a good while, then drifts.
SEO for tradies against hipages, Facebook ads and a truck wrap
Everything on this list works for someone.
hipages, Oneflare, Airtasker
Good when you're starting out or filling a quiet week. Instant. But you rent the leads, you share them, and you compete on price by design.
Facebook and Instagram ads
Decent for renovations and big-ticket work. Close to useless for emergencies, because nobody with water coming through the ceiling is scrolling.
Truck wrap
Cheap and better than people think, especially in a tight area like Ipswich or Joondalup where you're on the same streets weekly. Can't be measured or scaled.
Word of mouth
Still the best lead you'll ever get. Also capped by how many people you've worked for, and it goes quiet when the market does.
SEO
Highest margin leads you can get, and they compound. Where it loses: nothing happens in week one. Month one is setup. The profile moves in four to eight weeks, rankings from month three or four, real momentum around month six. If you need work next Tuesday, buy leads for a month while this builds.
Month by month
What the first year usually looks like, and when you can leave
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12
- Technical and local foundations
- Google Business Profile movement
- Organic rankings
- Compounding
- You can leave
Month 1
Setup-heavy. Crawl issues, tracking, the Google Business Profile, and the pages that earn money first. We do not dress month one up as results.
Typical timing, not a guarantee. Thirty days notice applies in any month, with no exit fee and no clawback.
Reviews move your ranking as well as your reputation
Reviews are part of how Google picks who goes in the box: volume, recency, and whether the words match what people search. Ten reviews mentioning "blocked drain" does something for you that fifty saying "great bloke" does not.
Getting them is about timing, not asking harder. Job's done, customer's happy, you're still standing there. Ask then and you'll get roughly three times the response of a text sent two days later.
We set up the system: a short link or QR code on your invoice, a follow-up the same afternoon, a script for the crew, and replies to every review. Aim for one a week.
What we do each month, and what it costs
- Google Business Profile worked properly: services, categories, service areas, weekly posts, photos
- 8 citations built or corrected so your details match everywhere
- 2 pages optimised, usually suburb and service pages
- 1 article, around 1,200 words, on something customers actually search
- Review system running, with replies to every review
- 20 keywords tracked across your suburbs, a report and a 20 minute call
That's the $990 a month Local plan, and the full detail is on our pricing page. Bigger operations with five or more vans usually sit on Growth at $1,990. No lock-in either way, 30 days notice.
Run the sum
How many enquiries a month each tier has to bring in
The only sum that matters, and it changes completely with what you sell. Move these to your own numbers.
Each enquiry is worth about $420 at that rate. That is revenue, not margin, so apply your own margin.
Local
$990 a month · One service area
3 enquiries a month to break even
GrowthMost common
$1,990 a month · Multi-suburb or service
5 enquiries a month to break even
Authority
$3,490 a month · Competitive metro
9 enquiries a month to break even
Fees are the published monthly prices, in Australian dollars, ex GST. If the number for Authority is not realistic for your business, Authority is the wrong buy, and we will say so.
When you should not spend a dollar on this
- You're booked six weeks out and knocking work back. Put your prices up first. That's free.
- You do contract work for two builders and that's the whole business. You need one good relationship, not rankings.
- You're the only sparky in a town of 3,000 and everyone has your number already. Search volume isn't there.
- No van signage, no reviews, and an email address you check on Sundays. Fix the basics first.
We'd rather tell you that in the first call than take twelve months of your money.
Questions
Questions we get asked
Straight answers, including the uncomfortable ones. Anything else goes to the person who does the work.
Ask your own questionHow long before the phone starts ringing?
Profile work usually shows in four to eight weeks, and that's where the first extra calls come from. Rankings take three to four months to move properly, and month six is where it starts feeling normal. Anyone promising calls in three weeks is guessing.
Do I need a new website?
Usually no. If it loads on a phone and we can add pages, we'll work with it. If it's a one-page Wix from 2017 with no way in, we'll say so. We don't sell websites, so there's nothing in it for us either way.
What if I only cover a few suburbs?
Easier, not harder. A sparky covering six suburbs around Wollongong has a much cheaper path into the map pack than one claiming all of Greater Sydney. Narrow beats broad.
Is this better than hipages?
Better economics, slower start. hipages gives you shared leads today at a price that never drops. SEO gives you exclusive leads in a couple of months, getting cheaper as they compound. Plenty of clients run both at first, then wind hipages back.
Can I stop any time?
Yes. 30 days notice, no lock-in, and you keep the profile, the site changes and the reviews. If we're not earning it, leave.
Do I have to write anything?
No. About ten minutes of questions a month over the phone, because you know things about the work that we don't. We write the rest.
Free, by hand, no obligation
Send us two things and we'll do the rest
Tell us your website and the competitor who keeps beating you. That's it.
Within 48 hours you'll get a two page rundown: where you sit in the map pack across each of your suburbs, three things holding you back, one you can fix yourself this weekend without paying anyone, and one that needs us. A real person spends 30 to 45 minutes on it. No automated PDF, no sales call.
Want your trade specifically? We've got pages for SEO for plumbers, electricians, builders and roofers.
- Turnaround
- Two business days
- Follow-up
- No sales call unless you ask
What clients say
In their own words
Upwork reviews, reproduced unedited apart from the spelling of Arbaz’s name.
I hired Arbaz to build links for our company website. He did well in his job. He manually outreached the website administrators and got us do-follow high DR/DA backlinks from the real website with high organic traffic, as we demanded. We noticed a great increase in our website domain authority due to the links Arbaz built for our website. He delivered on his commitments and was a pleasure to communicate with. I am extremely pleased with the outcome and will certainly work with Arbaz again.
Thank you for the invaluable SEO keyword research support you've provided during our recent projects. In a short period, your expertise has made a noticeable impact on our strategy and outcomes. Your ability to quickly identify relevant keywords and analyze market trends has been particularly impressive, directly contributing to enhancing our content's reach and effectiveness. Thank you Arbaz!
I had the pleasure of working with Arbaz, an exceptional SEO Specialist who surpassed my expectations. From the start, his professionalism and expertise were evident. He conducted a thorough website audit, developed a tailored strategy, and optimized on-page elements and off-page backlinks. His knowledge of the latest SEO trends and proactive recommendations greatly improved our website's visibility and organic traffic. His ability to collaborate with the content team and implement technical SEO optimizations further solidified their effectiveness. Overall, I highly recommend this SEO Specialist for his remarkable results and dedication to driving business growth.
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