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Not sure if your website's working for you? Let's talk it through - coffee locally or a call, no time limit.
A few months ago I looked at a Brisbane electrician's website that was showing up in Google for suburbs he'd never drive to, and missing from almost every suburb he actually works in. Nothing was broken. Nobody had ever told him what SEO is actually meant to do. So here it is in plain English.
SEO is making sure that when someone near you needs exactly what you do, they find you, not that other trade business down the road.
That's it. Everything else is detail.
Think about the last time someone needed a plumber in a hurry. They didn't ask around for three weeks. They picked up their phone, typed "plumber near me" or "hot water repairs Stafford", and called one of the first few businesses that looked legitimate.
That search usually shows two things before anything else. A map with three local businesses on it, and a handful of websites underneath. If you're not in either, you're not in the conversation. It doesn't matter how good your work is or how many happy customers you've got. The person searching never finds out.
Google wants three things from you, and none of them are tricks.
"Plumbing services" on one page tells Google almost nothing. Blocked drains, hot water, gas fitting, leaking taps and bathroom renovations are all different searches, and different people are typing them. A page for each service, written in the words your customers actually use, gives Google something to match each search to.
A page for a suburb you'd never drive to is worse than no page at all, because the calls it brings in are the wrong ones. But if you only list "Brisbane", you're competing with every business in Brisbane. A real page for each suburb you actually work in tells Google you're the local option there.
Google looks for signs that you're a real, trustworthy business. Your Google Business Profile (the listing that puts you on Google Maps) filled in properly, with photos and your real service area. Reviews, and you replying to them. Your licence number. The same business name, phone number and address everywhere you're listed online. None of that is technical, and most of it is free.
That electrician started his business in April this year. New business, no years of Google reviews to lean on, and one catch-all "service areas" page doing the job of eleven.
In August, Google showed his website for searches in just 2 of the 11 suburbs he works in, at around position 25 and position 70. That's page three and page seven. Nobody scrolls that far.
So we built a proper page for each of those 11 suburbs. First drafts went in at the end of August, and they were all live by late September.
Within weeks, 9 of the 11 pages were showing in Google for their own suburb search, and five of them were sitting around the first page. His search visibility roughly doubled in a month, and his average position moved from 60 to 49.
There was no trick to it. Google could finally see where he works.
A Brisbane plumber was in a different spot again. Great reviews, a Google Business Profile and social media, but no website at all. So every search that wasn't a straight map lookup went to someone else. His first website gave every job its own page, so each one can be found on its own instead of buried in a list.
A fair bit of what gets sold as SEO isn't worth paying for, so it's worth knowing what to watch for.
It isn't a trick. Anyone promising page one in a fortnight, or a secret method, is either guessing or about to cost you money.
It isn't stuffing keywords everywhere. Writing "electrician Brisbane" twenty times on a page makes it worse for people reading it and doesn't fool Google.
It isn't set and forget. Your competitors are adding pages and collecting reviews too. A little bit, done every month, beats a big burst once a year.
It isn't something you should be locked into. I don't do lock-in contracts. If I can't show you what changed each month, you should be able to walk away. Each month you get a plain English report: which searches you showed up for, where you sit, and what I changed.
You've probably heard that people are now asking ChatGPT and Google's AI answers for recommendations instead of searching. That's true, and it's growing. The good news is it rewards the same things: clear pages about what you do, where you do it, and proof you're good at it. AI search sits on top of good SEO, it doesn't replace it. If you want the longer version, I've written about what to ask anyone selling AI SEO.
You don't need to hire anyone to start. Ten minutes on your phone will tell you a lot.
If you'd rather someone just looked at it for you, that's what I do. Every business needs something different, so I quote SEO after a proper chat about where you are now and where the work is coming from. Here's how I handle SEO for trade businesses. Or book a free website audit and I'll tell you the one thing I'd fix first, even if you never hire me.
Rather just talk it through? Book a free chat. I'll look at how you're showing up on Google and tell you what I'd do first.
