SEO for Tradies

How long it takes to see results from SEO will depend on your starting point.

For instance, if we’re picking up the work from another SEO agency that has already laid a good foundation, or if we’re building on an already established website and brand, it’s going to be significantly easier to rank than starting with a brand-new website.

Generally speaking, there are a few factors that dictate how competitive it is to rank your business in the search results. These include:

• The age of your website
• Previous SEO work
• The competition in your industry
• The number of new pages that need to be created
• The authority of your website
• The location of your business (regional is usually more competitive than metro)
• The keywords that you want to rank for
• The number of services you offer and the locations you offer them in

In general, we say it takes around three to six months to start seeing results from SEO. However, this could be longer or shorter based on any of the factors mentioned above. Once we’ve completed an initial audit of your website, we’ll be able to provide a more accurate timeframe for results based on your unique circumstances.

It’s important to remember that the slowest part of your SEO campaign will usually be the first few months, when we’re building the foundations and laying the groundwork for long-term results. Once those onsite foundations are in place, it becomes much easier to see progress as your results compound over time.

It’s a good question. Probably the best metaphor we can give is that SEO is a lot like going to the gym. When you start doing SEO, it can be hard to see results and often feels like you’re getting nowhere. However, as the months go on, it becomes much easier to see the results as your fitness starts to compound, or in this case, as your rankings begin to increase.

SEO is a moving target. As search engine algorithms change and the way that users search continues to evolve, your strategy also needs to evolve to keep up with these changes. While the basic principles of SEO have remained the same over the years, the weighting and the way that we implement different SEO factors changes.

The truth is, those other businesses in your niche that you see at the top of the search results are there as a result of constant work. The most successful businesses are constantly working on and evolving their SEO strategy. You should not look at SEO as being a one-off fix, but rather an ongoing exercise for your business to stay at the top of the search results.

Some of the most competitive SEO industries for tradies include electricians, plumbers, and roofers.

It’s worth noting that tradies were among the first to truly recognise the value of SEO, which has made these industries some of the most competitive spaces online.

Because many trade businesses have been investing in SEO for more than a decade, the competition has steadily increased – especially in major metropolitan areas. As a result, ranking highly in these industries can be challenging and takes consistent effort over time.

That’s not to say it’s impossible, but it’s important to understand that reaching the top of the search results in highly competitive trades like electrical, plumbing, and roofing requires patience, strategy, and long-term commitment.

Local SEO is a specific type of SEO that focuses on ranking at the top of the search results in a predefined area. For tradies, this means that we want to rank at the top of the search results in multiple suburbs or regions that you service.

The key difference between a traditional SEO campaign and a local SEO campaign is that we are narrowing the focus to ensure that we are only ranking in areas that you can feasibly service. We work with tradies to understand their service area, where their most profitable customers are, and the types of jobs that they want to be doing. With this information, we’re able to put together a local SEO campaign that effectively puts you in front of more users in your desired service area.

There’s no right answer to whether you should do Google Ads or SEO. It really depends on your goals for the business.

If your goal is to generate immediate leads for your trade business, then Google Ads is going to be the way to go because it is reactive. You can set up a campaign fairly easily and be up and running in a matter of days. The downside to doing Google Ads is that it is expensive and you are at the mercy of what others are willing to pay per click.

The benefit of SEO is that it has a higher perceived level of trust with users. Around 70% of users won’t click on ads and will go directly to the organic search results because of that higher level of trust. This means that if you rely entirely on Google Ads to generate business, you are missing a significant portion of the market.

Another key benefit of SEO is that it is scalable. You don’t need to pay for every click that you receive, and as your website continues to grow, it becomes increasingly cost effective for your business and a more sustainable way to generate ongoing leads.