Most trades in Sussex get work through word of mouth. That is a good problem to have, but it caps your growth and leaves you exposed when the phone goes quiet. Getting found on Google is how you top up the pipeline with people who are ready to book right now. Someone typing “emergency plumber Bognor Regis” at 9pm on a Sunday is not price shopping. They want the first credible name they can call.
The good news is that local search is winnable for a small trade business. You are not competing with national brands here. You are competing with the other five sparkies or roofers covering your patch, and most of them have done next to nothing on their online presence. A few solid moves put you ahead.
Start with your Google Business Profile
Your Google Business Profile is the single most important thing you own for local search. It is the listing that shows up in the map pack, the box with the little pins that sits above the normal blue links. For a lot of trade searches, that map pack is where the clicks go.
Claim it, verify it, and then actually fill it in. Not the bare minimum. All of it. The trades that win in the map pack are usually the ones that treated the profile like a proper shop window instead of an afterthought.
- Primary category. Pick the one that matches your core trade (Electrician, Plumber, Roofing contractor, Plasterer). Add secondary categories for the other services you offer.
- Service area. If you work across a patch rather than from a shopfront, set your service areas. List the real towns you cover: Chichester, Arundel, Littlehampton, Worthing, and so on. Do not stretch it to places you would never drive to. Google notices, and so do customers who ring you and then hear you cannot get there.
- Services and descriptions. Add each service as its own line with a short plain description. Boiler installs, consumer unit upgrades, flat roof repairs, whatever you actually do.
- Photos. Real photos of real jobs. Before and after shots of a rewire or a re-roof do more for you than any stock image. Add your van, your team, finished work. Refresh them now and then.
- Opening hours and holiday hours. Keep these honest and current, especially if you offer emergency callouts.
There is a fair bit more to it, and we have a full walkthrough on how to set up and optimise your Google Business Profile if you want the step by step. The key point for now: a half-finished profile is the most common reason a good trade business stays invisible.
Reviews are the local ranking lever most trades ignore
Reviews do two jobs at once. They push you up the map pack, and they are often the thing that decides whether a customer calls you or the next name on the list. A profile with 40 recent five-star reviews beats one with 4 old ones almost every time, even if the work is identical.
The best time to ask for a review is the moment a customer tells you they are happy. Not next week. Right there, on the doorstep, while the good feeling is fresh.
The trouble is that happy trade customers rarely leave reviews on their own. Delighted, yes. Motivated to open Google and type something out, no. So you have to ask, and you have to make it easy. Save a short link to your review page as a text you can fire off the second you have wrapped a job. Something like “Really glad you’re happy with the bathroom. If you’ve got a spare minute, a quick Google review genuinely helps a small local business like mine. Here’s the link.”
Reply to every review, good or bad. A calm, professional reply to a rare negative one tells the next reader far more than a wall of five stars. We go deeper on this in our guide to getting more Google reviews and why they help your rankings, but the habit matters more than the tactics. Ask every time.
Build proper service and area pages on your website
Your Business Profile gets you into the map pack. Your website is what backs it up and catches the searches that land in the normal results. Too many trade sites are a single page that says “we do plumbing, call us”. That gives Google almost nothing to rank.
The fix is a page for each service and a page for each town you want work in. So an electrician might have separate pages for rewires, EV charger installation, fuse board upgrades and fault finding. Then area pages for the places that matter, like electrician in Worthing or electrician in Littlehampton.
The mistake to avoid is spinning up 30 near-identical area pages with the town name swapped in. Google spots that quickly and it does nothing. Each area page should earn its place with real local detail: jobs you have done in that town, the sort of housing stock you deal with there, how quickly you can get across, a local review or two. If you cover Worthing, the page should read like it was written by someone who actually works there, not a template with the town name dropped in.
A few things every service and area page needs:
- A clear heading that matches what people search for (the service plus the place).
- Honest detail about the work, written like you talk, not like a brochure.
- Photos of real jobs and any relevant certifications (Gas Safe, NICEIC, etc.).
- A phone number that is easy to find and easy to tap on a phone.
- A simple way to get in touch without filling in a 12-field form.
This umbrella approach sits above the trade-specific detail. If you want the deeper version for your trade, we have practical guides on SEO for electricians, SEO for plumbers, and SEO for builders that go further into the searches and pages that suit each one.
Get your business details consistent across the web
Citations are just listings of your business on other websites: directories, trade bodies, local sites. Yell, Checkatrade, the Gas Safe register, your trade association, local Sussex directories. Google uses these as a sanity check. If your name, address and phone number match everywhere, that builds trust. If they are all slightly different, it muddies the picture.
So pick one exact format for your name, address and phone number and use it everywhere, down to the punctuation. If you have moved or changed your number, go and fix the old listings rather than just adding new ones. Inconsistent old citations are a common drag on local rankings that nobody thinks to check, so it is worth a tidy-up even if nothing else changes.
The order to do it in
You cannot do everything at once, and you do not need to. Here is the sequence I would follow if I were starting from scratch with a Sussex trade business:
- Week one. Claim and fully complete your Google Business Profile. Add real photos and set your service areas.
- Ongoing from day one. Start asking every happy customer for a review. Make it a habit, not a campaign.
- Weeks two to four. Build out your website with a page per service and a page per key town. Write them like a person, not a robot.
- Month two. Fix and add your citations so every listing matches. Get onto the trade directories that matter for your work.
None of this is complicated. It is just consistent, and consistency is exactly where most trades fall down. They set up a profile, do it half way, and never touch it again.
Where a helping hand fits
Plenty of trades run all of this themselves and do fine. It is not rocket science, it is graft applied in the right places. But if you are flat out on the tools and the marketing keeps slipping to the bottom of the list, that is usually the point where a bit of outside help pays for itself. We work with small and medium businesses across West Sussex, and a lot of that is exactly this kind of local groundwork: getting the profile right, building pages that rank, and setting up a review habit that runs itself.
Whatever you decide, do not let the online side sit untouched while a competitor with worse work but a better profile takes the calls that should be yours. The searches are happening in your town every day. The question is whose name comes up first.
Frequently asked questions
Your Google Business Profile can start showing you in the map pack within a few weeks once it is verified and properly filled in. Website pages and citations tend to build over two to four months as Google trusts them more. Reviews help almost straight away and keep compounding the longer you keep asking. It is steady progress rather than an overnight switch.
Yes. The profile gets you into the map pack, but your website backs it up and catches the searches that land in the normal results. It is also where you prove you can do the work with service pages, real job photos and certifications. A profile with no website behind it looks thinner and converts fewer of the people who click through.
There is no magic number, but recent and steady matters more than a big pile of old ones. If the other trades on your patch have four or five reviews, getting to twenty or thirty recent ones puts you well ahead. Keep asking every happy customer rather than doing one push and stopping. A slow, constant trickle beats a one-off burst.
Only for the towns that genuinely matter to your business, and only if each page has real local content. Spinning up dozens of near-identical pages with the town name swapped in does not work and can hurt you. A handful of proper area pages with real detail, local jobs and reviews will do far more than thirty thin ones.
Citations are listings of your business on other sites like Yell, Checkatrade, trade registers and local directories. They still matter because Google uses them to confirm your business is real and consistent. The key is that your name, address and phone number match exactly everywhere. Mismatched old listings quietly drag on your local rankings, so it is worth fixing them.
