How do I get my trade business to show up first on Google?

Local SEO for a trades business comes down to three things working together: a Google Business Profile that's fully filled out, a website structured around your actual services and towns, and consistent signals that tell Google you're a real, active, trustworthy business.

The core steps, roughly in order of impact:

• Claim and completely fill out your Google Business Profile — hours, service area, photos, and category matter more than most people expect
• Build a website with a dedicated page per service and per town — a generic "Services" page competes for one search term instead of dozens
• Submit your sitemap to Google Search Console so Google knows every page exists and can index them
• Get real reviews — ask satisfied customers directly, right after a job, when it's top of mind
• Keep your business name, address, and phone number identical everywhere — your website, Google profile, Yelp, Angi. Inconsistency quietly hurts rankings
• Build a public presence beyond just the website — a LinkedIn page, consistent branding, activity Google can associate with a legitimate business

What doesn't work: keyword-stuffing pages, buying reviews, or having ten near-identical town pages with the city name swapped and nothing else different. Google's gotten good at spotting thin, duplicated content, and it can hurt your rankings rather than help.

This isn't a one-time task — it compounds. A site that keeps adding real, useful content (new project pages, an FAQ section like this one, updated photos) keeps giving Google new reasons to rank you higher over time.