SEO for tradies · Australia
SEO for tradies: rank in the suburbs you work, for the jobs you actually want.
Customers search for a trade by job and by suburb, at the moment something breaks. Local SEO for tradies puts your own website in front of them: a page for every job you want more of, a real page for every suburb you drive to, prices and straight answers on the page, and links from local sources. We run our own tradie sites in Australian cities; we build yours the same way.
From AU$297 a month, no set-up fee, no lock-in. Your address stays private.
- Job + suburb in the title — the search, word for word.
- The night-time question in the heading — with the cost in it.
- What to do first, then the price — the part Google and AI quote.
- Service area, not address — your home street stays private.
- One clear next step — by message or call, your choice.
- Schema and job pages linked — a cluster, not an orphan page.
In one paragraph
What SEO for tradies means
SEO for tradies is local SEO for a business that goes to the customer: plumbers, electricians, roofers, heating and cooling, pest control, painters, builders, removalists. Google ranks a tradie near their base by default, so ranking across the suburbs you serve takes a page per job (with the price), a real page per suburb or region, the emergency page that answers “what do I do now”, FAQs written so Google's answer box and AI assistants quote you, technical fixes, local links and listings that use a service area instead of an address, and a monthly report. We run our own tradie sites in Australian cities and build client sites the same way, in phases, from AU$297 a month.
Tradie SEO, in eight parts
What tradie SEO includes
The same eight parts for every trade. What changes is which jobs get a page first and what each suburb page has to answer.
A page for every job you want more of
“Blocked drains”, “switchboard upgrades”, “roof restoration”: one page each, with the price, how the job goes and what to do first. Not one “Services” page with a list.
A real page for every suburb you drive to
Written so a local recognises their own street: the housing, what fails there, the council, the price in that area. Built in phases until your city is covered.
The emergency and after-hours page
“Burst pipe, what do I do now?” is the search that converts at 11 pm. A page that answers it, with the next step, wins the job.
Prices on the page
A set price or a from-price per job. Tradies who show prices get the enquiry; “call for a quote” loses to the one who did.
Answers written for Google and AI
Direct answers to the questions people ask before they book, with FAQ structured data, so the answer box and AI assistants quote your site.
Technical work your site builder skipped
Speed on a phone on 4G, click-to-call that works, Service and LocalBusiness schema with service areas, no broken pages.
Local links and listings
Directories with your service area (not a fake address), supplier and association pages, local mentions. Never bought packages.
A monthly report in plain English
Which suburbs are covered, where you rank for your main jobs, enquiries from Google, and what we did. One page.
Interactive
How customers search for your trade, and which page answers each search
Pick your trade. Four kinds of search, with real examples of how people type them, and the page on your site that has to exist for each one.
Suburb names are examples; your pages use yours. The point is the four shapes: every trade has all four, and most tradie websites answer none of them.
See which of the four your site answers todayThe emergency or after-hours page: what to do first, then the next step.—
The service page and the suburb page, linked: the price there, how it goes.—
The price list on the page, with what changes the price. The answer AI assistants quote.—
Your Google profile in service-area mode plus the suburb pages it links to.—
From our own tradie sites
What tradie search looks like in Google, by trade
Live numbers from the local service sites we own and rank in Australia: how many times each one appeared in Google results in the last 28 days. Not a forecast; what is happening now.
| Trade | Areas we rank | Google appearances, 28 days |
|---|---|---|
| Plumbing | Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney, Sydney's Eastern Suburbs, Gold Coast, Western Sydney | 56,127 |
| Roofing | Adelaide, Brisbane | 18,392 |
| Water Damage Restoration | Brisbane, Ipswich and Logan | 9,611 |
| Pest Control | Perth | 5,264 |
| Blocked Drain | Perth | 3,297 |
| Termite Inspection | Melbourne | 1,958 |
Appearances are Google Search Console impressions for each site over the last 28 days, updated daily. The sites are ours; the areas are where our partners take the enquiries. See Leads for tradies.
By trade
What changes from one trade to the next
Same structure, different questions. These are the patterns from the tradie sites we run ourselves.
| Trade | What the pages have to do |
|---|---|
| Plumbers and electricians | Emergency searches at night, by suburb. The emergency page and a price for the common jobs win the call; the suburb pages win the planned jobs. |
| Roofers and heating & cooling | Seasonal spikes (storms, first heatwave). Pages ready before the season, with the local pattern: tile roofs here, ducted systems there. |
| Pest control | Termite inspections for buyers, treatments for owners. Two audiences, two sets of pages, and the inspection price on the page. |
| Painters, handymen, cleaners | Price-sensitive, repeat work. Pages per suburb with the hourly rate or the from-price and what is included. |
| Builders and renovators | Searched by room and by suburb: “bathroom renovation Hornsby”. Project pages with real photos and a cost range beat a gallery. |
| Removalists | Searched by origin and destination. Pages per area plus “moving from X to Y” content and a clear hourly rate. |
| Concreters and landscapers | Searched by product and by suburb: driveway, retaining wall, turf. One page per product with the per-metre price. |
Tradie marketing, compared
Where SEO sits next to Google Ads, marketplaces and paid leads
Four ways a tradie gets work from the internet. They are not rivals; they are for different moments. The mistake is paying for the fast ones forever because the slow one was never started.
| SEO for tradies | Google Ads | Marketplaces (hipages, Airtasker) | Leads for tradies (ours) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| When the work starts | Months: first positions in 2–3 months (regional) to 4–6 months (metro) | The day you pay | The day you sign up | Two weeks free, enquiries from day one |
| What you pay for | A monthly plan by city size, from AU$297 | Every click, whether it calls or not | Every lead, shared with other tradies | Each real enquiry, exclusive to you; no monthly fee |
| Who owns the result | You: the pages and positions are yours | Nobody: it stops when the budget stops | The marketplace | Us: the sites stay ours |
| Cost per job over time | Falls as positions compound | Rises with competition | Flat, plus the price war | Flat, agreed in writing |
| Best for | Any tradie who will still be trading in two years | A quiet month, a new service, a new area | Filling gaps this week | Work now while SEO builds; areas we already rank |
Running ads? Our pricing page has a calculator that compares your monthly ad spend with the local SEO plan for your city. Social media for tradies works for referrals and repeat work, not for the 11 pm burst pipe; we do not sell it.
SEO for tradies by city
Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide, Gold Coast
The plan follows the city: its size sets the price, its regions set the order of the suburb pages. Regional cities and towns are covered too.
| City | Plan | What is different there |
|---|---|---|
| Sydney | Metro, from AU$1,997 | Inner West, Eastern Suburbs, the Hills, Parramatta, Sutherland: one region at a time. |
| Melbourne | Metro, from AU$1,997 | The most searched tradie SEO city in Australia; suburb identity is strong, so suburb pages matter more. |
| Brisbane | Metro, from AU$1,997 | Brisbane, Logan, Ipswich, Moreton Bay: storms and heat set the seasons for roofers and aircon. |
| Perth | Capital, from AU$1,497 | Spread-out metro, long drives: the suburb plan decides which jobs are worth the trip. |
| Adelaide | Capital, from AU$1,497 | Our own base. Smaller market, less competition per trade, faster first positions. |
| Gold Coast | Capital, from AU$1,497 | Tourist suburbs and new estates: different jobs, different pages. |
Regional cities (Geelong, Newcastle, Wollongong, Toowoomba, Cairns, Wagga Wagga…): Regional plan from AU$997. Towns up to about 50,000 people: Starter from AU$297. Full table on the pricing page.
What we fix most often on tradie websites
Six things that keep good tradies off page one
- One “Services” page for everything. Google ranks pages, not lists. “Blocked drains” needs its own page to rank for “blocked drain Marrickville”.
- A “Service areas” page with eighty suburb names. A list is not a page; a local would not recognise their suburb in it.
- No prices anywhere. “Call for a quote” loses to the competitor whose page says what a hot water system costs.
- A fake address to get a profile in a better suburb. Google removes it, and the trust with it. Service-area mode exists for a reason.
- A site that takes six seconds on a phone. The emergency search happens on a phone, outside, on 4G. Speed is the first ranking factor you can feel.
- Bought links. The packages sold to tradies (“200 backlinks for $99”) are the ones Google penalises. Local links are slower and they hold.
Questions tradies ask
Straight answers
What is SEO for tradies?
Search engine optimisation for a trade business: making your own website rank on Google for the jobs you do, in the suburbs you serve, so customers find you without you paying per click or per lead. In practice it means a page for each job type, real pages for the suburbs you drive to, prices and direct answers on those pages, the technical fixes your site builder skipped, local links and listings, and a monthly report. It is local SEO applied to a business that goes to the customer rather than the other way round.
How much does SEO cost for a tradie?
It follows the size of your city, not your trade: from AU$297 a month in a town up to about 50,000 people, AU$997 in a regional city, AU$1,497 in Adelaide, Perth, Gold Coast, Canberra or Hobart, and AU$1,997 in Sydney, Melbourne or Brisbane. No set-up fee, GST not applicable, no minimum term except the Starter plan (three months). The free audit ends with a written quote with one number on it.
How long does SEO take for a tradie?
Technical fixes and the first job pages go live in the first month. Less competitive suburb searches usually reach page one within 2–3 months in a regional city; a competitive metro trade such as plumbing or electrical takes 4–6 months to show clearly, then keeps compounding as more suburbs are covered. Every monthly report shows the positions, including the months when they are not moving yet.
Do I need a website for tradie SEO?
Yes, and it has to be yours: SEO builds pages on a site you own, so the rankings stay with you. If you have a site from a builder or a template, we usually keep it and fix it. If it cannot be fixed (no page control, no speed, no schema), see our websites for tradies: a site built to rank from day one, which is cheaper than fixing a bad one later.
Is SEO better than Google Ads for tradies?
They do different jobs. Google Ads brings calls from the day you pay and stops the day you stop; in a metro trade a click can cost more than a lead is worth. SEO takes months to build but the positions are yours and the cost per job keeps falling. Most tradies we work with run ads at the start, then wind them down as the organic positions take over. Our Leads for tradies service is the third option while SEO builds: enquiries from local sites we already rank, paid per real enquiry, no monthly fee.
What about hipages, Airtasker and ServiceSeeking?
They are marketplaces: the customer's request is sold to several tradies and you compete on price and speed of reply. They can fill a quiet week; they do not build anything you own. SEO does the opposite: the customer finds you, only you, on your own site. Many tradies use a marketplace while the SEO builds and drop it when the diary fills.
How do I choose an SEO agency for tradies?
Ask for three things in writing: which pages they will build in the first 90 days (job pages and suburb pages, by name), what the monthly report shows (positions by suburb and enquiries, not “traffic”), and what they will not do (no bought links, no fake address, no guaranteed rankings). An agency that cannot name the suburbs it will build pages for is selling a package, not a plan.
Does it work for my trade?
The structure is the same for any trade that goes to the customer: plumbers, electricians, roofers, heating and cooling, pest control, painters, builders, removalists, concreters, landscapers, handymen, cleaners. What changes is what the pages have to answer, which is what the table by trade on this page shows. If your trade is not listed, say so in the audit form; the answer is usually yes.
Can you do SEO for just my suburb?
We plan the whole city and build it in phases, starting with the suburbs where you do most work and where search demand is highest, adding new ones every month. One suburb alone rarely has enough searches to pay for the work; the city does. In a small town, the Starter plan covers the town and three surrounding areas.
Who writes the pages? Is it AI?
A person who knows the trade writes the brief and checks every page; we use AI tools for research and drafts, never to publish unchecked text. Every suburb page has detail that could only be true there, and the prices and FAQs are yours. Google filters pages that could exist without the suburb name; ours could not.
What is the difference between this and Leads for tradies?
SEO for tradies ranks your own website: you pay a monthly amount and own the result. Leads for tradies sends you enquiries from local websites we already rank: you pay per real enquiry, with no monthly fee, and the sites stay ours. One builds an asset, the other fills the diary now. Many tradies use both for a while.
Do I need a Google Business Profile?
Yes, and it stays yours. For a tradie it should be in service-area mode (no street address shown, the suburbs you serve listed). We give you a checklist for it and, if you add us as a manager, we review the text. It is not something we charge for: the website side is where the work is.
Related: local SEO for service-area businesses (the eight ingredients of a suburb page), websites for tradies for a site built to rank, Leads for tradies for work while SEO builds.
Free audit
See which jobs and suburbs you rank for, which you don't, and what the pages are missing.
Tell us your trade and the areas you drive to. Within two business days you get a written audit, your pages scored against the eight parts above, and the quote for your city. No sales calls: everything in writing.
- Where you rank for your top five jobs, suburb by suburb
- Which of the four kinds of search your site answers today
- Your listings: service area or address, and whether they match
- The Google profile checklist in service-area mode, and the written quote