Local Business
Your mate told you to get a website. You got one. It sits there doing nothing. Here's why — and what actually works.
Someone told you to get a website. Maybe your accountant. Maybe your partner. Maybe that bloke at Bunnings who reckons he's a marketing guru because he watches YouTube. So you got one. Paid a few hundred bucks. Put your phone number on it, a photo of the ute, and called it done. Then nothing happened.
Here's what actually happens when a homeowner in Dayboro needs a plumber at 7pm on a Wednesday. They don't open the Yellow Pages. They don't ask Facebook. They grab their phone and Google "plumber near me" or "emergency plumber Dayboro."
Google shows them three results. Maybe five. The tradie who shows up in those results gets the call. Everyone else might as well not exist.
Your website isn't getting leads because Google doesn't know it exists. Or worse — Google knows it exists but has no reason to show it to anyone. There's nothing on it. No content. No suburb names. No descriptions of what you actually do.
Google is not complicated. It wants to match what someone searches for with a page that answers their question. That's it. If someone searches "blocked drain Samford" and your website has a page that talks about fixing blocked drains in Samford, you're in the running. If your website just says "Dave's Plumbing — call us" with nothing else, you're invisible.
The tradies who get found online have a few things the rest don't:
Hours, services, photos of real jobs, replies to reviews. Not the half-finished listing you set up three years ago and forgot about. Google gives massive weight to a complete, active profile. It's free. Most tradies still don't bother.
Not one page with a bullet list. "Hot water systems" gets its own page. "Blocked drains" gets its own page. "Gas fitting" gets its own page. Each one mentions the suburbs you work in. Google can only rank what exists — if you don't have a page about it, you won't show up for it.
Even just a short post once a fortnight. "Why your hot water system fails in winter" or "3 signs your switchboard needs upgrading." Google rewards websites that show signs of life. A site that hasn't been touched in 18 months gets pushed down.
If you've done 500 jobs and have 3 Google reviews, that's a problem. Reviews are social proof — they tell Google that real people use your business, and they tell homeowners that you're worth calling. Ask every happy customer to leave one. Make it easy.
The number one thing we hear from tradies is "I don't have time for that." Fair enough. You're on the tools from 6am. The last thing you want to do after a day of crawling under houses is write a blog post about tapware.
But your competitors are getting it done somehow. Not because they're sitting up at midnight writing articles. They're getting someone else to do it. An agency, a marketing person, a mate's kid who's good with computers.
The catch: Most agencies charge $2,000 to $5,000 a month. For a sole trader pulling in $150k before expenses, that's brutal. And half the time you can't even tell if it's working.
Content doesn't cost what it used to. Not even close. The same quality blog post that a marketing agency would charge $300 to write can now be produced for a fraction of that, reviewed by someone who actually understands your trade, and published in the same day.
The tools have changed. The cost has dropped. The only thing that hasn't changed is that most tradies still aren't doing it.
While everyone else is still running on word of mouth alone, you can be the one who shows up on Google when their customer searches. The bar is genuinely low in most local trade categories.
Open your phone. Google your trade and your suburb. "Electrician Dayboro." "Builder Samford." "Painter Mount Glorious." See who shows up.
If it's not you, that's a lead you just lost to whoever is there.
Now do it once a week. Same search. Track whether you're showing up. That one habit tells you more about your online presence than any dashboard or analytics tool ever will.
Every time someone in your area Googles your trade and you don't show up, that job goes to whoever does. It's not complicated. It's just maths.
We'll audit your online presence — Google listing, website, search rankings — and tell you straight what's working and what's not. No fluff. No pitch deck.
Get a Free Audit