Not ready to hire anyone? Fair enough — so would we.

Claim and finish your Google Business Profile

This is the single highest-return hour in local marketing, and it's free. Your profile is what shows up in the map pack — those three businesses above the normal search results — and most tradies either haven't claimed theirs or filled in half of it.

Go to google.com/business and search your business name. If a listing already exists (Google creates them automatically), claim it rather than making a second one. Duplicates split your reviews and hurt you.

• Business name exactly as you trade — no keyword stuffing like “Dave's Plumbing Sydney Emergency 24/7”, that gets profiles suspended
• Primary category set precisely (“Electrician”, not “Contractor”) — this is the strongest ranking signal you control
• Add every secondary category that genuinely applies
• Service-area business: hide your address, list the suburbs you actually drive to
• Hours that are true, including whether you really do answer at 9pm
• Phone number that rings your mobile, and your website URL
• Services list filled out with your actual jobs and prices where you can
• Description written for a human, mentioning the suburbs and the trade once, naturally

Get your first 20 reviews

Reviews do two jobs: they push you up the map pack, and they're the thing a customer reads before deciding between you and the next bloke. Twenty good ones puts you ahead of most sole traders in any suburb.

The trick is asking at the right moment — the day the job finishes, while they're happy and the work is in front of them. A week later they've forgotten.

• Get your review link: Google Business Profile → Ask for reviews → copy the short link
• Save it as a text shortcut on your phone so it's two taps, not a hunt
• Send it the same day the job wraps, every time, without exception
• Ask by name and reference the job: people write better reviews when reminded what they're reviewing
• Never offer discounts or payment for reviews — it breaches Google's policy and Australian Consumer Law
• Reply to every review, good or bad, within a couple of days
• A bad review answered calmly sells better than no bad reviews at all

Set your service area up properly

Most tradies either list one suburb (and never appear anywhere else) or list forty (and rank convincingly in none). Google reads a scattered service area as a business with no real home.

Pick the suburbs you'd genuinely drive to for a normal job, ordered by where you actually work most. Then make sure your website has a page for each of the main ones — Google ranks pages, and a page that names the suburb is what turns up when someone types it.

• List the suburbs you'd really take a job in — not the whole state
• Put the suburb you're based in or work most first
• Keep it under about 20 areas; beyond that the signal thins out
• Make sure each main suburb has a page on your site that names it
• Use the suburb in the page title, the heading, and once in the text — written for a person, not stuffed

Photos — the part everyone skips

Profiles with real, recent photos get taken more seriously than ones with a logo and nothing else. You're already on site with a phone in your pocket, so this costs nothing but the habit.

Shoot the work, not selfies: the finished switchboard, the tidy trench, the deck at golden hour. Before-and-after pairs are the most persuasive thing you can put up.

• Take a before and an after on every job worth showing
• Upload a few each week rather than 50 in one hit
• Include your ute and your crew occasionally — people hire people
• Wipe your boots and tidy the frame; a clean photo reads as clean work
• Add photos to the website gallery too, not just Google

Posting and questions

Google Business Profile has a Posts feature most tradies never touch. Posting isn't a magic ranking lever, but an active profile looks alive, and it gives someone comparing three quotes a reason to pick the one that's clearly still trading.

The Q&A section is more useful than it looks: anyone can ask a question on your profile, and anyone can answer — including a competitor. Seed it yourself with the questions you actually get asked.

• Post a recent job, an offer, or a seasonal reminder every fortnight
• Add your own Q&A entries: call-out fee, service area, licence number, emergency availability
• Answer new questions within a day or two before someone else does
• Keep hours updated over Christmas and Easter — wrong hours cost real jobs

The three numbers worth watching

Ignore vanity metrics. Three numbers tell you whether any of this is working, and all three are free to see in your Google Business Profile and your website analytics.

• Calls from your profile — the only number that turns into money directly
• Direction requests and website clicks — how many people got far enough to act
• Search terms your profile appeared for — tells you which services and suburbs to build pages around next
• Check them the same day each month and write the numbers down; the trend matters, not the month