Tradie SEO checklist: what to fix first and what can wait

SEO, short for search engine optimisation, means making it easier for customers to find and contact you when they search on Google. Most of the jobs are small and a bit dull. The ones that matter most are the ones that stop a customer reaching you. Picture a homeowner with no hot water on a Sunday who taps your website and finds a phone number that does nothing. This tradie SEO checklist begins with contact problems like that one and moves on to the fixes that can wait.

Here’s a made-up example. A customer finds an electrician’s website after work. The page lists rewiring and switchboard upgrades but the phone number sits inside a picture and nothing says which suburbs he covers. She can’t tell whether he works near her, so she closes the page and rings the next firm.

If you’d rather have someone run these checks for you, see our SEO for tradies service. If you want to start on your own, the table below is the whole checklist on one screen.

What should a tradie SEO checklist put first?

Put first whatever stops a customer reaching you, because a perfect page that nobody can ring is worth nothing. Work down the table in order. If a check fails, note who needs to fix it and carry on with the others while you wait.

The sections below show how to run each check and what to do when one fails.

Can a nearby customer find the right business?

Check that your Google Business Profile shows the right name, trade category, phone number, hours and service area. Google says a profile with complete and accurate details is more likely to show up for local searches.¹

The pass condition is simple. Someone who finds your listing tonight could ring you and reach you. Use the name on your van and invoices and pick the most specific category for your main trade, because Google says categories affect local ranking.² If you work from home and travel to customers, Google says to hide the address.³

If your business is also listed on directories, such as ones your trade association runs, keep the same name, phone number and website there. Our guide to Google Maps ranking explains how Google decides who appears near the top and how to check your own spot fairly.

Does each page explain a job you actually do?

Give each main job its own page that says what you do, where you do it and what the customer should do next. A page called “Services” with a one-line list of trades gives a customer very little to decide on.

A useful page covers five things:

• The job in plain words, such as unblocking a drain or replacing a switchboard.
• What the price depends on, even if you can’t quote a fixed figure.
• The suburbs you cover.
• A photo from a real job, with a short caption.
• One clear way to ring or send a request.

Use the words your customers use, because your enquiry log is the best list of them you have. Give each photo a short description called alt text. Google’s starter guide says alt text explains the relationship between the image and your content.⁸

Google’s guidance on helpful content asks whether a page shows first-hand knowledge.⁷ Photos and details from your own jobs are that kind of evidence. The starter guide adds that a good page title is unique, clear and accurate about what is on the page.⁸ “Blocked drains in the Inner West” does that and “Services” doesn’t.

Our tradie website examples show how 16 Australian trade businesses present their services if you want ideas.

Do you need a page for every suburb?

No. Write a suburb page only when you can say something true and useful about work there. Ask yourself whether a customer in that suburb would learn something they couldn’t learn from your main service page.

Google’s spam rules explain why. They describe scaled content abuse as many pages made mainly to manipulate search rankings. They list doorway abuse as pages made to rank for specific and similar searches, including pages for particular regions or cities that funnel people to one page.⁶ A page that only swaps the suburb name is the kind of page those rules describe.

A good suburb page names a real job you did there, what the problem was and what you did about it. Add your own photos. One strong page beats ten thin ones.

Can someone contact you from a phone?

Open your website on your own phone and try to reach yourself the way a customer would. You don’t need any special tools for this check. We put it high because a customer who can’t reach you can’t hire you.

1. Search for your trade on your phone and tap your own result.
2. Find your phone number without opening a menu. Tap it and check that the call screen shows the right number.
3. Fill in the quote form with your own details and send it.
4. Check that the message reaches your inbox and note how long it took. Notice how long the page took to appear on mobile data as well, because a slow page is a developer job.
5. Repeat on a second phone if you can and after every change to the website.

If tapping the number does nothing, ask your developer to make it a telephone link, which is a link that starts with tel:. Text or a picture can sit inside that link, so judge the number by what happens when you tap it and not by how it looks. Phones can behave differently, which is why step five asks for a second phone.¹⁵

Kavera note: We opened 16 Australian trade business websites on 9 October 2026. Ten had a tappable phone link on the first mobile screen and two showed enquiry fields there. We did not place calls or submit enquiries. The full counts are in our guide to tradie websites.

Does your proof belong to your business?

Use photos, reviews and licence details that belong to your business. Customers can spot stock pictures. A photo of your own job at a real address is worth more than a polished one from a library.

Ask real customers for reviews after a finished job. Never offer a discount or a gift in return, because Google prohibits free or discounted goods or services in exchange for reviews.⁴ Our guide on how to get more Google reviews has the wording.

In NSW the licensee’s name and licence number must be shown in all advertising for licensed building and specialist trade work. The NSW Government says that covers the internet.¹³ Check that your website shows yours. Other states have their own rules, so ask your state regulator.

If you use an AI tool to draft page text, read and fact-check every line before it goes live. Google calls it critical to manually fact-check and review all AI-generated content before publishing.¹⁰ Our guide to AI-generated content and Google goes into the detail.

Kavera note: In our Sydney trades check on 16 and 17 October 2026, review-platform links appeared in 4 of 50 completed ChatGPT answers. Google business or map records appeared in 2 of 49 completed Google AI Mode answers. The method is in our Sydney trades AI search index.

Can Google see your main pages?

Check that Google has stored each main page, because a page it hasn’t stored can’t appear in search results. Use the URL Inspection tool in Search Console, which is Google’s free tool for checking your website. Your developer needs to have set up your website in Search Console first.

1. Type the full address of a main page into the box at the top of Search Console.
2. Read the status at the top of the result. “URL is on Google” means the page is eligible to appear in search results and “URL is not on Google” means it can’t.¹⁴
3. Take a screenshot of the status to keep as your evidence.
4. If the page is not on Google, look under the crawl details for the reason and pass it to your developer.¹⁴

“URL is on Google” does not guarantee that the page will show up for any search. To check that, search for the page’s address on Google.¹⁴

How do you know whether the work is helping?

Keep three records apart: how often Google shows your site, what people do on your listing and the enquiries you receive. A rise in one doesn’t prove a rise in the others.

• Google showing your site. Search Console is Google’s tool for your website. It counts impressions as how many times your site appeared in Search results and clicks as how many times someone clicked through.¹¹
• What people do on your listing. Your Business Profile counts calls as clicks on the call button. Its data covers both ordinary unpaid search results and Google Ads, which are paid adverts.⁵
• Enquiries you receive. Log each one by hand with the job, the suburb and how the customer found you. To count quote forms as well, copy Google’s own example. Count the thank-you page that appears after a form is sent as a key event, which is Google Analytics’ name for an action you choose to count.¹²

Google suggests waiting a few weeks before judging whether a change helped.⁸ If your trade has busy and quiet seasons, compare the same month a year earlier and not the month before. Our guide on how long SEO takes explains what to expect while you wait. If you are weighing up the cost, read is SEO worth it.

Which checks can you do yourself and which need help?

You can do the checks that depend on facts only you know. A developer should fix anything that lives inside the website.

When you hand a problem over, say exactly what you saw and when. “The number on the home page doesn’t open the call screen on my phone” is a clear job for a developer. “The site needs SEO” isn’t.

Which SEO tips for tradies should you be careful with?

Be careful with any tip that sounds exact. The Google pages we read give no monthly review target, no posting schedule and no promise that a set of basic fixes will beat your competitors.

What can wait until the basics are done?

Links from other websites, blog posts and extra page code can all help later but none of them fixes a lost call, so they sit after the checklist.

• Links from other websites: Google says prominence draws on how many websites link to your business.¹ Start with real ones, such as a supplier or a trade association you already belong to.
• Articles: write one when a customer question from a real job deserves a proper answer. A page that only exists to hold a keyword isn’t worth the time.
• Extra page code: some websites add hidden code that labels a business’s details for search tools. That is a developer job and it can wait.

Do you need anything different for AI answers?

Not for this checklist. The same basics apply: an accurate listing, clear pages and a contact route that works. Our AI SEO checklist adds the checks for ChatGPT and Google’s AI answers.

Kavera note: In two checks about two months apart, our client SHORE went from absent to first in one Sydney builder shortlist. The later answer linked its website. We built SHORE’s website and run its SEO. The full comparison is in our ChatGPT SEO guide.

What should you do next?

Start this week with rows one and three of the table, because they catch the problems that cost jobs. Then work down the list and keep your evidence in one folder so you can see what changed.

If you’d rather hand the whole checklist to someone, our SEO for tradies service covers the profile, the pages and the tracking.

Our SEO audit is free. It covers a technical, visibility, keyword, competitor and Google Business Profile review with a prioritised roadmap. Implementation is separate unless retained. Monthly plans start at Suburb SEO, $890/month + GST. Compare the SEO packages for terms and scope. No SEO package guarantees rankings, leads or revenue. For a look at what SEO costs across Australia, read how much SEO costs.

The fine print

We read the Google, Search Console, Analytics and NSW Government pages named in the sources on 21 October 2026. The pass conditions and the order of the checklist are our judgement and not a Google rule. We have not tested whether completing this checklist moves a ranking and the guide makes no such claim.

The counts in the Kavera notes come from our own reviews on the dates given, which cover 16 websites and 50 questions and not all Australian tradies. The review-platform and map counts are link-category counts and don’t show that reviews caused a business to be named. The SHORE result was one question and two answers, so it doesn’t show which change caused it.