If you run a trade business in Leeds and your phone isn’t ringing, the problem usually isn’t your work. It’s that the homeowners who’d happily book you don’t know you exist. This guide walks through the four things to fix this month — in the right order — so you stop losing jobs to lads with worse reviews and louder websites.

Why most Yorkshire trades are invisible on Google

Walk down any high street in LS6 and ask five trade business owners how they get work. Four will say “word of mouth and Checkatrade.” One will say they paid an agency for SEO three years ago and aren’t sure what they got for it.

The truth is brutal: most trade websites in Yorkshire are unfindable. They were built five years ago by someone’s nephew, never optimised, and rank on page four for the searches that actually matter.

The three problems compounding

  • No Google Business Profile — or one with zero reviews and the wrong service area
  • Generic service pages — “Roofing services in Yorkshire” instead of “Flat roof repair in LS6”
  • Zero local signals — no citations, no Yorkshire press mentions, no schema markup

Fix those three and you’ll outrank 80% of your local competition. Nobody else is doing the basics properly.

The four things to fix this month

Don’t try to do everything. Pick these four, in this order, and finish each before starting the next.

1. Claim and complete your Google Business Profile

This is the single highest-ROI thing you can do. Most trade businesses in Leeds have either no GBP, an unverified one, or one with two reviews and the wrong category.

Walk through every field. Add your actual service area (postcode by postcode). Upload 20+ photos of completed jobs. Set your service categories carefully — “Roofing contractor” is different from “Roofer” in Google’s eyes.

2. Build location pages for your top 3 postcodes

If you cover LS1 to LS28, you don’t need 28 pages. You need three or four — one for each “patch” you actually work (e.g. North Leeds, City Centre, Aireborough). Each page should mention specific roads, landmarks, and the kinds of jobs you do in that area.

Don’t keyword-stuff. Write the page like you’re explaining to a customer who’s just moved to Roundhay.

3. Get 10 Google reviews in 30 days

Reviews are the single biggest factor in the local map pack. The mechanic is simple: text a review request to every customer the day after the job is done. Use a short, friendly script. Include the direct Google review link so they don’t have to search.

4. Wire up basic schema markup

LocalBusiness schema tells Google exactly what you do, where you do it, and your opening hours. Most trade websites don’t have it. Adding it is a 30-minute job for a dev and gets you eligible for rich results.

What to ignore

Trade business owners get pitched daily by SEO agencies offering “1,000 backlinks for £99/month.” Ignore all of it. Cheap link packages will get your site penalised, and your competition is so weak that you don’t need fancy tactics anyway.

Same goes for “AI content writers” promising 100 blog posts a month. You don’t need volume — you need three good service pages and a properly tuned GBP.

How long until it works?

Realistic timelines for a Yorkshire trade business doing the four fixes above:

  • Week 1-2: GBP fully optimised, first photos uploaded
  • Week 3-4: Location pages live, schema markup added
  • Week 5-8: First 5-10 Google reviews land, map pack rankings start moving
  • Week 9-13: Top 3 in map pack for primary service keyword in your patch, qualified enquiries triple

That’s the 90-day arc most of my clients see. If yours doesn’t get there by day 90, I work for free until it does.