Local SEO
You don’t need the whole city. You need the suburbs you’d actually drive to.
Think about the search your customer makes: your trade plus a suburb, typed into a phone by someone standing in it. Win the suburbs you’d drive to before smoko and the rest of the city can go to somebody else.
Free. We email you what’s broken within a business day, before anyone asks you for money.
Free check
See where you turn up when a customer searches your trade in your suburb.
Nothing here gets written until we know who you’re selling to, what the other operators in your patch already say, and what you can say that they can’t. You get that in writing before a page gets built. What that means before we start.
You got the ranking. You’re still on the highway.
Open Maps on your phone. Search your trade. Now drive ten minutes down the road and search the same words again. The three names on the map change.
That test is the whole problem. There is no single result for “electrician”. There is a result for wherever the person is standing when they ask. So when a report says you rank for your trade plus your city, it is telling you something that stops being true a few suburbs out.
Google states it in its own help: the map result weighs three things — how relevant you are to what was typed, how close you are to whoever typed it, and how well known you are. You cannot move the second one. Distance is decided by where the customer is standing, which is why a city-wide position evaporates a few suburbs out and why the answer is to be genuinely relevant in the suburbs you can reach, rather than thinly present everywhere.
If someone pitches you more ground — twenty-five location pages, the city name in every heading — ask how those pages differ. Pages like that are the pattern Google’s spam policies call scaled content abuse. And every extra kilometre you win is a kilometre you then have to drive.
What the driving actually costs
Say you drive up to 60km for jobs that run 1.5 to 2.5 hours and bill $110 to $350, and pulling the radius in saves 40 minutes a job.
Three jobs a day is 2 hours. That is another job, or it is being home before the kids are in bed. Same week, same trade, same ute.
Before you spend anything
Put your own radius through it and see what the driving is costing you
Three sliders — your average drive, your jobs a week, your hourly rate. It gives you the hours you spend going nowhere in a year, and what pulling the patch in would give back. No typing, no email, no call.
Takes about 2 minutes. It shows its assumptions — 45 km/h average, 46 working weeks.
Free. We email you what we find within a business day. No call unless you ask for one.
We never share or sell your details, and we do not add you to a mailing list.
What it does for you
Four things a city-wide ranking can’t do
Local SEO comes with every build. This is what it buys — not keywords, not a chart of visitor numbers, these four.
You turn up where the customer is standing
The map is rebuilt for wherever the phone is. So you get built for the suburbs you actually work, one at a time, instead of a city-wide position that quietly stops being true four suburbs out.
You get the far jobs off the calendar
A tighter patch means the work that comes in is work you can reach. In the example above, that is 40 minutes a job — two hours across a normal day, without working any harder for it.
The bloke two suburbs over can’t buy the same thing
One trade per service area. Your patch does not get sold to your competitor next month, and if it is already taken when you ask, you get told before you have spent anything.
You can check it without taking our word
Every page is checked before it goes live, and a page that fails doesn’t go live. You see the results, warnings included. If you ever move to somebody else, that is the standard you make them meet.
We pick the patch before we write a word.
Four steps. None of them is “more keywords”.
Step 01
Find the real centre
We start from where the ute sleeps, not the registered business address. Then we draw the edge in drive time rather than straight-line kilometres, at the hour you actually drive it. School traffic on a Tuesday morning, not an empty road at 11pm.
Step 02
Count who is genuinely in there
We list the operators competing inside that boundary, by running the searches rather than reading a population figure. That count helps decide whether your patch suits Regional, Suburban or Metro.
Step 03
Sort suburbs by money, not size
The biggest suburb inside your radius isn’t always the best one. We rank the list by what a job there is worth, how often it repeats, and whether you have actually worked in it. A suburb you have never had the ute in does not earn a page.
Step 04
Build it, then check it
One location page on Regional, six on Suburban, twelve on Metro, each one run through the same check before it goes live. If it fails, it doesn’t go up. What goes on those pages comes out of jobs you have actually done, which is a job of its own: that is the location pages page.
What actually lands
Eleven things you get handed, and what each one is for
- Your radius, drawn in drive time. The boundary, the hour it was measured at, and the reason the edge sits where it does.
- The competitor count inside it, per trade. Named operators and their review counts, from running the searches — not a population figure.
- Six location pages on Suburban, one on Regional, twelve on Metro. Each carrying a named local specific and one real job you did there.
- A service-area page for the suburbs that didn’t earn one of their own, so the rest of the patch is covered without 20 thin pages.
- Your Google Business Profile service area set to match the radius — not “we service everywhere”.
- The check results for every page, warnings left in. A page that failed didn’t go live.
- The side-by-side check showing no two of your pages say the same thing.
- Links from each suburb page to the service it actually sells, so a customer who lands on Thornlie can get to the thing he wants to book.
- The monthly re-check report if you take a retainer — same checks, run against your live site, one page, plain English.
- Google’s free search and visitor reports (Search Console and Analytics) in your own Google account, set up before the site goes live, so the numbers are yours rather than ours to show you.
- Logins, the site’s files and the check results, handed over at the end. You can walk at any time and take the lot.
Plus the domain and hosting in your name from day one, if the build is ours.
Straight up, before the quote
The patches we take, and the ones we hand back
A patch only holds its value if we sell it once. So here is which jobs we turn down, before you go any further.
Where this works
- You drive to your jobs, and the patch you’d cover is under an hour across.
- You’ve actually worked in the suburbs you want to be found in.
- You’d rather own six suburbs properly than appear thinly in 25.
- You want to know which jobs are worth the drive before you chase them.
If that’s you, the drive time calculator is the whole first step. It costs nothing and nobody rings you.
Where we’d say no
Somebody in your trade got here first. If your patch overlaps one we already build for, we hand yours back. No overlap, ever — and you learn that before any deposit.
You want suburbs you’ve never worked in. A suburb earns a page when you can tell us about one real job in it. If you can’t, we won’t build the page, because a page that could be about anyone is the thing Google’s own policy names as spam.
You want the whole metro on the $4,997 build. If the count inside your radius says the patch can’t be won that way, we quote the $7,997 one instead of taking the money.
You need it moving next week. The build is 2 to 4 weeks and local search is slow after that. If someone promises week-one results, ask them what they’ll show you in week one.
What ships, and what it costs.
$2,997 for one town — 50% deposit, 50% on completion. $4,997 for your suburbs — 25% deposit, 50% on draft approval, 25% before it goes live. $7,997 if the count says your market genuinely needs the whole metro — and we say so rather than selling you the cheaper one twice.
Every page is checked before it goes live, and you see the results: pass and fail, line by line, warnings left in.
Every page also has to carry at least 3 things that appear nowhere else on your site. That’s easy for suburbs you’ve worked in, and hard to fake for 25 you haven’t.
Not registered for GST. The price you see is the price you pay.
See which suburbs you’re missing
Free. Within a business day we email you the suburbs, who’s above you in each, and which build fits.
After it’s live, if you want us to stay.
The same check re-runs against your live site every month and you get a one-page report in plain English. That is Stay Found, $1,297 a month, which also turns one real job into a page on your site every month. Hold Your Patch, $1,997, makes that fortnightly and keeps your suburbs shut to your trade. Month to month, 30 days’ notice, no contract. If we built the site, the first months of this come with the build — one month on Regional, two on Suburban, three on Metro, from the day it goes live. Going straight onto Hold Your Patch? You pay the $700 a month difference in those months.
We write your Google posts and a person publishes them. You see each one first.
We don’t sell Q&A monitoring. More about the profile work on the Google Business Profile page.
Take these to whoever else is quoting you
Five questions that sort real coverage from a list of suburbs
Here is what to ask — of us and of everyone else — with our own answers underneath. You can use all five whether or not you ever speak to us again.
01
“Which suburbs, exactly, and why those ones?”
Ours: ranked on what a job there is worth, how often it repeats, and whether you have actually worked in it. If the answer is a list with no reasons, ask how they were picked.
02
“How many real operators are inside my radius?”
Ours: we run the searches and count them. If they quote you a population figure instead, ask them to name the operators.
03
“Can you post to my Google Business Profile automatically?”
Ours: we write your Google posts and a person publishes them, and you see each one first. If they say it’s all automatic, ask who checks each post before it goes up.
04
“What stops you signing my competitor two suburbs over?”
Ours: one trade per service area, no overlap, ever, and if your patch is taken you get told before any deposit. Ask them to put their answer in writing.
05
“Who owns the domain, the hosting and the Google account when this is over?”
Ours: all three in your name from day one, and we work in them by invitation rather than with your password — revoke our access in one click, from your own screen. If they hold any of it, you are renting your own website and you will find out the day you try to leave.
If a provider answers four of these well and is honest about the fifth, they are probably worth talking to — even if it is not us.
Questions tradies actually ask about local SEO
I already rank on Google. Why would I need this?
Ranking for your trade plus your city and ranking in the suburb someone is standing in are two different results. Drive ten minutes and search the same words. If the three names on the map change and yours drops off, that is the gap. The online presence check runs it for every suburb you work, so you don’t have to drive round doing it yourself.
How big should my radius be?
Smaller than you think, and measured in minutes rather than kilometres. Say you drive up to 60km for jobs that run 1.5 to 2.5 hours. If pulling that in saves 40 minutes a job, three jobs a day is 2 hours back. Put your own numbers into the drive time calculator before you decide — three sliders, no email.
Why not just cover the whole metro area?
You can, on Metro. It costs more to build: $7,997 against $4,997 for a site aimed at a tight patch. And every extra kilometre of coverage you win is a kilometre you then have to drive — the drive time calculator puts a number on that in about two minutes.
I’m in a metro area. Does that lock me out of the cheaper build?
No. A metro tradie isn’t competing across the whole Gold Coast, he’s competing in Southport, and the cheaper build is aimed at exactly that. What decides it is how many real operators are inside your radius, not the population of your city. If the count says the patch can’t be won that way, we tell you and quote the $7,997 build instead.
What is the map pack?
It is the small block of three businesses with a map above it, sitting before the normal blue links. It draws on your Google Business Profile as well as your website, which is why the profile work and the site work get done together rather than separately.
Can you guarantee me the top 3 on Maps?
No. Nobody owns where Google puts you, so nobody can sell you a position on it. If someone promises you the top three, ask them what happens to your money in the month it doesn’t land. What we will put in writing: the build is live in 2 to 4 weeks once everything is in, every page is checked before it goes live, and you see the results. No lock-in either way.
How long before anything moves?
The build takes 2 to 4 weeks once everything is in. After that we don’t judge anything on visitor numbers for at least a month, and that’s written into the retainer. Local search moves slowly. If someone promises week-one results, ask what they’ll show you.
How do you decide which suburbs get their own page?
A suburb earns a page when you have actually worked there and can tell us about one real job in it. We rank the list by job value and repeat rate first, not by population. Your build sets how many get their own page (one on Regional, six on Suburban, twelve on Metro), and the rest become sections on a single service-area page instead of thin pages of their own.
I run more than one trade. Does that change the radius?
Yes. Each trade has its own searches and its own set of competitors, so a radius that is comfortable for one can be crowded for another. We count them separately. Where the answer is borderline we put a 90-day checkpoint in writing, so it gets looked at again instead of assumed.
What happens if my patch is already taken?
We tell you, and we don’t take the job. One trade per service area is the whole reason the work is worth anything — if we sold your suburbs to the bloke two over as well, you’d both be paying us to fight each other. You find out at the free audit stage, before any money changes hands.
What does it cost?
$2,997 for Regional: one town, one location page, live in two weeks, 50% deposit and 50% on completion. $4,997 for Suburban with six real location pages inside your patch, live in three weeks, paid 25% deposit, 50% on draft approval and 25% before it goes live. $7,997 if your market genuinely needs the whole metro. Ongoing is $1,297 a month for the monthly page, the check and the report, or $1,997 with fortnightly writing and your patch held. Both are month to month with 30 days’ notice.
Keep reading
Three pieces on how a radius actually gets decided.
6 min read
The three names on the map, and how they get picked
The Google Map pack is rebuilt for wherever the phone is standing.
6 min read
Work out what your radius is costing you per week
Drive time never lands on a statement.
7 min read
How to choose the suburbs worth owning
Export 12 months of invoices, score every suburb out of 12 on money, repeat, drive and story, adjust for competitor density, then rule a line.
Read on the Gold Coast
What A Customer Sees, Suburb By Suburb
We ran the search a customer runs for five trades in five Gold Coast suburbs: who Google put on the map, the reviews it took, and what three AI assistants said when asked who to call.
Start here
Know which suburbs are worth owning, before you pay anyone to chase all of them.
The free audit looks at what someone inside your patch sees when they search for your trade. Within a business day we email you what’s broken, and you decide after that.
Free. No call required. One trade per area — if your patch is taken, we’ll tell you that instead of selling you a build that has to fight it.