A vague primary category
Filing under something broad to cover everything makes you slightly relevant for everything and strongly relevant for nothing.
Guide
Local SEO for home services
A home services business usually does several things: some plumbing, some electrical, some handyman work, maybe heating. That breadth is good for the business and bad for one thing in particular, which is the Google Business Profile, because it has exactly one primary category and that category does most of the work in deciding which map results you appear in.
8 steps
Free to read, in the order it pays to do it. Nothing to sign up for and nothing to download.
The answer is not to pick the broadest category available. It is to pick the trade you most want more of as the primary, add the rest as secondary categories, and then let the website do the work the profile cannot: a page per trade, each one specific enough to rank on its own.
The other thing that catches these businesses is seasonality. Gutters in autumn, heating in winter, gardens in spring, cooling in summer. A site that reads the same all year is competing hardest in the wrong month.
What home service businesses are actually competing for
These are the shapes the searches take. The words in brackets are whatever the searcher puts there, which is usually a town, a neighbourhood or a brand.
- handyman near me
- local plumber and electrician
- gutter cleaning [town]
- who to call for [specific problem]
- emergency repairs near me
- home maintenance service [area]
The work, in the order it pays to do it
- 1
Choose the primary category by profit, not by volume
The primary category shapes most of your map visibility. Pick the trade whose jobs you most want more of, not the one you happen to do most often or the vaguest one on the list.
- 2
Add every other trade as a secondary category and as a service
Secondary categories widen the pool you are drawn from, which is how a gutter-cleaning enquiry reaches a business filed under electrician. The services list inside the profile is matched against what people actually type, and almost nobody fills it in properly.
- 3
Build a page per trade, written as if it were the whole business
The plumbing page should read like a plumber wrote it. A page that says "we also do plumbing" ranks against pages that do nothing else.
- 4
Set the service area honestly and hide the address
You work at customers’ homes. The address should be hidden and the area should be the one you genuinely travel.
- 5
Write the "who do I call for this" pages
People with a problem often do not know which trade fixes it. A page that says what a dripping ceiling, a tripping fuse or a damp wall usually means, and who handles it, catches somebody early and is almost never written.
- 6
Let the site change with the season
Gutters in autumn, frozen pipes in winter, garden and fence work in spring. Not a rewrite, just promoting the relevant page and keeping it current.
- 7
Get reviews that name the trade
"Rewired the kitchen" and "cleared the gutters" tell Google two different things about the same business. Generic praise tells it nothing.
- 8
Say what you do not do
It sounds like giving up work. It saves the calls you refuse, and a clear boundary reads as competence rather than limitation.
What usually goes wrong
One page listing all the trades
It competes against specialists who have a whole page each, and loses to all of them.
An empty services list in the profile
Free to fill in, matched against real searches, and usually blank.
The same site all year
Half the trades in this category are seasonal and the site never acknowledges it.
How to tell whether it is working
Rankings are not the measure. These are, and all of them come from accounts in your own name rather than from a report you have to take on trust.
- Calls from the profile, and which trade the caller wanted
- Which trade page each enquiry arrived through, so you can see what the site is actually selling
- Whether the seasonal pages get their impressions in the right month
- The mix of jobs against the mix you want, which is the number that tells you whether the primary category is right
If you would rather not do it yourself
Everything above is work you can do without hiring anybody, and the profile half of it is worth doing whatever else you decide. If you want it done for you, this is the service that covers it, and we scope it on a call before anything starts.
Other guides
Questions about local SEO for home service businesses
What should the primary category be for a multi-trade business?
The trade you most want more of. It shapes most of your map visibility, and picking the broadest available category dilutes you across everything instead of making you strong anywhere.
Can one profile cover several trades?
Yes, through secondary categories and the services list. What it cannot do is make one page rank against specialists, which is why each trade needs its own page on the site.
Do we need separate profiles per trade?
No, and separate profiles at the same address for the same business is against Google’s guidelines and risks suspension of all of them.
How do we handle the seasons?
Keep a page per seasonal job and promote the relevant one as the season turns. It is a navigation and homepage change, not a rewrite.
Book a call with us
A 30-minute call in your working hours. Tell us what you sell and where, and we will tell you what we would do first and what it involves. Prefer email? Send your website through the form and the Passieon Team will reply within two working days.