Most plumbers get their first few jobs through word of mouth. A recommendation from a mate, a neighbour who passes your number along, maybe a card left on a noticeboard at the local builders’ merchant. That works — until it doesn’t. Eventually you hit a ceiling. You want a steadier flow of leads, and you know that people are searching Google every single day for a plumber in your area. The question is how to make sure they find you and not the company down the road.
That is where local SEO comes in. Not the complicated, agency-jargon version of it, but the practical stuff that actually moves the needle. These are seven local SEO tips for plumbers that will help you show up in the searches that matter, build trust before a customer even picks up the phone, and ultimately get more work coming through the door.
1. Claim and fully optimise your Google Business Profile
If you only do one thing from this list, make it this. Your Google Business Profile (GBP) is the single most important factor in whether you appear in the map pack — that cluster of three businesses Google shows at the top of local searches. When someone types “emergency plumber near me” or “plumber in Guildford,” Google pulls results from GBP listings first.
Start by claiming your profile at business.google.com if you haven’t already. Then fill in every single field. Your business name should be your actual trading name — do not stuff keywords into it, as Google penalises that. Add your correct address or service area, your phone number, your website, and your opening hours. Choose the most specific primary category available (Plumber, not “Home Services”) and add secondary categories for anything else you genuinely offer, such as Drainage Service or Water Heater Installation.
Upload real photos of your work. Not stock images — actual photos of jobs you have completed, your van, your team if you have one. Google rewards profiles that have fresh, genuine photos, and customers trust them far more than a listing with no images at all.
We have written a full step-by-step walkthrough on this in our Google Business Profile guide for tradespeople, which covers everything from verification to choosing the right categories. It is worth reading if you want to get this right from the start.
2. Build a website that targets specific services and towns
A surprising number of plumbers either have no website at all or have a single-page site that says something like “We offer plumbing services in the South East.” That is not enough for Google to work with. If you want to rank for searches like “boiler repair in Maidstone” or “bathroom plumber in Chelmsford,” you need pages that specifically target those terms.
Think about your website as a collection of landing pages, each one speaking directly to a particular service in a particular area. A page for boiler installations in one town. A page for emergency call-outs in another. A page for bathroom fitting in the next town over. Each page should include the town name in the title tag, the heading, and naturally within the body text. It should describe what you do, what the customer can expect, and how to get in touch.
This is exactly the approach we take when building websites for plumbers. If you work across Surrey, for example, our plumber SEO in Surrey service creates targeted pages for every town in the county so you can rank in each of those local searches individually.
You do not need dozens of pages on day one. Start with your core services in your three or four busiest towns, then expand from there. The important thing is that each page is genuinely useful — not just the same text with the town name swapped out.
3. Get listed in the directories that actually matter
Directory listings — sometimes called citations — still carry weight in local SEO. When Google sees your business name, address, and phone number listed consistently across trusted websites, it gains confidence that your business is real and established.
The directories worth focusing on for UK plumbers include:
- Yell.com
- Thomson Local
- Checkatrade
- Trustatrader
- Bark
- FreeIndex
- Yelp UK
- 192.com
- Cylex UK
- Apple Maps
The key word here is consistency. Your business name, address, and phone number (often called NAP) must be identical everywhere. If your GBP says “J. Smith Plumbing Ltd” and your Checkatrade listing says “J Smith Plumbing,” that inconsistency can hurt your rankings. It sounds pedantic, but Google notices.
Beyond the big national directories, look for local ones too. Your county council may have a local business directory. Your local Chamber of Commerce almost certainly does. These hyper-local links can be surprisingly powerful for local SEO because they signal to Google that you are genuinely rooted in the area. If you serve multiple counties, such as Essex and Kent, building citations in each area strengthens your visibility across the board — which is exactly what our plumber SEO in Essex and plumber SEO in Kent services are designed to do.
4. Collect Google reviews consistently, not just once
Reviews are one of the strongest ranking signals in local SEO, and they also happen to be the thing that convinces a potential customer to call you instead of the next plumber on the list. A business with 80 reviews averaging 4.8 stars will almost always win the click over a business with 6 reviews, no matter how good those 6 reviews are.
The mistake most plumbers make is asking for reviews in a burst — maybe after reading an article like this one — and then forgetting about it for months. Google values recency. A steady trickle of new reviews every week tells Google your business is active and trusted. A cluster of reviews from eight months ago followed by silence tells a different story.
The easiest approach is to make it part of your process. After every completed job, send a quick text message with a direct link to your Google review page. You can generate this link from your Google Business Profile dashboard. Keep the message simple and personal: “Thanks for today, [name]. If you were happy with the work, a quick Google review would really help me out — here’s the link.” Most happy customers will do it if you make it easy.
We have a whole article dedicated to this topic — how to get more Google reviews — which covers the exact process, the messages that work, and the mistakes to avoid. If reviews are an area you have been neglecting, that is a good place to start.
5. Create location-specific pages for every town you serve
This tip ties into what we discussed in section two, but it is important enough to call out on its own. If you serve a wide area — say, most of a county or parts of several counties — then having a single page that mentions your whole service area is leaving leads on the table.
When someone in Bromley searches for “plumber in Bromley,” Google wants to show them a result that specifically mentions Bromley. If your website only has a generic “areas we cover” page that lists 30 towns in a comma-separated line, you are unlikely to rank for any of them individually.
Instead, create a dedicated page for each town or area you want to target. Each page should be genuinely tailored: mention local landmarks or specifics where relevant, describe the types of properties common in that area (Victorian terraces with old pipework, new-build estates, and so on), and make it clear that you actually work there regularly. This is not about tricking Google. It is about showing both Google and the customer that you know and serve that area.
The workload here can be significant if you serve dozens of towns, which is one of the reasons many plumbers choose to work with a local SEO agency to handle it. Whether you do it yourself or get help, the principle is the same: one page per location, each one useful and specific.
6. Post regularly on your Google Business Profile
Most plumbers do not realise that Google Business Profile has a built-in posting feature, and even fewer use it. GBP posts appear directly on your profile in search results and on Google Maps. They let you share updates, offers, completed jobs, or useful tips — and they signal to Google that your profile is active.
You do not need to post every day. Once or twice a week is plenty. The content does not need to be polished or clever. A photo of a job you have just finished with a short description works brilliantly. “Just completed a full bathroom refit in Sevenoaks. New thermostatic shower, underfloor heating, and wall-hung vanity. If you’re planning a bathroom project, get in touch for a free quote.” That kind of post does three things at once: it shows Google you are active, it gives potential customers confidence in your work, and it adds a local keyword (Sevenoaks) to your profile.
Other post ideas that work well for plumbers include seasonal reminders (checking boiler pressure before winter, preventing frozen pipes), short tips that demonstrate your expertise, and any new services you have started offering. You can also use posts to highlight positive reviews, which gives them a second life beyond the reviews tab.
Think of your GBP posts as a mini social media feed that lives right inside Google. The advantage over actual social media is that people see these posts at the exact moment they are searching for a plumber — when buying intent is at its highest.
7. Track your rankings so you know what is working
This last tip is about something most plumbers skip entirely, but it makes the difference between doing local SEO properly and just guessing. If you do not track your rankings, you have no idea whether the work you are putting in is actually paying off.
Local rankings are more nuanced than you might think. You might rank number one for “plumber in Dartford” when searched from the centre of Dartford, but drop to position eight when the same search is made from three miles away. This is because Google personalises local results based on the searcher’s exact location. A tool called a GeoGrid (sometimes called a local rank tracker) shows you how you rank across a grid of points around your area, giving you a realistic picture of your visibility.
At the very least, keep a simple spreadsheet of your target keywords and check where you rank for them once a month. Note which pages are climbing, which are stuck, and which new keywords are starting to appear in your Google Search Console data. Search Console is free and gives you real data on exactly which searches are bringing people to your website.
When you can see what is working, you can do more of it. When you can see what is not working, you can fix it before wasting months on the wrong approach. This is something we do for every client as part of our ongoing management — if you are curious about how rank tracking works for plumber SEO in Hampshire or any other area, it is one of the things included from day one.
Start getting more plumbing leads from Google
None of these local SEO tips for plumbers require a marketing degree or deep technical knowledge. They require consistency, a willingness to put in the groundwork, and an understanding that Google rewards businesses that show up, provide real information, and earn trust from their customers.
If you have the time and discipline to work through this list yourself, you will see results. Many plumbers do. But if you would rather focus on the plumbing and let someone else handle the SEO — the website, the citations, the rank tracking, the GBP optimisation, all of it — that is exactly what Localengine does.
We work exclusively with tradespeople across the UK, and everything is included for a flat rate of 300 pounds per month with no setup fee. That covers a fully built website targeting your services and towns, citation building across 40-plus directories, Google Business Profile management, review generation support, and monthly GeoGrid rank tracking so you always know where you stand. If you want a steady stream of plumbing leads from Google without having to become an SEO expert, get in touch and we will show you exactly how it works for your area.