The belief goes: if the phone already rings from word of mouth, Google can only be for people who are not very good. It is a comfortable idea across the UK, and it is half right.
Word of mouth is the best lead a trade gets. The customer arrives trusting you, the price conversation is shorter, and nobody has compared you with three others. What it cannot do is reach a customer who knows nobody to ask. A burst pipe in a town you have just moved to, or a roof job for someone new to the street, goes to whoever Google puts on the screen.
So the useful question is not whether SEO beats word of mouth. It is whether your referrals are leaking at the last step, and whether there are jobs out there that referrals will never carry. This post gives you a test for both, a table that says which situation you are in, and the arithmetic of what a year costs.
Which situation are you in? A decision map
SEO is worth paying for when referrals have stopped filling the diary or cannot reach the work you want; it is worth waiting on while the diary is full and you want nothing more.
| Your situation | Is paid SEO worth it now? | Do this first |
|---|---|---|
| Booked for months, turning work away, no wish for more | Not yet | Keep the profile accurate and ask for reviews, so the next gap does not catch you out |
| Busy, but the work is lower value than you want | Yes, aimed at the jobs you want | Name the job and the town, then pick searches for that job only |
| Referrals slowing, or most of them come from one source | Yes | Run the two-minute check below before any quote |
| New to an area, or the people who know you are in another town | Yes, this is the clearest case | Profile and review count first, because nobody there can vouch for you |
| No website, thin or unclaimed profile | Fix the base first | A profile and a one-page site. The Website plan is £50 every four weeks, free mockup first |
Notice what the table does not say. It never says word of mouth is bad. The question for each row is only whether there is work you want that your referrals will not bring you. If the doubt is about the quiet months, whether to pay for SEO over the winter sets the keep, start or stop choice out.
What a recommendation leaves out
A recommendation hands someone your name and nothing else, so what they find when they search that name decides whether the referral becomes a call.
I cannot give you a UK figure for how many referred customers check Google before they ring, because I have not found a source I could open. What I can say is that typing a name into a search box is the easiest step in the world, and that you can see exactly what they would see. It takes two minutes on your phone.
- Search your business name. Is your profile first, with the right number, hours and trade?
- Search your trade and your nearest town. Who is on the map, and how many reviews do they show next to yours?
- Open your own website on the phone. Can a stranger tell what you do, where, and how to call within one screen?
If step one shows someone else, or a half-filled profile, you have found the leak. It costs nothing to fix and it protects the referrals you already earn. That is the first job, whoever you pay later.
Worked example: what a year has to earn back
Divide a year's fee by your average job: at £300 every four weeks that is £3,900, and on an invented £650 job the plan pays for itself at six extra jobs.
The numbers below are made up to show the method, so swap in your own (the same sum across three budgets and three job values is in how much a tradesman should spend on marketing). Say a plumber in Hampshire averages £650 a job and has an SEO plan on a website that already exists.
Break-even on an invented £650 average job
| SEO and Map Pack, £300 every four weeks, thirteen payments | £3,900 |
| Extra jobs needed at £650 each (£3,900 divided by £650) | 6 |
| With a website built and hosted, £350 every four weeks | £4,550 |
| Extra jobs needed at £650 each (£4,550 divided by £650) | 7 |
An invented average, used to show the method. It is not a forecast of jobs won, and Sitework is not VAT registered, so these are full amounts. If your average is £2,000, the same year needs two jobs.
The honest read is that six extra jobs a year is a number a busy trade could reach or miss, which is why the test above comes first. If the answer is yes, the full plan is on the SEO and Map Pack page, with a £150 deposit taken off the first payment and twelve weeks minimum, then rolling.
Turn the referrals you have into something Google can see
A referral that never becomes a review is invisible to the next stranger, so asking each happy customer to say it on Google is the cheapest SEO a UK trade can do.
Every finished job is a chance to ask. A short message with a direct link, sent the same day while the customer is still pleased with the work, costs nothing. The wording should be theirs, not yours, and it should not come with a discount or a reward, and check Google's review policy before you offer anything in return (I did not open that page for this post).
Over a few months that builds the one thing a new customer can compare at a glance: how many people have used you recently, and what they said. It also builds the prominence Google talks about, so the work is not wasted if you later pay for more. Whatever the leak check finds, this is the step to start this week.
What SEO reaches that referrals cannot
Referrals travel along the people who already know you, while a Google search is how someone with no one to ask finds a UK trade.
That is the whole case, and it is a modest one. Google describes local results as a mix of relevance, distance and prominence, with reviews and information from around the web feeding the last. I read that on a search summary of its help page, not the page itself. It means a trade with accurate details, a good spread of recent reviews and pages about the job it wants can show up for strangers.
How that looks depends on the trade. A roofer's jobs are rare and big, so a few extra enquiries matter. A plumber's are frequent and smaller, so which jobs are worth paying for is the sharper question. In both, the referral base stays; the paid work is aimed at what it misses.
When to wait, and why it is not a failure
If you are booked for months in Scotland, Wales or England alike and do not want more work, a monthly SEO fee buys nothing you can use, and waiting is the correct call.
A fee for more enquiries you cannot take is a cost with no return. What is worth doing meanwhile is cheap: complete the profile, keep asking for reviews, and make sure the website loads fast on a phone. Then set a date to re-run the two-minute check, say every quarter, so you notice when the diary starts to thin rather than after it has.
The same goes for the opposite case. If you have never had a website and your profile is empty, paying for SEO on top of nothing is paying twice. Start with the base, and the rest can follow when the sums say so. If you are in your first year of trading, is SEO worth it for a new trade business sets out the order.
How long before it shows up, if you do start
Local SEO is a months question, not a weeks one: my target is the Google Maps top 3 in 90 days for up to three agreed searches in one area, or billing pauses and the work continues.
That is a target with a remedy rather than a promise, because Google says there is no way to request or pay for a better local ranking. Whether 90 days is realistic depends on who already holds the top three in your town, which is why I look before I quote. Can you get into the Google Maps top 3 in 90 days? sets out the ranges by starting point.
Bottom line: word of mouth is the lead you want, and SEO is the way to reach the customers it cannot. Run the two-minute check, work out your break-even, and pay only if the sums and the diary both say yes.