Websites for trades in Wales
Websites for trades in Wales: the town pages that are real and the number that answers
A tradesperson in Wales gets work from three searches: the trade with the town, “near me” in the map, and the emergency search at eleven at night. The site that wins them has a page for each service, a page for each town genuinely served, the number in the header of every page, and a form that reaches the van. We also run trade-specific sites at builderwebdesign.co.uk and electricianseo.co.uk; this page is the part those do not cover, which is Wales: the Welsh-speaking customer, the border towns, and the schemes and certificates that apply here and not in England.
The three searches
What each search wants from the site, and what most trade sites give it
- "Plumber Bangor"
- Wants a page about plumbing in Bangor: the estates, the boiler makes you fit, the last three jobs with a photo, the number. Gets, on most sites, a home page that says "all aspects of plumbing and heating" and a contact page. The page for the service in the town is the page that ranks, and it takes a season.
- "Electrician near me"
- Wants the map, which is decided by the Google Business Profile: the primary category, a service area matching the towns you take, reviews arriving steadily with the job and the town in them, and photos from real jobs. The site backs the profile up by agreeing with it on the name, the address and the phone.
- "Emergency electrician Wrexham" at 11pm
- Wants a number, tappable, at the top of a page that says you answer at night and roughly what it costs to come out. Gets a form. The emergency page is a separate page, the number is a button, and the call goes to a phone that is switched on.
The Welsh part
Where a Welsh-speaking tradesperson wins, and where an English-only site is fine
In Gwynedd, where 64% of people speak Welsh, and in Ynys Môn, Ceredigion and Carmarthenshire, a customer will often choose the trydanwr or the plymar who can talk through the job in Welsh, and searches for a trade in Welsh, small in number, have nobody competing for them. If you speak Welsh, the site says so on the home page, carries the Welsh Language Commissioner's Iaith Gwaith speech bubble that marks a Welsh speaker, and, on the bilingual build, has the service pages in Welsh with a switch that works. If you do not, the site does not pretend, and in Wrexham, Cardiff or Newport, where most customers search in English, an English site with the town pages done properly loses nothing.
Then the border. A trade in Wrexham, Mold, Welshpool or Chepstow works both sides of it, and the site names Chester, Shrewsbury or Bristol as towns served with the same honesty as the Welsh ones, with the CH, SY and BS postcodes in the service area, or Google reads the Welsh address as the whole story.
And the things that apply here and not in England, which a customer in Wales may ask about and a template from a national company never mentions: the Welsh building regulations, which are set separately and have required sprinklers in every new home since 2016; the Welsh Government's Nest scheme, which sends insulation, heating and heat-pump work to approved installers; and the certificates a Welsh council's building control expects to see. The trade's national bodies, Gas Safe, NICEIC, NAPIT, TrustMark, are shown with their numbers, not as logos.
The monthly work adds one town or service page a month, in Welsh too where the customers are, runs the review routine at the end of every job, and reads the numbers. The prices are the same for a sole trader and a firm of twelve, and the audit is free.
Questions businesses in Wales ask us
How many town pages should a trade have?
As many towns as you genuinely work in and can say something true about, usually four to eight. A page for Wrexham that mentions the estates you work on and the last three jobs there is a page; twenty pages for every village within thirty miles with the name swapped is what Google's doorway policy filters, and the filter takes your real pages with it.
Should I put Welsh on the site if I speak it?
Yes, and say so plainly: a line on the home page, the Iaith Gwaith speech bubble, and, in Gwynedd, Ynys Môn, Ceredigion or Carmarthenshire, a Welsh version of the service pages. A Welsh-speaking customer choosing between two electricians in Caernarfon will choose the one who can explain the job in Welsh. If you do not speak it, do not pretend; a Welsh page with nobody to answer the phone in Welsh does harm.
I get all my work from recommendations. Why bother?
Because the recommendation now ends with a search. The neighbour gives your name, the customer types it in, and what comes back decides whether they ring. No site, or a dead Facebook page, sends them to the second name they were given.
Do you build sites for one trade in particular?
We run separate sites for builders and electricians with everything specific to those trades, and this page is the Welsh part that those sites do not cover: the language, the border, the certificates and schemes that apply here. Any trade in Wales can start from either.
Send us your town and your trade
You get a review of who is in the map pack for your searches and why, what a customer sees when they look you up on a phone, whether your town is free on the monthly tiers, and a fixed price.