Local SEO for Sunshine Coast Trades: The 12 Things That Actually Move the Map Pack

When someone on the Coast searches "electrician Noosa" or "garage door repairs Caloundra", the first thing they see is the map pack: three Google Business Profile listings with a map, above the normal results. For a trade, being in those three is most of the game. This is the list of things that actually move you into it, in roughly the order they tend to matter.

1. Pick the right primary category

Your Google Business Profile has one primary category and it carries more weight than anything else on the profile. "Electrician" beats "Contractor". "Plumber" beats "Home services". Add the secondary categories you genuinely do, and no more.

2. Fill in the services, properly

The Services section of the profile is where you list switchboard upgrades, hot water repairs, roller door motors, whatever your trade does. Each one with a sentence of description. Most profiles have three vague entries. Twenty specific ones give Google twenty more reasons to show you.

3. Reviews, steadily, with replies

Review count, recency and rating all count. Twenty reviews spread over two years beat twenty in one week. Build it into the job: a text with the review link when you send the invoice. Reply to every one, including the bad ones, in a sentence or two. A customer reading reviews is also reading how you handle complaints.

4. Real photos, added regularly

Your ute, your team, finished jobs. Not stock. A profile that gains a few photos a month looks like a business that is working, and customers click on it more, which Google notices.

5. Name, address and phone, identical everywhere

Your business name, address and phone number should match exactly across Google, your website, Yellow Pages, Localsearch, True Local and your social profiles. "Pty Ltd" on one and not another, an old mobile number on a directory, a previous address: each one is a small reason for Google to trust you a little less.

6. A service area that matches reality

If you cover Caloundra to Noosa, say so on the profile. If you do not, do not. Google ranks you better where you are near and where you say you work; claiming all of Queensland dilutes both.

7. A page per service on your website

The profile gets you into the map. The website decides where in it. One page per job you want more of, written for the person with the problem: what is wrong, what you do about it, what it roughly costs, how fast you come. Not a single "Services" page with a bullet list.

8. Suburb pages, but only for suburbs you work in

A page for Maroochydore, one for Buderim, one for Noosa, each with something true about working there: the job types you get, the estates, the travel time, a recent job. Fifty identical pages with the suburb name swapped is the opposite of this and Google treats it accordingly.

9. Structured data on the site

LocalBusiness schema that tells Google your name, address, phone, opening hours, licence and service area in a format it does not have to guess at. It is invisible to customers and it is one of the cheapest things on this list to get right. Every site we build has it.

10. Fast on a phone

Most trade searches happen on a mobile, often outdoors. A site that takes six seconds to show a phone number loses the call. Test yours on your own phone, on mobile data, in a car park.

11. The directories that matter, and only those

Yellow Pages, Localsearch, True Local, your trade association, your suppliers' "find an installer" pages. These are citations and links Google trusts. The three hundred "free business directories" an SEO package submits you to are not, and some do harm.

12. Keep going

None of this is a one-off. Reviews keep arriving, photos keep being added, pages get updated when the business changes. The trades that hold the map pack on the Coast are not doing anything clever. They are doing the ordinary things every month.

If you would rather someone else did the ordinary things, that is most of what our local SEO work is. Make the Switch Electrical in Mount Coolum tripled their enquiries within six months of us doing exactly this.