Pages a plumber's website should have

A thin plumbing site, with a phone number and a few vague lines about "all your plumbing needs", gives a searcher little to go on. So if you searched "plumber seo" because you want more local work, the honest answer isn't a trick. It's pages. The right pages, each with one job, saying plainly what you do and where you do it. Here's what to build, what to put on each, and what to leave off.

Purpose: Tell a stranger in about five seconds who you are, what you do and where you work.

Say your trade and your area in the first lines, in plain words. "Plumber and heating engineer covering [your area]" beats a slogan every time. Then list your main services as links to their own pages, show how to ring you, and add one or two trust signals, such as your registration numbers if they apply.

Avoid stock photos. Avoid a rotating banner that hides your phone number. And avoid claiming to do everything. A home page that tries to cover every job says little about any of them.

Purpose: Let someone with one specific problem land on a page about exactly that problem.

Give each main service its own page, but only for work you genuinely do. That might be boiler servicing and repair, heating, leaks and emergency call-outs, and bathroom installation. If you don't fit bathrooms, don't build the page. A page for work you don't do is just a way to waste someone's afternoon.

On each page, say what the job involves, what you need to know from the customer, how they get in touch, and what areas you cover. Write it the way you'd explain it on the doorstep.

Gas work needs particular care. Anyone employed to work on gas appliances in domestic premises must be a Gas Safe registered engineer and competent in that area of gas work. So if you service or repair boilers, say so and show your Gas Safe registration number on the page. And to be fair, not every plumber does gas work. If you don't, say which jobs you do and which you don't, and don't imply gas work you aren't registered for. Saying plainly what you don't do saves everyone a wasted call.

Same logic for oil and solid fuel. GOV.UK's list of competent person schemes includes OFTEC for oil appliances and HETAS for solid fuel. Mention them only if you do that work.

Avoid one giant "Our services" page with a bullet list. Avoid copying the same paragraph onto every service page with the job title swapped. Avoid jargon the customer has to decode before they can ring you.

Purpose: Show you genuinely work in a particular place, and give people there a reason to pick you.

One honest page per place you really cover. Not forty. Say what you do there, mention the kinds of homes or jobs you tend to see, and make clear how someone in that place reaches you.

Here's the trap. It's tempting to clone a page and swap the town name. Don't. Google's spam policy treats scaled content abuse, meaning many pages made mainly to manipulate rankings, however they were created, as spam. A page that only differs by a place name is exactly that. If you can't write something real about working in a place, you don't have a page for it yet.

Avoid listing every postcode you've ever driven through. Avoid areas you wouldn't actually travel to. And avoid fake "local" detail you can't back up.

Purpose: Prove you do the work, with your own jobs.

Show real jobs: a boiler swapped, a bathroom finished, a leak put right. A couple of photos, a line on what the problem was, what you did and roughly where, kept general. Photos from your own phone are fine, because they're clearly yours.

Avoid stock images. Avoid before-and-after shots with no explanation. Avoid showing a customer's home in a way they haven't agreed to, and never include identifying details without asking.

Purpose: Let happy customers do some of the persuading.

Collect reviews where people can verify them, and link to or show them on one page. Ask after a job goes well, while it's fresh. Google says more reviews and positive ratings can help your local ranking, though nobody can promise a result.

Avoid writing reviews yourself. Avoid cherry-picked one-liners with no names or context. And avoid hiding the awkward ones; a calm, sensible reply to a poor review tells people more about you than a spotless wall of praise.

Purpose: Answer "can I trust this person in my home?" before anyone has to ask.

List what you actually hold, and make it checkable. If you do gas work, put your Gas Safe registration number on the site and link to the register so a visitor can check you. HSE says you can check an engineer by entering the licence number from their ID card on the Gas Safe Register website, by texting "Gas" and the seven-digit licence number to 85080, or by calling 0800 408 5500. A business can be checked by its registration number. Their competencies are marked on the ID card too, so tell people what yours cover.

WaterSafe describes itself as a free online directory and national accreditation body for competent and qualified plumbers, covering the Water Fittings Regulations, and approved plumbers issue Certificates of Compliance. If you're on it, say so.

Avoid logos with no explanation. Avoid claiming a badge you don't hold. And avoid vague "fully qualified and insured" lines that point at nothing.

Purpose: Answer the questions people ask on the phone, so they don't have to.

Write down the questions you hear all the time and answer them in your own words. How do I know you're registered? What areas do you cover? How do I ask for a quote? Short answers, honest ones.

Avoid made-up questions nobody asks. Avoid answers that dodge. If the honest answer is "it depends", say what it depends on.

Purpose: Make it easy to start a conversation.

Keep the form short: name, contact details, what the job is, where it is. Say what happens next. Add a phone number for people who'd rather ring, because many will.

Avoid a form with fifteen compulsory fields. Avoid promising a reply time you can't keep. Avoid a contact form that goes nowhere.

Purpose: Put a face and a place to the business.

Say who you are, how long you've worked in the trade (only if you can state it), what you do and where. A real photo helps. Give your phone number, email and the areas you cover, all in one place.

Avoid a life story. Avoid a contact page that's only a form. People ringing about a burst pipe want a number, not a mission statement.

Purpose: Meet your legal duty and quietly build trust.

If you're a UK limited company, you must show your registered number, your registered office address, where you're registered, and that it's a limited company on business letters, order forms and websites (GOV.UK). The footer is the obvious home for it. Add your Gas Safe number there too, if it applies.

Avoid leaving it out and hoping nobody notices. Avoid tiny grey text nobody can read.

Purpose: Get you into local results when someone nearby needs a plumber.

If you visit customers rather than serve them at your address, you're a service-area business. If you don't serve customers at your business address, remove the address from the profile. You can set up to 20 service areas, so pick the places you genuinely cover.

Be clear about what you can't do. There's no way to request or pay for a better local ranking. Local results are mainly based on relevance, distance and prominence. So keep the profile accurate, match it to your website, and ask for reviews.

Avoid showing a home address you don't want public. Avoid listing areas you won't travel to.

Short on time? Start here.

1. Home page. Your trade, your area, your phone number.
2. Your main service page. The job you most want more of, written properly.
3. Accreditations and insurance. Registration numbers, checkable.
4. Reviews. Real ones, in one place.
5. Quote request and contact. A simple way to get in touch.

Everything else can follow. Do these five well and the rest can follow.

Not sure which pages you're short of? Seracu offers a free snapshot: a free look at which topics your site lacks compared with its competitors. It's a clearer picture of the gaps. If you want more background first, see our guides on SEO for small business, content gap analysis and getting found on Google, and the pages you should have directory. Or start with the five pages above.