Website not getting leads in Stirling? How we rebuilt a tree surgeon's site

Staleys Tree Solutions are a tree surgeon in Stirling, and their website now carries a page for every service they offer and every town they cover. We redesigned it around what they actually do and where they actually work, and a few months later the owner left a public recommendation saying the site had been redesigned and they were moving into ads with us.

Most trade websites are built to look nice, not to win work, and closing that gap is the most common job we are brought in to do. Below is what was wrong, the three things we changed, and how to tell whether your own website has the same problem.

The question every busy trade eventually asks

It comes out something like this: my website looks perfectly good, so why is it not bringing me any work? We hear a version of it constantly, and rarely from people who are struggling. They are busy enough on word of mouth, they turn up and they do a good job. The website just sits there looking smart and bringing in next to nothing, and they cannot see why. The answer is almost always the same, and it has very little to do with how the site looks.

Why a smart-looking website still brings in no work

A website that looks good and a website that wins work are two different things, and most trades have been sold the first one. The usual setup is a tidy homepage, an about page, a photo gallery, a contact form, and one services page with everything piled onto it. It photographs well and it reads well. It just gives Google nothing to work with.

When someone types stump grinding stirling into their phone, Google wants to send them to a page that is about stump grinding in Stirling. If your stump grinding is one line on a page that also covers felling, hedges and emergencies, and that page is trying to speak to six towns at once, there is no clear page to show, so Google sends the job to one of your competitors instead.

The fix is the oldest rule in local marketing. Stop writing about the business, and start writing about WHAT you do and WHERE you do it, with a page for each.

What we changed for Staleys in Stirling, and why it works

We rebuilt the site around two simple ideas, a page for everything they do and a page for everywhere they do it, and three changes carried most of the weight.

First, a page for every service. Tree felling, crown reduction, stump grinding, hedge trimming, ash dieback and emergency tree work each got their own page, written about that one job, instead of sharing a single list. So when someone searches for crown reduction, there is now a whole page about crown reduction for Google to send them to.

Second, a page for every town. We built proper location pages for Stirling, Falkirk and Bridge of Allan, and each one is written about that place rather than spun from a template. The Stirling page alone runs to around 1,600 words and talks about the real neighbourhoods and the local tree protection rules, because a page that clearly knows the area is a page Google will trust for the area.

Third, the plumbing underneath. We made the business name, address and phone number read exactly the same on every page and in the code Google reads off the site, added the details that mark it out as a genuine local business, put a map on it and made the phone number tappable on a mobile. None of that shows up in a nice screenshot, and all of it is the difference between a site that looks like a business and one Google can actually find and put in front of people.

A few months into the work, Staleys put it in their own words:

He has now re designed my website and we are moving into ads as he has been consistent with what he can deliver and how it's delivered. Great guy and a great addition to my team

That is the whole point of a rebuild like this. The website stops being an ornament and becomes the first thing in the business that earns its keep.

How to tell if your own website is the problem

You do not need us to check this for you. Open your website on your phone and go looking.

• Does every service you sell have its own page, or are they all stacked onto one?

• Does every town you work in have a page that is actually about that town?

• In the first line or two, does it say plainly what you do and where, or does it talk about the company?

• Is your name, address and phone number written the same way everywhere Google can see them?

• Can you tap the phone number and have it ring?

If you answered no to more than one of those, your website is working against you, and no amount of posting on social media makes up for it. The good news is that this is one of the fastest wins a local business has sitting in front of it.

Getting that fixed site to the top of Google is a separate job that sits on top of it, and if that is where your head is, that is what we do over at Rank on Google. The website has to come first though, because ranking only pays off once the page it sends people to actually turns them into work.

So if your site looks fine and brings in next to nothing, that is exactly the problem we rebuild websites to solve. Book a call and we will go through yours together, page by page, and show you where it is losing you work.