Picture a homeowner who has just been given your name. Maybe a neighbour recommended you, maybe they searched “builder near me”. Before they ring, they look you up. They are about to let a stranger into their house and hand over a lot of money, so they spend a minute or two deciding.
Two things have to happen for your website to win that job. Google has to show it to them. Then, in that first minute, it has to answer three simple questions: can you do my job, can I trust you, and how do I get a price? Most trade websites fall down on one or both.
Problem 1: Google doesn’t know your site exists
Google doesn’t show every website. It sends out a program, known as a crawler, to visit sites and read them. Only the pages it has visited and decided to keep can show up in search results. That process is called indexing.
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