Writing
What we know, written down
Straight answers about what a trade website costs, what it needs, and what actually gets you the call. We don't promise rankings and we don't make up numbers.
- Who owns your website? Domains, hosting, and what happens when you leaveThe single question worth asking before you pay a web designer anything. How to check who is really named on your domain, what your rights are, and how to get it back if the answer is wrong.
- Website care plans — what you are actually paying for every monthMonthly website fees run from nothing to hundreds. What is genuinely a recurring cost, what is marketing wearing a maintenance badge, and how to tell which you are buying.
- What is actually included in a £700 website — and what is notA line-by-line account of what the bottom of the professional price band buys, what it deliberately leaves out, and the four things that get quietly billed later.
- My new website is not showing up on Google — what is actually going onIndexed, ranked and found are three different things, and most panicked searches confuse them. How to tell which one you have got, in the order worth checking.
- Choosing a web designer — the questions to ask, and five answers that should worry youTwelve questions that separate a firm that will still be answering the phone in two years from one that will not, and what a good answer to each actually sounds like.
- Why your old website stopped bringing in workWebsites rarely break. They go quietly out of date while everything around them moves — and there are only about six reasons the enquiries dried up.
- How many pages does a trade website actually need?One page or twenty? The answer follows from how many things you sell and how many places you sell them in — not from what a package happens to include.
- Roofing company websites — what turns a look into a phone callRoofing enquiries arrive frightened, urgent or both. What a homeowner with a leak and a surveyor with a schedule each need to see before they ring.
- Tree surgery websites — turning photographs of the work into enquiriesTree work is bought on nerve as much as price. What the customer is checking — tickets, insurance, who clears up — and why the photographs are doing most of the selling.
- Groundworks and landscaping websites — showing the work properlyTwo trades, two very different buyers on the same website. How to serve a contractor pricing a package and a homeowner pricing a garden without losing either.
- How trade businesses get recommended by AI searchWhat trade business owners control in AI search discovery — crawlable pages, consistent facts, real evidence, honest limits. No magic switches or guarantees.
- How scaffolders win direct work instead of subcontractingSubcontracting fills the diary on somebody else's terms. What has to be true — online and offline — before a client picks one scaffolding firm over another.
- Is Checkatrade worth it for tradespeople?An honest run at Checkatrade: what it does well, what the model means for who wins, and how to tell if it earns its fee in your trade and area.
- Website vs paid lead platforms — what does a lead really cost?Three platforms, three charging models. What each means for your diary, and how to compare honestly against owning the enquiry.
- Google Business Profile vs a website for tradesThe profile is free and it earns its place. Where it stops — and why the firms that win local searches usually run both rather than choosing.
- Facebook page vs a website for tradesFacebook is word of mouth at scale, and it is genuinely useful. What it cannot do is be found by someone searching for what you do.
- Getting found on Google as a trade business in KentThe three routes local customers take — Maps, web results and third-party surfaces — what Google says actually drives each, and the priority order worth working through.
- How to show up on Google Maps as a trade businessWhat Google says drives local results, the setup decisions that get trades firms suspended when wrong, and the order of attack worth following.
- Websites for trade businesses — what they cost, what they need, and what actually wins workA plain guide to what a trade website is for, what it should contain, and what it is reasonable to pay. Written for owners who have been quoted wildly different numbers.
- How much should a tradesman's website cost in 2026?What sits behind the quotes trades get — from a tenner a month to five figures — and how to tell which end of that range your business actually needs.
- Website builders vs a built site — the honest comparisonSquarespace and Wix genuinely work, and they cost about a tenner a month. Here is what that price does not include, argued on labour rather than features.
- Scaffolding company websites — what wins commercial workCommercial scaffolding enquiries get checked by people who are managing risk. What a contractor or surveyor looks for before they put you on a tender list.