How to get more work as an electrician in Ireland without paying for leads

1. Claim and fix your Google Business Profile this week

This is free and it's the single biggest lever. Search your business name on Google. If a panel with your name appears on the right, claim it. If not, create one at business.google.com. Then fix the five things most electricians get wrong:

• Primary category: Electrician. Add secondary categories for what you want more of, for example "Electric vehicle charging station contractor" if you do EV installs.
• Service area: list the towns you actually go to, not the whole province.
• Phone number: your mobile, the one you answer.
• Photos: ten real ones. Fuse boards you've fitted, the van, you. No stock.
• Website link: to your own site, not your Facebook page.

2. Get a review after every job, with a link

Google gives every profile a short review link. Save it as a text template on your phone: "Thanks for the work today. If you've a minute, a Google review would mean a lot: [link]". Send it while you're still in the driveway. Electricians who do this get a review from roughly one in three customers. Twenty reviews at 4.8 puts you above almost everyone in your county.

3. Build the three pages that win the big jobs

A homepage that lists "all electrical work" ranks for nothing in particular. The jobs worth having are searched by name. Give each its own page:

• Rewires and fuse-board upgrades. What's involved, rough price bands, why an old board is a risk, and a photo of a board you fitted.
• EV charger installation. The grant, what the meter needs, how long it takes, your SEAI registration if you have it.
• Solar PV if you do it. The highest-value enquiry in the trade right now.

Each page should name your town and the towns around it in the text, naturally. "We fit EV chargers across Waterford, Tramore and Dungarvan" is how people search and how Google matches.

4. Put your number and WhatsApp where a thumb lands

Tradespeople lose more work to bad contact buttons than to bad reviews. On a phone, your number should be a tap-to-call button that's visible without scrolling, and there should be a WhatsApp button beside it, because half of your customers would rather send a photo of the fuse board than describe it. Contact forms are for people at desks. Your customers are in kitchens.

5. Show the Safe Electric registration properly

Registered Electrical Contractor, the mark, your REC number, linked to the register. Header and footer. Customers have been told to check it, so make checking take one tap. It's covered in detail in our guide to badges and registrations on your website.

6. Match the van and the site

Put the web address on the van, the same name as on the site, the same name as on Google. When someone sees the van at a neighbour's and searches the name that evening, everything should line up. Mismatched names are the most common reason a recommended electrician can't be found.

7. Give it six weeks

A new site with a proper Google profile usually starts showing for "electrician [your town]" within a few weeks and settles over two or three months. Reviews speed it up. In the meantime the site already does the second job: it convinces the people who were sent to you.

What this costs

Steps one, two, four and six are free and take an evening. Steps three and five need a website. Ours is €400 for a one-page site or €900 with the job pages, live in five working days, and it includes the Google Business set-up in step one. See websites for electricians in Ireland.