SEO for roofers: how UK roofing firms get found on Google

SEO for roofers is getting a roofing business found when homeowners search Google for roofing help nearby, such as "flat roof repair portsmouth" or "roofer near me". Google usually answers with a map of three roofers, so it starts with a Google Business Profile set up as a roofer, a page for each job and steady reviews.

Before you change anything, see where you show today. A free Google Maps rank check shows where you rank from 25 spots around your base for one search, such as "roof repair", with no sign-up.

Further down is a reading of seven real Portsmouth roofing searches from 1 November 2026: who took the map, which sites took the web results, and the two searches that broke the pattern.

What is SEO for roofers?

SEO for roofers, also called roofing SEO, is making your business easy for Google to match to the roofing jobs people search for in your area. It has two halves.

1. Local search. Your Google Business Profile, your reviews and your details on other sites decide whether you appear in the map of three businesses, the Google 3-pack, for searches such as "roof repair" made near you.
2. Your website. A page for each job you want more of decides whether you appear in the web results under the map, and whether you show for searches that get no map at all.

Most roofers work from home or a yard and travel to customers, which changes how Google treats the listing. Our guide to local SEO for plumbers, electricians and other trades covers service areas for any van-based trade. This post is about what is particular to roofing.

How to do SEO for a roofing business

1. Set up your Google profile as a roofer. Roofing contractor as the main category, your address hidden if customers don't come to you, and the towns you cover added.
2. List the jobs you want as services, and give each one a page. Flat roofs, repairs, re-roofing, chimneys, guttering and call-outs each get their own page on your website.
3. Ask every customer for a Google review. Send a direct link once the job is done, and reply to every review.
4. Keep your details the same on trade sites. Your name, phone number and areas should match on Checkatrade, TrustATrader, MyBuilder and anywhere else you are listed.
5. Check where you show across your area. Search from several postcodes you cover, not only from your own house.

Each step is explained below, after what the seven searches showed.

What Google showed for seven Portsmouth roofing searches

We read seven Google searches on 1 November 2026 to see what a homeowner actually meets. Each was a roofing job plus the town, such as "flat roof repair portsmouth", collected through DataForSEO's SERP API for the United Kingdom, on mobile, at about 09:51 UTC.

For each page we noted the map pack, the trade directories among the ten web results and whether Google showed an AI Overview. The firms are left out here.

KerbrankReal data

What the reading shows:

1. The map was on 6 of the 7 pages. The exception was "emergency roofer portsmouth", which had no map pack at all. Seven of its ten web results were roofers' own pages, three of them with "24/7" in the title. For an urgent job, most of that first page went to roofers' own pages.

2. A few roofers held the map. The five roofing searches had 15 map places between them, and only four roofers filled them. Two were in all five. Every listing in those maps had 4.9 or 5.0 stars and between 61 and 160 Google reviews, and the roofer with the most reviews came first in all five.

   Google's help page on local ranking says "Local results are mainly based on relevance, distance and popularity." Reviews feed the popularity part, and here they lined up with the order.

3. The chimney search went to chimney sweeps. None of the four roofers from the other maps appeared for "chimney repair portsmouth". If you want chimney work, Google has to know you do it, from your services and a chimney page, or the sweeps take it.
4. Trade directories took 28 of the 70 web results. Checkatrade alone had 16, and it was on all seven pages. MyBuilder and TrustATrader had five each. Google's "Find results on" row of directory links appeared on all seven pages too, at the top of six of them.
5. Firms' own sites took 34 of the 70. Many were a page for one job in one town, such as flat roofing or emergency repairs, rather than a home page. Facebook, Instagram and Reddit took the other 8.
6. No ads, and AI answers on some. None of the seven pages had ads. Google's AI Overview showed on 4 of the 7.

This is one town on one morning, searched for the whole of the UK on a phone. A search made from a street in Portsmouth, a desktop or another day can show different roofers, so run your own searches before you decide what to change.

To see who takes the map where your customers are, run a free rank check for your main job, such as "flat roof repair". It searches from 25 spots around your base and shows where you come at each one.

What homeowners search for

Roofing work is searched for in large numbers, and much more at some times of year than others. These are UK monthly averages from Google Ads keyword data (through DataForSEO, United Kingdom, checked 1 November 2026), with the lowest and highest month in the twelve months to September 2026.

Two things follow. Repair and leak searches climb in autumn and winter, so the time to get your profile, pages and reviews in order is before October, not during a storm. And most searches say "near me" rather than a town, which means Google decides who to show by where the searcher is standing.

Set up your Google Business Profile as a roofer

Google's guidelines for representing your business are short on roofing but clear on the things that trip roofers up.

1. Hide your address if customers don't come to you. Google says "If you're a service-area business, you should hide your business address from customers." Its own example is a plumber running the business from home. Add the towns and areas you cover instead.
2. Use your real name. The name should be the one on your van, your invoices and your website. Google says adding unnecessary information to the name isn't permitted and could get the profile suspended, so "Smith Roofing" stays "Smith Roofing", not "Smith Roofing Flat Roofs Portsmouth".
3. Pick one main category. Google says "Use as few categories as possible to describe your overall core business from the provided list." For most firms that is Roofing contractor. Add others only for work you really do as a core part of the business. Our guide to choosing your primary category explains how to check.
4. List your services. Google lets many service businesses add services to their profile, so add the jobs you want more of: flat roof repairs, re-roofing, chimney repairs, fascias and guttering, emergency call-outs. The chimney search above shows why this matters.
5. Add real photos. Before and after shots of your own jobs, your van and your team help a homeowner choose you once you are in the map. Our guide to Google Business Profile optimisation goes through every field.

Give each roofing job its own page

In the reading, many of the roofers' web results were a page for one job, and pages like that took seven of the ten results for the emergency search. A single "Our services" page that lists everything gives Google less to match.

A good job page says what the job involves, the roof types and materials you work with, the areas you cover, how quickly you can come out, any guarantee you give, and photos of jobs you have done. Write it for the homeowner reading it on a phone with water coming through the ceiling.

The pages most roofers need are flat roofs, roof repairs, new roofs and re-roofing, chimneys, fascias, soffits and guttering, and emergency repairs if you take call-outs.

Add a page for a town only where you really work and have something real to say about jobs there. The trades guide explains why near-copies of one page with the town swapped can count against you.

Say how you handle building regulations. A re-roofing page is where a careful homeowner looks for this.

The Planning Portal's guidance on re-roofing, written for England, says "In most situations, this work will need Building Regulations approval." It also says re-covering a roof should include improving its insulation, that a much heavier or lighter covering can mean strengthening the roof, and that some flat roof repairs don't need an application.

Say on the page who sorts out the approval and what the homeowner gets at the end. Building rules differ across the four UK nations, so write it for where you work.

Reviews and trade sites

Google reviews. In the five roofing maps every listing had at least 61 reviews, so a roofer with a handful will struggle to get in. Ask every customer once the job is done, with a direct link, and reply to every review. Our guides cover how to get more Google reviews and how to respond to them.

Checkatrade, TrustATrader and MyBuilder. They were the three directories that kept appearing, and Checkatrade was on every page. Some homeowners choose straight from those pages without reaching your website.

If you are listed, keep your name, phone number and areas the same as your Google profile, and collect reviews there too. Our guide to local citations explains why matching details matter and which directories trades meet most.

Check where you rank across your area

Distance is one of the three things Google names, so a search from your own house only shows how you look from your house. A homeowner five miles away can see a different three roofers.

Search for your main jobs from a few postcodes you cover, or use a grid that checks many spots at once. Our guide to ranking higher on Google Maps covers what to change when you find a gap.

Dashboard · Position mapExample

Kerbrank runs your roofing searches, such as "flat roof repair" or "roofer", from spots across your area every week, and shows which roofers hold the top three where you don't. You can try it with a 14-day free trial, no card needed.

Common questions