Two businesses share your van: the artist and the caretaker.
Landscaping is really two trades wearing one name. The project business — patios, decking, full garden redesigns — sells like architecture: portfolios, imagination, five-figure decisions made over weeks. The maintenance business — mowing, hedges, monthly upkeep — sells like reliability: turn up, do it well, forever.
Their customers search differently, judge differently and convert differently — and almost every landscaper's Google profile serves one while quietly starving the other. Designing for both is the whole game in your trade, and this page is that design.
In short
Landscapers win Google Maps by serving both halves of the trade on one profile: project searchers get a portfolio — before/after photos, design-heavy services, reviews describing transformations — while maintenance searchers get reliability signals — steady reviews mentioning years of service, clear recurring offerings, responsive replies. Categories declare both honestly, and the seasonal demand curve is planned for, not suffered.
The five-figure dreamer and the fortnightly regular
Meet your two searchers — and notice they never read your profile the same way.
"Garden design [town]" — imagination shopping
Weeks of research, multiple quotes, Pinterest boards. They open your photos before anything else: befores, afters, details of finished stonework. A thin photo section ends the conversation before it starts; a rich one sells the consultation while you sleep.
"Gardener near me" — reliability shopping
They're hiring a habit, not a vision. Reviews mentioning "three years now", "always turns up", "same crew" close this deal. Recurring services listed plainly (fortnightly mowing, seasonal tidy-ups) tell them you actually want this work — many project-led firms don't, and it shows.
The most photogenic trade on the map — use it
No trade transforms space this visibly. Your review strategy should be photo-led on the project side and consistency-led on the maintenance side — two asks, two vocabularies, one honest system.
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1
Project jobs: ask at the reveal, ask for the photo
The finished-garden walkthrough is the peak moment — "if you're happy, a review with a photo of the garden would mean the world" converts at the emotional high. Customer photos of real transformations are the strongest asset a landscaping profile can hold.
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2
Maintenance jobs: ask at the anniversary
Regulars don't have a reveal moment — they have loyalty. "You've been with us a year — would you say so in a review?" produces the "reliable for years" reviews that win every future maintenance client. One ask per client per year, universal, unincentivised.
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3
Reply seasonally sharp
Spring reviews get replies within days — that's your booking season, and reply activity is profile freshness exactly when searchers flood in. A March reply streak is worth more than a November one; we schedule the work accordingly.
Categories: declare both trades, lead with the money one
Google's green-trade categories split cleanly along your two businesses. The anchor follows your revenue centre; the secondaries declare the other half honestly.
| Category | Use it as | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Landscaper | Primary | The anchor for project-led businesses — carries design, patio and construction searches. |
| Gardener | Primary (maintenance-led) / Secondary | A maintenance-first business anchors here instead; project-led firms stack it to stay in the recurring-work contests. |
| Landscape designer | Secondary | For genuine design services — it signals the consultative end and matches high-value "design" searches. |
| Lawn care service | Secondary | Real recurring lawn work only — it's its own search family with its own loyal customers. |
| Paving contractor / Fence contractor | Secondary | If driveways and fencing are true service lines, these enter contests "Landscaper" alone doesn't fully cover. |
Seasonality note: categories are year-round, but your profile activity shouldn't be — the strongest landscaping profiles bank photos and reviews from the busy season to keep the profile visibly alive through winter, when next spring's big projects start their research.
Verifiable green-trade credentials — rarer, so louder
Landscaping has no licence and plenty of cowboys, which makes the real accreditations disproportionately loud when actually displayed. Hold any of these? They belong on the profile, not the letterhead.
- BALI — British Association of Landscape Industries↗
- The industry's established accreditation body, with vetted membership and a public find-a-member directory a client can check your name against — the strongest single "we're the real thing" signal in your trade.
- APL — Association of Professional Landscapers↗
- The professional landscapers' association with vetted membership — a second checkable register for the project client comparing three quotes.
- TrustMark↗
- The government-endorsed quality scheme covering garden and landscaping trades — "government-endorsed" does heavy lifting with cautious homeowners.
- Marshalls Register↗
- A manufacturer-run installer register (not an independent body — we label it as what it is) that hard-landscaping clients recognise, with workmanship guarantees attached to registered installations.
The landscaper's checklist
- ✓One profile, two businesses: portfolio depth for projects, reliability signals for maintenance.
- ✓Photos are your conversion engine — befores, afters, details; customer photos above all.
- ✓Two review asks: the reveal moment (with photo) and the loyalty anniversary.
- ✓Anchor category follows the revenue centre; declare the other half in secondaries.
- ✓Bank busy-season content to stay visibly alive through winter research months.
- ✓BALI/APL/TrustMark are checkable in a cowboy-scarred trade — display them where searchers look.
Your patch, project and maintenance separately
Project work travels further than maintenance rounds — so we track them as separate keyword families across your geo-grid. You see exactly where "garden design" searches find you versus where "gardener near me" does, and the map fills in on both fronts month by month.
Fixed prices. On the page.
Fixed monthly packages, on the page — the same in January as in May, unlike your demand curve. Bank transfer, no lock-in.
| Package | Monthly | Keywords tracked | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | £299 | 2+ | Get on the map in your town |
| Growth | £599 | 4+ | Climb into the top 3 |
| Market Leader | £899 | 6+ | Own the map pack |
No contract · Cancel anytime · Pay monthly by bank transfer · Prices exclude VAT where applicable
Straight answers
We only want project work, not maintenance. Does the split still matter? +
Yes — as a filter. The profile can honestly signal project-only (categories, services, description), which saves your phone from mowing enquiries and sharpens your relevance for the design searches. The split matters whichever side you choose; what hurts is not choosing.
Winter is dead for us. Should we pause the SEO? +
Winter is when spring's big projects do their research — the £20k garden starting in April was searched in January. Pausing exactly when the highest-value researchers are looking is the classic seasonal-trade mistake. We keep the profile alive with banked content; the work is lighter, not paused.
Our best photos are on Instagram. Do they help the profile? +
Not until they're ON the profile. Instagram reaches followers; Google reaches strangers mid-decision. Same photos, uploaded weekly to the profile with real captions — it's the same content doing a second, arguably bigger job.
We cover three towns. Can we rank in all of them? +
Rankings anchor to your real base, so expect a gradient — strongest at home, thinning outward. The geo-grid shows the honest picture across all three, and the work pushes the strong zone wider each quarter. What we won't do is fake addresses in each town; that's a suspension, not a strategy.
How does payment work? +
Monthly in advance by bank transfer — invoice with our UK account details, no card stored, no minimum term. Cancel any month you like. Card payments are coming soon.
Done for you
Our Google Maps SEO service
Fixed monthly prices, geo-grid rank reporting, no lock-in. The full climb, handled.
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Business Profile optimisation
The one-off rebuild that fixes what Google sees first — categories, services, photos.
See where you stand first — free
Before you spend a pound: a human checks your map presence across your patch and tells you honestly whether we can help.