Home / Industries / Tiling and floor coverings
When someone types “tiles” into Google, they see shops. Whole pages of shops, promotions and catalogues. The tradesman who actually lays them comes far behind, if at all. Yet your client exists: they have bought their tiles, or are about to, and they are looking for someone who can lay them properly. I build your presence on those fitting searches, in the towns where you work.
15 years in SEO
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A woman in Cognac has bought her tiles and is looking for someone to lay them. Your site comes up third. Its title says “Tiles | Home”, like a shop's. The two lines above it belong to a shop and a quote site. Fix the title, then the description.
Fig. 1. Three results for getting tiles laid in Cognac. Only one is written by the person who will hold the trowel. (She was looking for a fitter. Your title made her think you sold tiles.)
What this means for you. I rewrite the title and description of each page to include the word fitting, the type of job and the town.
SEO for a tiler is the work that makes a tile fitter show up on Google when someone in their area is looking for a person to do a floor, wall tiles, a walk-in shower or a terrace. It relies on pages organised by type of fitting, on jobs shown with their constraints and on an up-to-date Google Business Profile. Its aim is simple: get fitting enquiries directly, rather than through a shop or a platform.
The problem
The online market is dominated by those who sell the product: DIY superstores, builders' merchants, online shops. You won't push them out of general searches, and you don't need to. They sell boxes. You sell fitting, and that search has its own words.
Several chains offer a fitting service and hand the job to a tradesman of their choosing. Quote sites do the same with their forms. Either way, you work on their terms, and the client remembers their name, not yours.
A well-planned layout, clean cuts around a frame, a properly set shower fall: the client can't recognise them. If your site doesn't teach them what to look for, they compare you on price against occasional fitters.
An audit, for real
The site below doesn't exist, but its flaws do: they're the five I spot most often. Hover over a number.
Tiles in every shape and form
Floors, walls, indoor, outdoor: a wide choice for your projects.
See the galleryFig. 2. Fictional site, reconstructed. Any resemblance to yours would be a good reason to call me.
What your customers type
I've picked six possible searches for a tiler, to be read as illustrations. The ones for your towns, with their real volume, will be in the audit.
What works
Interior floors, wall tiles, large formats, walk-in showers, terraces, mosaic, natural stone: each of these corresponds to a search and a level of skill. I create a page for the ones you really do, and none for the others.
A photo of a floor says nothing without a caption. Tile size, fitting pattern, type of subfloor, area and town: five lines are enough. They teach visitors to see the difficulty, and give Google words your competitors don't write.
Many tilers' profiles are filed under a shop category or left empty. I fix the category, list your fitting types as individual services, and help you post one photo per finished job.
The client doesn't know whether to buy tiles before calling you. Tell them. You fit what they supply, you supply them yourself, or both: a short page avoids many confused calls and reassures the person who already has their tiles in the garage.
A plumber, kitchen fitter or builder in your area already passes you jobs. A link from their site to yours, and the other way round, makes sense to the reader and counts for Google. I help you ask for it simply.
What costs dearly
Sections by material and colour, manufacturer images, an “our products” button: the visitor thinks you sell tiles. They were looking for a fitter, so they close the tab.
Sixty stacked photos can't be read and can't rank. Twelve described jobs, sorted by type of fitting, work far better.
Levelling and checking the subfloor take up a big part of the job. Leaving them out suggests fitting is just sticking tiles down, and makes your quote hard to defend.
An outdoor page put online at the start of summer arrives after clients have decided. Google needs time to take it into account. Prepare it over the winter.
The method
Four steps. I start from your technical fitting work, because there's less competition there.
One-minute test
Five frank questions to find out whether support makes sense in your situation. Sometimes the answer is no, and I'll tell you.
What it brings in
A ranking doesn't pay a salary. What counts is what it brings: enquiries, customers, revenue. Move your page up and see what it could bring in.
Example assumptions, open to challenge: 400 searches a month for a tiler in your area, 4% of visitors make an enquiry, one enquiry in three is signed (this varies a lot from one trade to another), €4,000 per client. Click-through rates by position are rough orders of magnitude, and they have been shifting since Google started showing AI answers above the results. Redo the calculation with your figures
Possible revenue€0
Close to home
Charente mixes old stone houses with more recent detached homes. In Angoulême or Cognac, people search for a tiler with the town name. In a small town like Jarnac or Ruffec, they type the town's name and want to know if you'll travel that far. I know the department through Newp, the agency I co-founded near Cognac.
In a block of flats or a townhouse, the job is sometimes upstairs, on an old wooden floor. A page that shows these jobs and explains your precautions answers owners who fear nasty surprises.
An old stone house may have an original floor to keep or patch. If you know how to work with stone and terracotta, say so on a separate page. People looking for that skill type precise words, such as “tomettes”.
Around the small towns, detached houses have large ground-floor rooms and terraces to lay out. State how far you travel and your usual lead times.
Beyond Google
Your clients also ask AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude or Mistral, and their questions are technical. For example: “I've bought 120 by 120 tiles for my living room near Angoulême, my floor isn't perfectly flat, which tradesman can lay them?”. The AI reminds them of the precautions, then sometimes mentions professionals.
It can't guess that a tiler masters large formats if that isn't written anywhere. Shop listings don't say it, and nor do platform profiles. Your page, with the format laid, the subfloor prepared and the town, gives it the exact information. I write these pages with you, in trade terms, so that a reader and an AI understand them the same way.
Question asked to an AII've bought large format tiles for my living room, near Angoulême. Who can lay them properly?
Three options come up, described in more or less detail:
Fig. 3. Reconstruction, names hidden. This is the spot we aim for: on the list, with the most precise description.
Three typical cases
These portraits are examples built for this page. Your own priorities will depend on what the audit brings to light.
The shop provides most of his jobs and sets the fitting price.
Its site talks about “all kinds of tiling” and attracts small jobs.
He lays a few each summer, always through word of mouth.
In practice
Pricing
The fee depends on four things. I give you a precise amount after a free first thirty-minute conversation.
Fancy a game?
A giant takes up the whole first page of your market. It has five weak spots. Take the coin and slide it into the machine.
INSERT COINSLIDE THE COIN INTO THE SLOT
Fig. 4. Sixteen seconds. No towns were harmed in the making of this game.
Together, let's devour your competitors.
One by one, and in order. Every spot gained makes the next one easier to take: that's why it keeps growing. See the method
Who you're talking to
My name is Kévin Papot. More than fifteen years in the job, four co-written books, and the Newp agency, co-founded in Charente. I also run my own online shops, in France and internationally: one of them went from zero to a million visits a month.
Before we talk tags, we talk margin, average basket and profitability. When you book a call, I'm the one who picks up.
FAQ
Target the fitting searches, which shops handle badly. “Tiler” with a town, “large format fitting”, “walk-in shower”: on these words, a tradesman who shows his jobs belongs there. I don't guarantee you a ranking; I put you on the right ground.
Generally yes, but first reread what your agreement with them says. A site in your name takes nothing away from the shop. It gives you a second source of jobs, which you invoice at your own price.
That's a business decision, not an SEO question. What matters is writing it down. If you accept, state your conditions. If you refuse, explain why. Either way, you save time on the phone.
A range per type of fitting can help, as long as you say what makes it vary: format, subfloor, cuts. Without those details, the figure will be held against you on a job that is nothing like it.
Three is enough: the subfloor before, an overall view after, and a close-up of a cut or a joint. The close-up is what convinces people who know. Always add the caption; without it the photo is almost useless.
Only if you want them. A page on regrouting or replacing a few tiles brings plenty of low-value calls. Some use them to get known; others prefer to steer clear.
By asking every client, without exception, on the day they walk on their finished floor. Ten detailed reviews over a year already carry weight in a mid-sized town. I give you the message and the link.
Sign up to the free, reputable directories, with exactly the same details as on your profile. It strengthens the consistency of your information. I advise against paid plans until your profile and website are in order.
Yes, exactly as they appear on your certificates, without interpreting them. A client having a walk-in shower fitted wants to know who is liable if something goes wrong. You give me the exact titles and I copy them across.
Allow a few weeks for the profile and several months for the fitting pages. Seasonal pages, like terraces, need to be ready before the season. I don't promise a date; I show you the progress month after month.
See also
30 minutes · video call · with me
Together we look at where you stand on Google and in AI, and what should change first.
