Home / Industries / Carpentry and timber construction
A timber extension or a roof frame to repair is a big budget for a family. Before calling, they look at finished projects, compare techniques and look for a business near home. The top results are often taken by national builders and quote sites. I work on your website and your Google Business Profile so that your workshop and your jobs are visible at that exact moment.
15 years in SEO
4 books on SEO and GEO
200+ sites tracked every day
1M / month visits to my e-commerce site
They trusted me with their visibility
Darty
Eurofins
Cegid
EBP
CNP Assurances
Ingram MicroA title that talks about passion, not extensions
A family in Cognac is looking for someone to build them a timber extension. Your site comes up third, with the title “Home” and a sentence about a passion for wood. The two lines above announce models and quotes. Fix these two texts so they talk about your workshop.
Fig. 1. Three results for a timber extension in Cognac. Only one cuts its timbers in the department. (Your workshop was twenty minutes away. The title just said “Home”.)
What this means for you. I rewrite the title and description of each page so they name the structure, the area and what the workshop makes itself.
SEO for a carpenter is the work that makes a carpentry firm show up on Google when a homeowner in its area is planning a timber extension, an extra storey, a timber-frame house or the repair of an old roof frame. It relies on one page per type of structure, on jobs described with their town and photos, and on a complete Google Business Profile. Its effect is measured by the quote requests that match your skills.
The problem
The timber construction market is contested. Timber home builders, extension kit sellers and quote sites publish pages for every department. On a general search, they rank ahead of a five-person workshop. On your area and your real structures, you have what it takes to answer them.
Many homeowners don't know the difference between carpentry and roofing. They type “roof” when they have a timber problem. If your site doesn't clearly name your structures, Google files you in a category that isn't yours and you get calls about tiles.
A roof frame disappears under the roofing within days. Without a photo taken at the right moment, there's no trace of your work. A client torn between two firms picks the one whose joints, lifting and result they've seen.
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.
Wood, our passion
Carpentry, roofing, zinc work, insulation: careful work for all your projects.
Contact usFig. 2. Fictional site, reconstructed. Any resemblance to yours would be a good reason to call me.
What your customers type
Here are six plausible searches, given as examples. During the audit, I check them against the searches actually made in your area.
What works
New roof frames, roof frame renovation, timber-frame extensions, extra storeys, timber houses, carports, cladding: each structure answers a different search. I write a page for each one you actually build. A single “our services” page can't rank for seven subjects.
Together we set up a simple habit: a few photos in the workshop, at the lift and once the timber is in place. Each job becomes a project sheet with the town, the wood species, the span and the duration. These pages are read by clients and understood by Google.
A homeowner trusts their house to a team, not a logo. Showing the workshop, the cutting of the timbers, the design office if there is one and the craftsmen reassures them that you can handle the job. No quote site can publish that.
The primary category, the listed services, the photos and the service area decide whether you show on the map. I set these so the profile says “carpenter” and describes your structures, then I organise asking for a review at the handover of each job.
Which wood species to choose, how to insulate a timber frame, whether an old roof frame needs treating, how long a job takes: these questions are asked every day. Answering them simply, from your experience, plants your name with readers who will sign in six months.
What costs dearly
When everything is mixed up, the page answers no search well. Separate the trades, even if you do them all. A client who wants an extension won't read a paragraph about gutters.
Thirty images of pale timber say nothing about the place, the structure or the difficulty. Two sentences under each photo are enough: the town, the type of roof frame, what was special about it.
Tie beam, principal rafter, ridge purlin: these words are correct, but the homeowner types “roof beam”. Keep the trade terms and add the client's words alongside them.
An extension or an extra storey involves planning formalities. The site can mention it and say how you support the client, without quoting any threshold or rule. Saying nothing suggests you don't deal with it.
The method
Four steps, carried out in this order. I fit in with your current jobs to get the photos at the right moment.
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: 250 searches a month for a carpenter in your area, 2% of visitors make an enquiry, one enquiry in three is signed (this varies a lot from one trade to another), €15,000 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 is a land of limestone and low-pitched roofs covered in curved tiles. Its old roof frames have their own shapes, in village houses as in farms. Around Angoulême and Cognac, detached houses are more recent, and people there are more likely to look for a timber-frame extension. If you work on both types of building, your site should show each one separately.
Longhouses, manor houses and village houses have old roof frames. A page on repairing these frames, with a real job in a Charente village, speaks to someone buying a house to renovate who searches with the name of their town.
The Cognac area has barns, chais and large outbuildings. Someone who wants to convert one looks for a firm able to keep the roof frame exposed. Showing a conversion, with the constraints you faced, attracts these projects.
In the towns near both cities, people search for “timber extension” followed by the name of the town. A timber extension page that names your area and suggests checking the planning rules at the town hall answers this local demand.
Beyond Google
Homeowners increasingly ask an AI like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude or Mistral before contacting a tradesman. For example: “I want to add a timber-frame room to my stone house near Angoulême, which firm can do it and what should I think about?”. The answer describes the stages of the project, then sometimes names a few firms.
An AI only cites what it can read and cross-check. It needs to find your structures named one by one, your towns, dated jobs and reviews that describe how the work went. A site reduced to a gallery and a form gives it nothing to work with. I write your pages so that an assistant can find a clear answer in them, and so can a reader.
Question asked to an AII want to extend my stone house near Angoulême with a timber-frame extension. Which firm should I contact?
Three types of business can take on this project:
Fig. 3. Reconstruction, names hidden. This is the spot we aim for: on the list, with the most precise description.
Three typical cases
These three cases are made up to illustrate how I work. None corresponds to a real business.
It works mainly through recommendations and gets few enquiries through its website.
It wants to sell extensions and mostly gets enquiries for garden sheds.
His site talks mostly about roofing and carpentry barely appears.
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?
Clickbait titles, fake reviews, copied pages: your market is a jungle. Grab the piece and slide it into the slot.
INSERT COINSLIDE THE COIN INTO THE SLOT
Fig. 4. Sixteen seconds. Ten snakes for one spot, as usual.
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
A full diary lets you choose your jobs, provided you have more enquiries than space. That's what SEO is for: getting more of the projects you want, such as extensions, and fewer enquiries outside your trade.
Not on national searches, and I'd rather tell you straight away. On searches that include your department, your towns or a specific structure, a well-presented local firm regularly ranks. Your real jobs are content they don't have.
No. One site is enough, with two clear sections and separate pages for each trade. The Google Business Profile has a primary category and secondary categories. We choose together the one that matches the work you want to grow.
No. We start from what exists, even a few pictures taken on a phone. From then on, I give you a short list of shots to take on each job. Within a few months, you have a solid base.
A price per square metre would be misleading, because every roof frame is different. You can, however, explain what makes up a quote and what pushes it up. The reader understands your figure better and enquiries with no budget become rarer.
That formalities exist, that they depend on the project and the town, and that you help the client put their application together if that's the case. I don't write any area threshold or timescale without your approval, because these rules change.
Keep them as long as they pay off for you. My job is to grow a source of enquiries that belongs to you. When it's enough, you alone decide whether to reduce or stop buying them.
Yes, as long as you say what you actually do. Clients ask, and so do AI tools. A page on your timber, its origin and your treatment choices meets a strong expectation.
The Google Business Profile reacts within a few weeks when it was badly set up. Structure pages take several months to settle in. I don't promise any position. I show you each month what's moving and what's stalling.
I write them from your explanations. A ten-minute call per job is enough for me to understand what was special about it. You reread, you correct the technical terms, and the sheet goes online.
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.
