Someone asked me recently what “average” ROI looks like for SEO in the trades, and I had to stop them before answering, because there genuinely isn’t a single number that means anything across every trade at once.
A plumber closing same-day emergency jobs behaves completely differently to a solar installer closing a considered £12,000 sale over several weeks. Lumping them together into one average tells you almost nothing useful.
I’ve spent years building and measuring lead generation for a boiler and solar installation business that scaled past £65 million in turnover, so I’ve seen how differently ROI actually plays out depending on the trade, the ticket size, and the sales cycle involved.
This post breaks the real numbers down properly, trade by trade, rather than giving you a single misleading average that doesn’t apply to your specific business.
What Does Average SEO ROI Actually Look Like Across The Trades?
Before getting specific, it’s worth establishing the general range, because it genuinely is strong across this sector as a whole.
Home services SEO campaigns typically return £5 to £12 for every £1 invested, with the broader trades and construction category averaging around 681% return on a three year view according to First Page Sage’s industry benchmarking, and solar energy specifically sitting close behind at around 770%.
Recent data tracking over a thousand HVAC and home services companies found a median SEO ROI of 27.46x closed revenue against SEO fees, with the bottom quartile still returning nearly 13x and top performers exceeding 60x.
Why Does The Range Vary So Widely Even Within The Same Broad Category?
Because average job value and sales cycle length differ enormously even within trades that get lumped together under “home services.” A plumber closing a same-day emergency callout at a few hundred pounds operates on completely different economics to a heat pump installer closing a £10,000 to £15,000 project that took three weeks of research and comparison.
Both can produce excellent ROI, but the mechanics behind each number are genuinely different, and treating them the same leads to unrealistic expectations in one direction or the other.
How Does ROI Actually Break Down By Trade Specifically?
This is where I think most generic SEO content lets business owners down, because a single blended average obscures more than it reveals.
What Do The Numbers Look Like For Higher Ticket, Considered Purchase Trades?
For roofing, general contracting, and by direct extension solar and heat pump installation, average ticket sizes typically run £8,000 to £15,000, with customer lifetime value often reaching £12,000 to £18,000 once repeat business and referrals are factored in.
Conversion rates on these higher-value, more considered purchases tend to sit lower, often 3% to 5%, precisely because the sales cycle is longer and involves more comparison shopping.
Cost per lead for these trades runs higher too, frequently £100 to £425, but because the allowable customer acquisition cost as a share of lifetime value is so favourable, typically only 1% to 3%, the overall ROI on properly executed SEO remains genuinely strong despite the higher upfront cost per lead.
What Do The Numbers Look Like For Higher Volume, Faster Cycle Trades?
Plumbing and similar high-frequency trades operate at the opposite end of the spectrum, average tickets of £800 to £1,200, but conversion rates of 12% to 16% and sales cycles as short as a single day for emergency work.
Cost per lead sits lower, typically £65 to £130, and because volume is considerably higher, the ROI shows up faster and compounds through repeat business and referrals more quickly than it does for a one-off, high-value installation.
Where Does Boiler, Heat Pump, Solar And EV Charger Work Actually Sit?
This sector genuinely blends characteristics from both ends of that spectrum depending on the specific service. Emergency boiler repairs behave more like the high-volume, fast-cycle trades, quick decisions, lower average tickets, higher conversion rates. Full heat pump, solar or EV charger installations behave more like the considered, high-ticket category, longer research phases, higher average value, lower but more valuable conversion rates.
A properly built SEO strategy for this sector needs to account for both patterns simultaneously, since the same business is often serving genuinely different buying behaviours depending on which specific service someone’s searching for.
How Does SEO’s ROI Actually Compare To Paid Advertising For The Same Trades?
This comparison consistently favours SEO once measured over a proper time horizon, and it’s worth being specific about why rather than simply asserting it.
What Does The Real Comparison Look Like With Actual Figures?
One documented study tracking trade businesses over several months found SEO campaigns representing roughly £430,000 in investment generated £8.6 million in closed revenue, a return on ad spend of 19.9x and a genuine cost per paying customer of around £100.
Paid advertising running in parallel across the same period spent roughly £1.8 million to generate £8 million in revenue, a return on ad spend of just 4.4x and a cost per paying customer above £440. That’s not a marginal difference, it’s roughly a fourfold gap in efficiency between the two channels once measured on actual closed revenue rather than clicks or leads alone.
Why Does This Gap Widen Over Time Rather Than Staying Fixed?
Paid advertising’s cost per lead tends to hold steady or rise as competition increases, particularly during seasonal peaks when every competitor bids more aggressively at once. SEO’s marginal cost per lead falls the longer a campaign runs, since the same ranking pages keep producing enquiries without a fresh cost attached to each one.
That means the ROI gap between the two channels genuinely widens the further out you measure it, which is exactly why judging SEO against a single month’s figures understates its real value considerably.
What Does Genuine Before And After Data Actually Look Like?
Numbers in the abstract are useful, but seeing what actually changes across a real engagement makes the pattern considerably more tangible.
What Kind Of Movement Should You Expect To See?
Documented case studies across home service trades consistently show a similar shape of improvement over a properly run engagement. Google Business Profile photo counts climbing from single digits into the eighties or nineties.
Review counts roughly tripling over the engagement period. Monthly enquiry volume increasing by a factor of five to seven, moving from perhaps five qualified enquiries a month to thirty or more. Local pack rankings moving from page three or four up into the top three positions for priority commercial terms.
None of this happens in the first month, but the consistent pattern across genuinely well-run engagements is a steady, compounding climb across every one of these metrics simultaneously, rather than one number improving while the others stay flat.
Why Does Getting This Right Matter Even More For This Specific Sector?
Boiler, solar, heat pump, air conditioning and EV charger businesses sit at the higher-value end of the trades spectrum, which means the ROI maths genuinely favours patient, properly executed SEO even more strongly than it does for lower-ticket trades, since each additional booked job carries considerably more revenue behind it.
You’re also competing against national comparison giants like MoneySuperMarket, GoCompare and uSwitch for exactly the same search terms, which raises the bar for what “properly executed” needs to look like compared to a simpler local trade with less entrenched competition.
Every senior person on our team at Essheo has spent eight or more years measuring exactly this kind of ROI in genuinely hard to rank sectors, including direct experience running lead generation that scaled a business to £65 million in turnover and peak months of £1.75 million in revenue.
The strategies we’ve designed and implemented have contributed to over £45 million in combined client revenue across the last two years alone, measured against real closed revenue, not vanity traffic or rankings in isolation.
Ready To See What This Could Look Like For Your Specific Trade?
Generic ROI averages tell you very little about what SEO could genuinely deliver for your specific business, your specific ticket size, and your specific sales cycle. What matters is running the real numbers against your actual figures, not a blended industry average that might not reflect your situation at all.
I set Essheo up to give boiler, solar, heat pump, air conditioning and EV charger installation businesses a properly modelled, trade-specific view of what SEO could realistically return, based on your genuine average job value and close rate, not a generic industry figure pulled from an unrelated sector.
Book a strategy call with me today and let’s work out the real ROI SEO could deliver for your specific business.