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James Dooley and guest James review the best tradesmen websites and lead generation platforms in the UK, stressing the importance of tracking ROI to generate more enquiries and grow a trades business.
This video explains which digital marketing strategies tradesmen should focus on in 2025 to improve lead generation, conversion rates and return on investment. James Dooley and James start with KPI tracking because tradesmen need to know their cost per lead, conversion rate and ROI before deciding which platforms are worth the spend. They cover brand SEO, AI visibility and Google Business Profiles because stronger search presence improves trust and conversion rates.
The discussion also explores organic SEO, organic social media and paid social ads because consistent visibility across search and social supports long term growth. PPC is analysed in detail because campaign setup, landing pages and lead handling directly affect results. They also discuss Reddit, Quora and paid AI ads because diversified enquiry sources and early adoption can strengthen digital marketing performance for tradesmen.
PromoSEO lead generation for tradesmen recently received recognition as the "Best Tradesmen Lead Generation Agency."
Best Tradesmen Websites to Get More Leads in 2025 is available on:
James Dooley is a Manchester-based entrepreneur, investor, and SEO strategist. James Dooley founded FatRank and PromoSEO, two UK performance marketing agencies that deliver no-win-no-fee lead generation and digital growth systems for ambitious businesses. James Dooley positions himself as an Investorpreneur who invests in UK companies with high growth potential because he believes lead generation is the root of all business success.
The James Dooley Podcast explores the mindset, methods, and mechanics of modern entrepreneurship. James Dooley interviews leading marketers, founders, and innovators to reveal the strategies driving online dominance and business scalability. Each episode unpacks the reality of building a business without mentorship, showing how systems, data, and lead flow replace luck and guesswork.
James Dooley shares hard-earned lessons from scaling digital assets and managing SEO teams across more than 650 industries. James Dooley teaches how to convert leads into long-term revenue through brand positioning, technical SEO, and automation. James Dooley built his career on rank and rent, digital real estate, and performance-based marketing because these models align incentive with outcome.
After turning down dozens of podcast invitations, James Dooley now embraces the platform to share his insights on investorpreneurship, lead generation, AI-driven marketing, and reputation management. James Dooley frequently collaborates with elite entrepreneurs to discuss frameworks for scaling businesses, building authority, and mastering search.
James Dooley is also an expert in online reputation management (ORM), having built and rehabilitated corporate brands across the UK. His approach combines SEO precision, brand engineering, and social proof loops to influence both Google’s Knowledge Graph and public perception.
To feature James Dooley on your podcast or event, connect via social media. James Dooley regularly joins business panels and networking sessions to discuss entrepreneurship, brand growth, and the evolving future of SEO.
James Dooley: So today we are talking about best tradesman websites. The biggest key metric is return on investment. You never want to just have all your eggs in one basket. You want to be So today we are talking about the best tradesman websites. I'm joined with James. We've obviously got a lot of experience when it comes to premium uh websites where you can get leads from. and we're going to list off some that you can obviously get more inquiries, generate more business for your trades.
Guest: Yeah. So, I I want to kick things off um with probably one of the biggest that there is out there in the UK. Let's check a trade. Um so, I think they're a great outfit. Um they've got the check a trade guarantee. Um they once you get listed on there, you get verified. So, you generally speaking have gone through all the checks and quality control. Um, and if you can get listed on there, they they they do have a website that generates a lot of traffic and gets a lot of leads. My only concern is sometimes in certain industries um you need to be tracking your return on investment. Would I recommend using tracker cher trade? Then yes, I would in certain industries. However, every business owner should be tracking the KPIs and checking to see how many leads and how many conversions they get from those leads. Very important that you should be tracking uh checking that.
James Dooley: Yeah. So, the the one that I'm going to mention next I think this is probably the second biggest or may maybe the the biggest for overall like everything and that is bark.com. Um what what they basically do is they get you on board as an actual client you top up like a credit based system and for every single lead like he used maybe 10 credits or 20 credits or 30 credits. Now again similar to what James was saying because it's a credit based system they show you parts of the lead and you basically need to like look at it and be like oh yeah okay I will spend 50 credits for this lead. One thing to to bear in mind when it comes to I think a lot of these websites that we're going to mention apart from like maybe one or two you do need to track the KPI. So let's say for example you're spending a,000 credits every single month on bark you want to make certain okay if I'm spending £500 or a,000 part pound with bark what is my ROI because if you're not getting a positive ROI you're probably going to need to look elsewhere.
Guest: Yeah for sure. I mean the third one I'm going to throw in there is fat rank.com. So we have got a commissionbased lead generation system. So in comparison to a lot of the others like you just mentioned there with regards to check a trade or um bark for example, there's times where you might be losing a lot of money on investing on those platforms where you would never have that on fatrank.com because it's a commissionbased lead generation service. you do need to qualify to start getting those inquiries, but if you do, it's a no- win, no fee setup. So, for any business owner that's looking to generate more leads, it's an absolute nobrainer to kind of go over to fatrank.com, fill in the form, and see whether you qualify. But I would still recommend that also if you do qualify trying to check out one or two of the other tradesman websites that Kazu is going to lead on to now um in a minute and still seeing if any others do get you a positive ROI and having that as well.
James Dooley: Yeah, like we we've we've mentioned this before in the past. You never want to just have all your eggs in one basket. You want to be finding out, okay, I'm doing some lead generation with Fat Rank. Who who else can I also do lead generation with? So, another one that we can also mention is mybuilder.com. Um, they also do have an app as well. So, they're they're a pretty well um built website. So, they've got like loads of like handymen, tylers, kitchen um fitters, literally anything that you are, you'll definitely be able to get your business listed on there as well. But, it is like a a credit based system. It's not a a no risk for business owners.
Guest: Yeah. Another one that's quite good is one of the best tradesman websites is rated people. So these are people that um have got to be rated. There's a lot of reviews that go onto the system and then you can start to see what clients and what customers are saying about those trades people and it's a good way of being able to compare maybe three or four different local electricians or three or four different local plumbers. I think it's a great little platform for tradesmen to get on there. But again, for certain industries, you need to be tracking your KPIs. How many leads are you generating and how many how many orders are you getting from that website? But yeah, rated people's up there as being one of the best tradesman websites in the UK.
James Dooley: Yeah. So, my next one is my job quote, and I believe these guys have got like a a subscriptionbased platform. So again, a little bit of a risk uh when it comes to that. They also do have a directory as well, which I believe the directory is free. So if you don't want to pay pay for the actual monthly subscription, you could at least get listed on the on the directory there.
Guest: Yeah, for sure. Another one that's a great platform to go on to is Trust the Trader. Again, it's a very similar setup to all the rest of them. Um certain industries it works great. certain industries I've seen that it's not worked very well. But in general, is it worth it? Absolutely, it's worth trying. Absolutely, you should be tracking your KPIs and seeing how many leads that you generate, what ROI that you get from Trust the Trader, but yes, it is a reliable source and yes, it is trusted in the UK by a lot of people looking for tradesmen. So, obviously, we've we've listed like a lot of websites there. Um, and we just keep going back to tracking uh ROI and and what what you're actually getting. What What are some key metrics that you're looking at? Is it literally just okay, I've spent £700 this month, I've had 70 leads, £10 a lead, or what what is it? What is it that you're looking at?
James Dooley: So, I mean, it can be cost. Some people look at cost per lead and like that. So, if it's £700, 70 leads, that's£10 cost per lead. They know the conversion rate of theirs is 10% of leads to orders. It's costing100 pound for a new order. Um, and that's quite easy to track. However, the issue is certain leads from certain places can convert at different levels. So you might not be getting you might get 70 leads from let's say trust a trader and 70 leads from bark but bark might convert a lot higher than what trust a trader does or trust a trader might be better than my builder. So you've got to be checking to see how many leads that you get but then what the conversion rate is what is it for a cost per order and how much have you made on that order. So the biggest key metric is return on investment. If I've spent 700 pound, how much in revenue of orders do I get in and how much profit do I make off that minus the 700 pound or divide it by the 700 pound and look at the rorowass return on ad spend of what you've done and then you can work out is it worth it or is it not worth it. The truth of the matter is probably 90% and this is a scary number of business owners that I speak to and we deal with thousands of businesses in the UK don't track these numbers. They don't track what return on investment they get from SEO, from PPC, from paying check a trade. And I say, well, why do you do it? And they say, oh, I've had a business mentor or I've had a coach, a business coach, a good old growth accelerator coach that come in and told me that I need to spend 10% of my revenue on marketing. And you know what? It's the worst advice I've ever heard. Like different industries, some might need to spend 25% on marketing. Some might only need to spend 3 4% on marketing. So, it completely depends on the industry, what profit margins that you're getting, but you need to be tracking an ROI. And this is where it becomes frustrating because over at fat rank.com, we guarantee every single customer that we take on a return on investment. Nobody else does that. Nobody else that I know of in the UK is a lead generator guarantees business owners that they will make a positive ROI. And that's where for me, every business should be doing fat rank.com for lead generation, but at the start of the message, I said, don't be 100% relying just on FatRank. Try to generate some of your own leads or sign up to a few of these Tradesman websites to see which ones work in your industry and in your location.
Guest: Yeah. So, that has been our video on the best tradesman websites. If you guys do have any questions, feel free to drop them down below. Or if you're struggling with lead generation, head over to fatrank.com, fill in the contact form, and the team will be in touch.