A builder came to me recently with a referral from a mutual contact, and before we’d even properly started talking he’d already half-sold me on himself. Twenty-two years in the trade. Forty-seven Google reviews averaging 4.9 stars. HIA membership. Two local business awards, one of them from this year.
Then I looked at his website.
His About page had one line on it. His name wasn’t on the site anywhere. His credentials, his reviews, his awards, his HIA membership, none of it appeared anywhere a customer or Google could find it. The people who came to him through referrals knew exactly who they were dealing with. Everyone else landed on a website that told them almost nothing.
This is the trust signal gap, and it’s one of the most fixable things I come across.
Trust signals are the pieces of evidence on your website and throughout your online footprint that show you’re a real business with real people doing real work. They’re how you prove to Google that you are the genuine expert in your field, and the proof needs to exist in more than one place.
Google’s own guidance on people-first content keeps coming back to the same idea: your content should clearly demonstrate first-hand expertise and leave visitors feeling they’ve learned from someone who knows their stuff. That’s not just good content advice. It’s the standard Google is using to decide who deserves to rank.
There’s also been plenty of discussion recently about Google updates putting trust and expertise signals under a closer lens. Confirmed or not, the direction of travel has been consistent for years. We covered the EEAT framework in more detail in Why EEAT Matters for Your Local Service Business and in EEAT and AI Search, and the short version is that both Google and AI tools are getting better at telling genuine experts from the pretenders.
1. Your About page. When did you last actually read it? For most local businesses it was written years ago and hasn’t been touched since. Yet it’s one of the first places a cautious customer clicks and one of the clearest places Google looks to understand who’s behind the business. A strong About page has real names, real photos and a real story. Why you started, how long you’ve been trading, the areas you service, who actually turns up to do the work. If yours currently says “we’re a passionate team dedicated to excellence” and not much else, that’s your first job.
2. Author bios on everything you publish. If you put anything on your website, blog posts, guides, FAQs, put a real person’s name on it. A short bio that says who you are, what you’re qualified in, and how long you’ve been doing it turns anonymous content into evidence of expertise. AI search tools in particular lean heavily on identifiable expertise when deciding who to cite. An article “by the team” carries far less weight than one by a named tradesperson with twenty years’ experience. You did the work to earn that experience, so take the credit for it.
3. Case studies of real work. “Quality workmanship” is a claim. “Here’s the retaining wall we rebuilt in Wanneroo after the winter storms, here’s what the problem was, and here’s how it looks now” is proof. Case studies, project pages, and before-and-after photos are some of the strongest trust signals a service business can publish. They don’t need to be elaborate. A few paragraphs, real photos, the suburb, the problem, the outcome. One decent case study a month adds up to a website that quietly demonstrates experience on every visit.
4. Reviews with actual substance. Google is increasingly reading what your reviews say, not just counting the stars. A dozen detailed reviews that mention the actual service and the location can do more for you than fifty star-only ratings with no words. Real experience, described in a customer’s own words, is exactly the trust signal Google wants to see. When you ask a happy customer for a review, ask them to mention what you did and where. And since those reviews live on your Google Business Profile, this ties directly into treating your profile as a trust page.
5. Credentials you show, not just claim. Licences, insurance, industry memberships, awards, years in business. Most local service businesses have these, and most websites either bury them or mention them vaguely. “Fully licensed and insured” means very little without detail. Show your licence number. Add the logos of the associations you belong to, linked to your member listing where possible. If you’ve won a local business award, put it on the About page with the year. None of this is bragging. It’s simply making your credentials checkable.
Read your About page and add real names, photos, and your story. Put an author bio on your most recent blog post or guide. Draft one case study from a recent job, with photos and the suburb. Ask your next happy customer for a review that mentions the specific service and where you did it. Add your licence number and association logos somewhere visitors can actually see them.
We spent an afternoon going through his website. By the end of it we’d built a list of things to add, and almost all of them already existed. The before-and-after photos were in his phone. His HIA membership was on a plaque on his office wall. His two awards were in a box somewhere. His story about why he got into building was genuinely compelling and had never been written down anywhere.
Google isn’t asking you to become someone you’re not. It’s asking you to prove you’re exactly who you say you are, and for a genuine local business that’s the easiest test in the world to pass. The evidence already exists. It just needs to make it onto your website.
This is something we do at Blue Cherry every day. If you’d like a second pair of eyes on your trust signals and where the gaps are, get in touch and I’ll take a look.
Karen Dauncey has been working in SEO since 2003 and is a recognised expert in Local SEO for professional and service-based businesses across Australia.
She is the founder of Blue Cherry Online Marketing, a Local SEO and Google Ads agency she established in 2008. Through Blue Cherry, Karen has optimised over 1,000 websites and managed millions of dollars in Google Ads spend, giving her a deep understanding of what drives visibility and enquiries for service businesses in a constantly evolving search landscape. Over the past two decades, she has worked with a wide range of local service businesses including trades, allied health, psychologists, childcare centres, naturopaths, accountants, lawyers and many more.
Karen is also the creator of The SEO School, an online SEO course designed to teach business owners how to take control of their own SEO. She regularly delivers educational programs for Local, State and Federal Government and was an advisor for the ASBAS Digital Solutions Program. Her passion for making SEO accessible drives everything she does, from free resources to hands-on training.
Karen has attended search engine conferences in London, Stockholm, Adelaide and Sydney, and was invited to attend a pilot Business Coaching Course at Google's Head Office. She holds a Diploma in Marketing from the Chartered Institute of Marketing in the UK.
She is also the co-owner of the Digital Experts Directory, an online directory for female service-based businesses.
To keep up to date with the latest in SEO, join her Facebook group The SEO School Community or follow her on Facebook or LinkedIn.
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