Local Visibility for Chimney Sweeps
A sixteen-week season decides the year, and the map decides the season
The work is compressed and the map is where it lands
- £2,650HETAS log burner installation
- £295Bird or blockage clearance
- £240CCTV chimney survey
- £190Multi-flue property sweep
- £110Standard sweep
Almost every sweep in the country earns the bulk of their year between the first cold week of September and the end of December. Sixteen weeks, give or take, and then a long tail of very little.
That compression changes what local visibility means. In a trade with steady year-round demand, a profile that improves over six months is fine — it catches up. In this trade a profile that starts performing in late October has missed most of what it was going to earn, and there is no second chance until next year.
So the work has to be done out of season, which is precisely when nobody feels like doing it. That is the single most useful thing to understand about marketing this trade, and it is why so many sweeps are permanently one season behind.
There is a second effect worth naming. Because demand spikes, the map results in September are being fought over by every sweep in the area at once, all of them suddenly active after months of nothing. Position in that window is decided by what was built in the quiet months, not by effort in the busy ones.
What that looks like in practice
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Do the profile work in spring.
Categories, service list, photographs, service area, opening hours. All of it settles over weeks rather than days, and doing it in August is doing it late.
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Collect reviews out of season too.
A profile with forty reviews all dated between October and December reads as a business that only exists in winter — and recency counts. A steady trickle through the summer, from surveys and installations, holds position better than a burst.
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Photograph in the quiet months.
Nobody is taking pictures during a fourteen-job week. The photographs that carry your profile through the autumn are the ones taken in April with time to spare.
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Use the service list properly.
Sweeping, birds’ nests, CCTV surveys, cowls, liner inspections, installations. Each is a separate thing people search for, and a profile listing only “chimney sweep” is invisible to most of them.
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Cover the villages by name.
Rural and semi-rural areas are where solid fuel actually is, and those searches are small, specific and almost uncontested.
The ratio
One HETAS installation is £2,650. Our Noticed package is £49 a month — £588 a year. That single job covers more than four years of it.
The seasonal arithmetic is starker than the annual one. If the map position is worth two extra jobs a week across a sixteen-week season, that is thirty-two jobs — and at anything above the basic sweep price it is a materially different year. The same position gained in November is worth perhaps a third of that, for exactly the same work.
What we’d actually do
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Rebuild the profile in spring
, so it has settled long before the first cold week.
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Set up review collection that runs all year
, including from surveys and installations rather than only from sweeps.
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Build a village and town layer
For the areas where solid fuel appliances actually are.
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Separate the installation searches
, because somebody researching a wood burner in July is a different, earlier customer than somebody booking a sweep in October.
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Watch position from May onwards
, which is the only time there is any point in changing something.
What good looks like at twelve months
- The profile is complete and settled before September
- Reviews arrive across the whole year, not just in the season
- Photographs are current rather than three winters old
- Each service you offer is listed as its own service
- Position is tracked from spring rather than checked in a panic in October
The mistakes we see most
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Starting in September.
By the time it works the season is half gone.
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One category, one service.
“Chimney sweep” alone misses birds’ nests, surveys, cowls and installation entirely.
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Winter-only reviews.
It looks seasonal because it is, and recency works against you for eight months of the year.
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Ignoring the villages.
The searches are small and the competition is frequently nobody at all.
The first ninety days
- Weeks 1–4
Profile rebuilt properly — categories, services, area, photographs — regardless of what month it is, because the sooner it starts settling the better.
- Weeks 5–8
Review collection running from every job type, and the village layer built out.
- Weeks 9–12
Installation content separated and published for people researching months ahead, and position tracked across the whole area rather than from your own postcode.
Where this lands in Gaffer
Every sweep is recorded against the property with its date, so next year’s reminder goes out in August rather than in the middle of the rush.
Review requests fire after the job rather than depending on somebody remembering during a fourteen-job week.
And because the work is logged by property and appliance, the summer approach to last year’s customers writes itself from real records instead of a list somebody rebuilds each year.
In a village, the map is only half of how you get found
Rural search behaves differently from urban search, and this trade is more rural than most.
In a town, somebody with a chimney opens Google. In a village, a meaningful proportion of them ask the local Facebook group instead — and then the answers are names, typed from memory by neighbours. That thread is doing the same job the map pack does, and for some places it does more of it.
Which means there are two things to be findable in, and they reward different work. The map rewards a complete, active, well-reviewed profile. The recommendation thread rewards being the name somebody remembers, and being easy to verify once they have been given it.
The practical version is unglamorous. Be a real presence in the groups covering the villages you serve — not posting adverts, which those groups dislike and often ban, but being visible enough that when somebody asks, two or three people type your name. Then make sure that when a stranger searches that name, what comes back is a complete profile with recent reviews rather than a phone number and nothing else.
The second half is where sweeps usually lose it. Getting recommended is common in this trade. Converting a recommendation into a booking depends on what the person finds when they check — and a name with four reviews from 2021 loses to the name mentioned second in the thread with forty from this winter.
Questions chimney sweeps ask
When should I start on this? As far from September as possible. Spring work shows up in autumn; autumn work mostly does not.
How many reviews do I need? Enough to be credible and recent enough to be current. Spread across the year matters more than the total.
Are village searches worth it? They are small, and they are also where the wood burners are. Very few competitors bother.
Should I market in summer at all? For installations and surveys, yes. That is when people plan, and it is when your competitors have gone quiet.
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