Last Updated on September 8, 2026
In a trade with no register, everything you can prove is worth more than anything you can claim. That is the whole strategy, and most of it is free.
The three records that must agree
Companies House, your website and your Google Business Profile. Same trading name, same address, same phone number, everywhere.
This matters here because of what happens when it does not. When Whito checked 64 UK tradespeople found by ordinary search across eight cities against Companies House in July 2026, 45 were a verifiable active company and 19, or 30 per cent, could not be verified. Two of the nineteen were trading under a company that had been dissolved.
A customer about to hand over a deposit on an eight thousand pound kitchen is increasingly the kind of person who checks. Registered under one name, trading as another and listed on Google as a third reads as three flaky firms rather than one careful one.
The zero-pound weekend, fitter version
Whito calls the two days of free fixes a business does before it pays for a single lead the zero-pound weekend. Here is the list for this trade.
- Make the three records agree. One trading name, one address, one phone number.
- Put the company number and registered address in the footer of every page, as text.
- Add your Gas Safe number if you hold one, with a link to the register.
- Say which competent person scheme covers electrical work on your bathroom jobs, and whether it is you or a named subcontractor.
- Register with BIFIS at 20 pounds plus VAT a month and publish the registration number, which a customer can validate against a public tool.
- Split your kitchens page and your bathrooms page. Different buyers, different budgets, different search terms.
- Publish one worked job, itemised, with the date.
- Ask your last ten customers for a review that names the job and the town.
Item five is the only one with a price on it, and £240 a year plus VAT is less than a Checkatrade Approved membership at £30 a month, which is £360 a year. That comparison is worth sitting with: in this trade, the accreditation that lets a customer validate you by number costs less than the directory listing that does not.
Why the worked job matters more than the gallery
Every fitter has a gallery of finished kitchens. They all look the same and none of them answers the question the customer actually has, which is what this will cost and how long the house will be unusable.
One itemised job does both. Something like: full kitchen, twelve units, quartz worktop, appliances supplied by the customer, eight working days, broken into strip out, first fix plumbing, first fix electrics, cabinets, worktop template and fit, second fix, making good. With a date on it.
It costs an hour to write and it does more than any photograph, because it is the only content on your site that a search engine or an AI assistant can quote as an answer.
The photographs that are actually missing
Not the finished room. The middle of the job.
- The floor levelled and the units set true, before the doors go on.
- Pipework boxed properly rather than hidden behind a panel.
- A tidy consumer unit and labelled circuits.
- The site at the end of a working day.
- Waste, bagged and gone.
A customer choosing between three quotes is not comparing finished kitchens, because all three will look fine. They are trying to work out which of you will leave their house habitable for two weeks. Nobody photographs that, so it is free ground.
Reviews that do work
Ask on the last day, while the customer is standing in a finished room and relieved. Ask specifically for the job and the town in the text: full bathroom refit in Chilwell, eight days, wet room conversion. That is a phrase somebody will search for and an engine can match.
Generic praise decorates. Specific description ranks.
Common questions
Is Checkatrade or BIFIS better value?
They do different jobs. Checkatrade Approved at £30 a month, £360 a year, is a directory listing and a review platform. BIFIS at £20 plus VAT a month, £240 a year plus VAT, is an accreditation with a public number validation. If you can only do one, the accreditation is the one that answers the question a nervous customer is actually asking.
What if I am a sole trader with no company number?
Then publish the trading name, the address and any scheme registration you hold, and be explicit that you are a sole trader. The aim is that a stranger can confirm you exist and are who you say you are. Pretending to be a limited company you are not is a much worse problem than not being one.
Do I need a website if I get everything from a directory?
The directory owns the relationship, the review history and the pricing of your own leads. That is a commercial decision rather than a marketing one, but note that in Whito’s cross-industry work the business’s own website was cited in 90 per cent of the Google AI Mode answers we logged in August 2026. A firm with no site has nothing for an engine to read.
The structural checks behind this research run on any website in about twenty seconds. Enter yours and read the full result on the page. Free, and we do not ask for your email.
Run the free Visibility Check