Longford is one of the smallest counties in the country by population, and nearly all of it is within half an hour of Longford town. Granard is up in the drumlins to the north, Edgeworthstown is on the N4 and the Sligo line to the east, Ballymahon is down on the Inny to the south, Lanesborough is on the Shannon where it opens into Lough Ree, and Drumlish, Ardagh, Keenagh, Newtownforbes and Abbeyshrule are the villages between. The Royal Canal crosses the county to meet the Shannon at Cloondara, and the N5 to Mayo leaves the N4 at Longford. It is a farming county of small holdings, beef mostly, with a power station and a bog industry that have closed and a holiday village that has opened. Website design in County Longford, for the trades, farms and visitor businesses, is something we do from Dublin with no office in Longford: a video or phone call to start, photos and details by WhatsApp, and the site built from them.
Half an hour from everywhere
Because the county is small, a Longford trade covers all of it and usually some of the next county too. A plasterer in Drumlish works Longford town, Granard and over into Leitrim at Mohill. A machinery repair yard outside Ballymahon serves farms in Westmeath around Ballymore and Moate. A vet in Edgeworthstown covers half the county and part of Westmeath. The customer does not type the county name. They type the town: “plasterer Granard”, “vet Edgeworthstown”, “firewood Lanesborough”. A site that says “serving Longford and surrounding counties” gives Google nothing to match. Each town needs to be written down, with a line about the work done there, and the same towns set as the service area on the Google Business Profile. We explain how that connects to the map in how to get your business on Google Maps.
Center Parcs, the canal and the Shannon
Center Parcs opened at Newcastle Wood outside Ballymahon in 2019 and changed the south of the county. Its guests leave for a day out at Lough Ree, the Corlea trackway or the town, and search for a taxi, a pharmacy, a chipper or somewhere for Sunday lunch while they are at it. The Royal Canal Greenway brings cyclists through Abbeyshrule and Keenagh to the Shannon at Richmond Harbour. Anglers have come to Lanesborough for generations. All of these are customers who know nobody in Longford; they find a business on Google or not at all. A holiday home or a guesthouse here that states its village, its hours and its distance from the Center Parcs gate in plain words gets the enquiry that a Facebook page never sees.
Small farms and the trades around them
Longford farming is small beef and suckler herds, some dairy, sheep on the drumlins, and wet land that needs drainage and keeps the contractors busy. The businesses around it, agricultural contractors, machinery repair, vets, fuel and firewood suppliers, builders and plasterers, run from the house with a number on the van and a Facebook page updated at Christmas. Their customers know them. The new ones do not: the Dublin family who bought a house with a septic tank outside Ardagh, the couple who retired to a cottage near Lough Ree, the nephew who took over the farm. For them a plain page with what you do, where you go and your mobile is enough, and that is what local SEO comes down to for a rural trade.
Granard to Ballymahon: name the towns
Longford town and most of the county share the N39 routing key, so the Eircode will not separate you from a competitor; the town names in your text do that. Longford town, Granard, Edgeworthstown, Ballymahon, Lanesborough, Drumlish, each with its own sentence, and with Complete a short page each over the months.
Plans
Essentials is €499 to set up and €50 a month for one site with your towns on it. Complete is €1,499 and €100 a month and adds the local pages, bookings, payments, chat and review requests. The pricing page has the detail; the rural trades are under websites for.