County Sligo has a coast that the world comes to and an interior that mostly looks after itself. Along the sea are Strandhill, Rosses Point, Mullaghmore, Easkey and Enniscrone, with surf schools, seaweed baths, caravan parks and cafes that live on a season from Easter to the end of September. Inland, down the N17 and the N4, are Tubbercurry, Ballymote, Collooney, Coolaney, Gurteen and Riverstown, where the trade is farms, marts, machinery, music and the people who service all four. Sligo town sits between them as the regional capital of the north west. Website design in County Sligo, for a business that works beyond one town, is about describing that ground accurately. We do it from Dublin, with a phone or video call to start and WhatsApp afterwards; nothing in the work needs us to be in the county.
Naming the towns, not the county
A search for “plumber Tubbercurry” is answered by a page that mentions Tubbercurry. A page that says “serving all of Sligo” is not that page. If you are a tree surgeon in Collooney who works Ballymote, Boyle and Sligo town, or a vet with a large animal round through Gurteen and Aclare, the site needs a short, truthful section for each place you go, with a line about the work you do there and how far you travel. With Complete we add those pages month by month. With Essentials the towns are named on the main site and extra pages are an add-on we quote first.
Most of the county around Sligo town, including Strandhill, Rosses Point and Collooney, sits in the F91 routing key, and the right Eircode on your contact page and in the structured data behind it helps Google place you. Your Google Business Profile should carry the same address and phone number as the site, down to the spelling, and getting your business on Google Maps explains the pin and the service area.
The Yeats visitor and the surfer
Two kinds of visitor come, and they search differently. The first comes for Yeats: Drumcliffe churchyard under Benbulben, Lough Gill and Innisfree, Knocknarea, the Yeats Summer School in Sligo town at the end of July. They are often older, often from America or Britain, and they book accommodation and dinner from a laptop weeks ahead. The second comes for the sea: surf lessons at Strandhill, Easkey or Enniscrone, the big waves at Mullaghmore in winter, a seaweed bath afterwards. They are younger, book from a phone the same day, and expect to pay a deposit by card. Both need the same thing from you: a page that says what you offer, when you are open and what it costs, and a booking button that works at eleven at night.
Who is running on Facebook alone
In the south of the county the agricultural contractors, septic tank crews, firewood and oil suppliers, fencers, farriers and riding schools largely run on a Facebook page and a mobile. The regulars do not need more. The family that moved to a house outside Ballymote last year, and the people arriving every September for ATU Sligo who need a car fixed or a room found, do. A short page of your own is the thing Google can read when they search. Our guide on what local SEO actually is explains the mechanics in plain words.
The two plans
Essentials is €499 to set up and €50 a month, which covers a trade or a shop with its service area named. Complete is €1,499 and €100 a month and adds bookings with deposits, payments, chat, review requests and the monthly local pages that a county-wide business needs. The detail is on the pricing page and the rural and tourism trades we build for are under websites for.