Plastering gets found in two ways. A homeowner with a blown wall or an artex ceiling searches “plasterer near me” or “skim coat Dublin” and rings two or three. A builder, a painter or an electrician who needs a reliable plasterer asks around, then checks the name online before passing it on. When we looked at websites for plasterers in Dublin, the common problem was the same for both: a gallery of grey walls with no context, no price approach, and no sign of where you work. Fix those three things and the page does its job.
A trade that is judged by the light
A plasterer’s work is invisible when it is good and obvious when it is bad, which makes it hard to photograph. A finished wall shot straight on looks like nothing. The same wall with the window light coming across it at an angle shows how flat it is, and that is what another tradesman or a careful homeowner looks for.
So: the room when you arrive, with the artex or the blown patch or the bare blockwork. The same room skimmed, side-lit, before the painter gets there. A close-up of an internal angle and a ceiling line. If you do cornice or lath and plaster repairs in older Dublin houses, photograph that separately, because the people searching for it will pay properly and they want to see you have done it before.
Patch jobs, full skims and the price question
The phone goes while your hands are covered and the skim is going off, and it is someone asking how much to do a box room. Put the answer on the page. A from price per room for a skim, a per metre rate for bigger areas, a minimum for a patch, and the things that move the price: artex removal, bonding, dry lining first, high ceilings, a house full of furniture.
Say which jobs you take. Some plasterers want full houses and new builds and have no interest in a two metre patch over a window. Others live on the small jobs between the big ones. Either is fine, but the page should say which, so the calls you get are the ones you want. A list of the areas you cover does the same job for distance. We covered what else belongs on a tradesman’s page in what a small business website should include.
External insulation and the SEAI register
If you do external wall insulation, this is its own page, and it is the most valuable one on the site. The homeowner’s grant depends on the work being done by an SEAI registered contractor, so if you are registered, say so near the top, with the number. Then walk them through it in plain words: the survey, the quote, how the grant application works, the scaffold going up, the render finish, the paperwork at the end.
People are nervous about the grant process and the contractor who explains it calmly gets the call. Photos of a finished house in its new render, with the same house before, do the rest.
Between the electrician and the painter
Plasterers sit in the middle of a job. The electrician and plumber have been and gone, the painter and decorator is waiting on you, and the builder is ringing to ask when. A short section on the site for other trades, saying what you take on, how far out you are booked and that you turn up when you say you will, gives them something to point their customers at. The pages for those trades link back to yours where it makes sense, which helps all of you on Google.
Before we start
A dozen photos, side-lit, in before and after pairs. Your price approach. The jobs you want and the jobs you do not. Your areas. Your SEAI registration if you have it. Ten minutes on the phone, and we write the rest and send it to you to check.
Price
Essentials is right for most plasterers: €499 to set up, €50 a month, no contract, VAT on top. An external insulation firm competing for grant work may want the ads and monthly content in Complete. Both plans are compared on the pricing page.