"Used tractors for sale" gets 1,600 searches a month on Google UK, "used excavators for sale" 590, "used mini diggers for sale" 390. A click costs between £0.27 and £0.52, because these searches are crowded with portals: Agriaffaires' UK domain ranks for 5,067 UK keywords with about 30,400 estimated visits a month (DataForSEO, October 2026). Hire is a much bigger market: "mini digger hire" alone gets 18,100 searches a month.
The first organic result for "used tractors for sale" is Autotrader, but the second isn't a portal. It's jfsales.co.uk, a dealer, with its own used stock and the model names in the snippet. In used machinery the portals have the volume, but a dealer that publishes its own stock with price, hours and photos can rank alongside them on the individual search. In hire the game is local, and it's played with the Google profile and the price list.
This is about firms that sell and hire out diggers, forklifts and farm machinery, not the manufacturers: for them, see SEO for manufacturing companies. Below are the first pages for used and hire searches, the prices that are missing, the questions about licences and training, and the calendar of searches.
In used machinery, a dealer can be a better listing than the portal
The first page for "used tractors for sale", read on 10 October 2026, runs like this: Autotrader, JF Sales, eBay, then a "Find results on" row with five portals (Agriaffaires, Mascus, Gumtree, Machineseeker, Ritchie Bros), a local block with three dealers (Bryson Tractors in Lanark, 4.8 stars and 38 reviews; Johnston Tractors in Carlisle, 3.8 and 16; Ellwood Farm Machinery in Chester, 4.6 and 27), and below that Gordon Agri, FarmAds, Carr's Billington, Farmers Weekly classifieds, JR Firby and Thurlow Nunn Standen. Five of the nine organic results are dealers' own sites.
JF Sales ranks for 689 UK keywords, 32 of them in first position, with about 6,760 estimated visits a month. That's less than a seventh of Agriaffaires' keywords, yet it sits second on the biggest search in its market. The page that ranks is a list of used tractors ("Showing 1-24 of 102 results"), and the snippet says that over half its tractors sell before they're advertised. It's a listing, done better. In the Google Shopping carousel on the same page, another dealer, PV Dobson, shows its tractors with the price: a Massey Ferguson 7719 S at £83,940, a 3645 at £21,540.
On "used mini diggers for sale" the same thing happens. First is Ridgway Rentals, a hire company selling its ex-hire Komatsu and JCB machines, then Autotrader with a 2021 JCB 8026 at "£17950 + VAT" in the snippet, eBay, Machinery Trader, and two small dealers with prices in the snippet: Highwood (£14,250 ex VAT) and Budd Plant (£7,750 + VAT). There's no local block here: Google treats the search as national. Two of the ten organic results are Facebook groups, one with 90,800 followers, which shows how much of this market is still private sales.
For a dealer, this means treating used stock like an ecommerce catalogue: one page per machine, with make, model, year, hours, price and real photos, plus a category page by type and by county. Pages for sold machines shouldn't be deleted: keep them up marked "sold" with a link to similar models, so the rankings they've built up aren't lost. ShellPlant already does this in its snippet: "Kubota K008 - Year 2021 - Hours 1547 (Ref 146) £11,500+VAT".
Hire is decided in the map, with few reviews
On "mini digger hire" (18,100 searches a month, £1.23 per click), searched from Manchester, the first thing below the directory row is a local block. The three firms are:
- Manchester Mini Diggers, 5.0 stars and 2 reviews;
- M.R. Diggers, 5.0 and 23;
- Digger and Driver Hire Stockport, 5.0 and 1.
One review is enough to get into the local pack. That's lower than in the other UK local sectors we've measured: builders in London need 4 to 18, and solar installers in Bristol 30 to 62. Searched from Manchester, "builders" shows firms with 17, 54 and 101.
With a bar that low, twenty reviews collected with a text message when the machine comes back, plus a Google Business Profile with the category "Construction machine rental service" and photos of the yard, put an average hire firm ahead of most competitors in its area.
In organic results the picture changes between the two products. For mini diggers there are Speedy Hire and then mostly local or regional hire firms: Smiths Hire with a Manchester page, Manchester Mini Diggers, Chase Plant Hire, Rent This Digger, BSM Group, Source UK, and Mammoth Hire with a page for Huddersfield. For forklifts, searched from Birmingham, there's no map at all: page one is forklift dealers with hire pages (East Midlands Forklifts, The Forklift Company with pages for Leicester and Manchester, Easy Truck, Hiremech), Yell, and Mammoth Hire three times with pages for Stoke-on-Trent, Telford and Chichester. A digger hire firm competes with its neighbours; a forklift hire firm competes with dealers and with national firms that have a page for every town.
The price list is the page that brings in customers
Under "mini digger hire" Google shows two questions about price: "How much does a mini digger cost to hire?" and "How much does it cost to hire a mini digger per day?". Among the related searches are "mini digger hire prices" and "mini digger hire cost UK". "Mini digger hire prices" on its own gets 1,000 searches a month.
Firms that publish a price get seen. Chase Plant Hire puts it in the title: "Mini Digger Hire from £75 - No Deposit". Its domain ranks for just 318 UK keywords, but 29 of them are in first position. Rent This Digger, a small firm covering Cheshire, the Wirral and North Wales, is on page one in Manchester with "from just £45 per day" in its title. MyBuilder's cost guide quotes £80 to £240 a day for self-drive hire. For forklifts, East Midlands Forklifts opens page one in Birmingham with "from as little as £49.00 per week", and The Forklift Company shows "£69+ VAT per week" on two city pages.
The cost per click shows where it pays. "Forklift hire" costs £8.16 per click, "forklift hire london" £12.32. "Used tractors for sale" costs £0.28. A click on forklift hire is worth 29 to 44 times one on used farm machinery, because a business hiring a forklift has stock arriving next week. Digger hire is cheaper to buy (£1.23 for "mini digger hire", £1.90 for "digger hire") because many searchers are homeowners with a garden project. Either way, one page per machine with the daily, weekly and monthly rate, what's included (delivery, buckets, damage waiver) and the date it was last updated answers exactly that person.
Training and licences: the question no price list answers
"Forklift" gets 22,200 searches a month. "Forklift training" gets 6,600, "forklift licence" 3,600 and "cpcs card", the construction plant operator card, another 6,600. Under "mini digger hire" two of Google's four questions are about who can operate the machine: "Do I need a licence to hire a mini digger?" and "Can anyone use a mini digger?". Under "forklift hire" one asks "What is a B1, B2, and B3 forklift licence?".
Customers ask this before booking, and none of the hire firms' snippets on page one deals with it. A page that explains who can operate what, when training is needed and whether hire with an operator solves the problem, with a link to the official rules (for forklifts, HSE's lift-truck training guidance, which asks employers to train operators to the standards in the L117 code of practice), catches the search and removes an objection. A firm that also runs a training centre has a second product to sell to the same person.
The calendar: hire peaks in spring, used sales in autumn
Hire searches share a peak in spring, when building and landscaping work picks up. "Mini digger hire" goes from 18,100 to 27,100 searches a month in March, April and May 2026, and drops to 6,600 in December. "Digger hire" goes from 5,400 to 8,100 in March and April, "tool hire" from 14,800 to 18,100 from March to May. "Used mini diggers for sale" peaks in March too, at 590.
The second moment is the autumn: "plant hire" reaches 14,800 in October 2025 against an average of 9,900, "cherry picker hire" 12,100 from September to November against 9,900, "used excavators for sale" 880 in September and October against 590, and "used forklifts for sale" jumps to 4,400 in September 2025 against an average of 880. If you want to be ready for March, publish the pages by January. You can check the pattern on Google Trends by comparing the last five years.
| Keyword | Average monthly searches | CPC | Peak month (searches) |
|---|---|---|---|
| forklift | 22,200 | £4.54 | Sep-Nov 2025 (27,100) |
| mini digger hire | 18,100 | £1.23 | Mar-May 2026 (27,100) |
| tool hire | 14,800 | £0.84 | Mar-May 2026 (18,100) |
| cherry picker hire | 9,900 | £1.90 | Sep-Nov 2025 (12,100) |
| plant hire | 9,900 | £3.51 | Oct 2025 (14,800) |
| forklift training | 6,600 | £2.86 | Sep 2025 (9,900) |
| cpcs card | 6,600 | £2.72 | Sep-Oct 2025 (8,100) |
| mini digger | 5,400 | £1.01 | Mar-May 2026 (6,600) |
| digger hire | 5,400 | £1.90 | Mar-Apr 2026 (8,100) |
| forklift licence | 3,600 | £2.09 | Jan 2026 (4,400) |
| forklift hire | 2,400 | £8.16 | Sep 2025 (5,400) |
| used tractors for sale | 1,600 | £0.28 | Sep-Oct 2025 (1,900) |
| mini digger hire prices | 1,000 | £0.97 | Mar 2026 (1,600) |
| excavator hire | 880 | £1.73 | Sep 2025 and May 2026 (1,300) |
| used forklifts for sale | 880 | £4.80 | Sep 2025 (4,400) |
| used excavators for sale | 590 | £0.52 | Sep-Oct 2025 (880) |
| used tractors | 480 | £0.28 | Sep-Oct 2025 and Mar 2026 (720) |
| used mini diggers for sale | 390 | £0.27 | Mar 2026 (590) |
| used farm machinery | 320 | £0.52 | Sep 2025 (720) |
| forklift hire london | 140 | £12.32 | Sep 2025 (480) |
The underlying market is growing slowly: according to the Construction Equipment Association, just over 29,000 construction machines were sold in the UK in 2025, 4.6% more than in 2024. In a market that grows this slowly, most new customers are won from competitors, and searches with a price in them are where that happens.
Recommended reading: how to set up Google Ads for construction, useful for forklift hire searches at £8 a click.
Frequently asked questions
Very few. In October 2026, on "mini digger hire" searched from Manchester, the local block showed firms with 2, 23 and 1 reviews. That's lower than in the other UK local sectors we've measured: builders in London needed 4 to 18, solar installers in Bristol 30 to 62.
On the individual search, yes. On "used tractors for sale" (1,600 searches a month) the second organic result is a dealer's own site, JF Sales, ahead of eBay and of the portals in the "Find results on" row, and five of the nine organic results are dealers.
Yes. Google shows questions like "How much does a mini digger cost to hire?" under hire searches, and sites that state a daily or weekly rate appear on page one even with little content. Chase Plant Hire ranks for 318 UK keywords, 29 of them in first position, with "from £75" in its title.
In spring. "Mini digger hire" goes from 18,100 to 27,100 searches a month between March and May, and "digger hire" from 5,400 to 8,100. "Plant hire" and "cherry picker hire" peak in the autumn instead. Spring pages should be published by January.
About £8.16 for "forklift hire" and £12.32 for "forklift hire london". Searches for used farm machinery cost far less: £0.28 for "used tractors for sale".
Where to start
Take the five machines in your fleet that you hire out or sell most. For each, search Google for "hire" or "used" plus the model and your county, and note whether your site appears on page one and with which page. If it's the home page, or you don't appear at all, that machine needs a page of its own with price, photos and availability. Then count the reviews of the three hire firms in the map: if the third has fewer than twenty, the first job is to ask this week's customers for them.
If you'd like to set this up with us across your whole fleet, get in touch. Here's how we work on SEO.
