Contractor website must-haves: a checklist to run on your own site

Marketing For Construction is an independent referral service, not a marketing agency. If you send the form, your details go to an independent agency that prepares any proposal.

The first screen

• Your trade is clear in plain words without scrolling.
• Your service area is named near the top.
• There is one obvious way to get in touch.
• The page loads quickly on a phone connection.
• The main photo is your own work, not a generic stock picture.

Service and area pages

• Each service you want more of has its own page.
• Each service page describes how you do the job and shows photos of it.
• Your service area is written out as the towns and counties you really cover.
• Any page for a particular town has real, specific content. Google’s spam policies treat near-identical city pages that funnel users to one page as doorway abuse.
• No page repeats the same keyword over and over. Google calls that keyword stuffing.

Proof

• A projects page with your own photos and a short description of each job.
• Reviews shown on the site are real and linked to where they were posted. The FTC’s rule bans fake reviews and testimonials, and managers posting reviews of their own company without saying so.
• No paid or incentivized reviews anywhere. Google’s Maps policy bans them.
• An about page that says who runs the company and how jobs are run.

Contact and quote form

• Your phone number can be tapped to dial on a phone.
• The quote form asks only what you need to reply: name, phone, email, the job and where.
• You have tested the form from your own phone this month, and the email arrived.
• Your business name, address and phone match your Google Business Profile exactly.
• A thank-you message says what happens next.

Search basics

• Each page has a clear title that says what the page is about.
• Project galleries have words, not only pictures.
• Nothing is blocking search engines by mistake, such as a setting left on from when the site was built.
• You or your designer can see which pages Google has indexed.
• Every page you care about can be reached through ordinary links from the menu or other pages.

Google’s Search Essentials set out the technical basics, but Google also says that meeting them does not mean it will crawl, index or serve a page. Treat them as removing obstacles, then make the pages worth showing. Our guide to contractor SEO explains the rest.

Ads and landing pages

• Each ad sends people to the page for that job, not the home page.
• The page repeats what the ad promised. Google’s Quality Score includes landing page experience: how relevant and useful the page is to people who click.
• Each landing page has the same short quote form and a phone number that can be tapped to dial.
• You know which calls and forms came from ads, so you can compare their cost with the jobs they won.

Google Business Profile link-up

• Your Google Business Profile links to your website.
• The name on the profile is your real business name, the same as on the site, with no keywords added.
• The profile shows your real address and the areas you serve, as Google allows both.
• Photos on the profile are your own work, as on the site.

Ownership

• The domain is registered to your company.
• You have the login to the website and hosting.
• You can get a copy of your site and photos if you change designers.

If more than a few items are unticked, it may be time for a rebuild. Our page on contractor website design explains how a construction site should be structured and what to ask a designer before you hire one.

Questions owners ask