Contractors & home service businesses Website design for contractors, with the search numbers to go with it.
If a homeowner can't find you the minute something breaks, the website you paid for isn't doing its job. I run the website and the search work for an auto body shop in Brooklyn, New York, and the website, the search and the ads for an appliance repair company in Baltimore, so every figure on here comes off an account I log into. Plans start at $800 a month and the website is designed and built inside them.
Click figures from each client's own Google Search Console. Plan pricing is the live curve every client is quoted from.
What has to be on a contractor's website before anything else?
A contractor website earns work by getting in front of somebody whose roof is leaking or whose car is on a flatbed, and then answering enough of their questions that calling you feels like the safe move.
Most advice about contractor web design stops at a checklist, and the checklist is usually right. Mobile first, real photos, click to call, reviews on the page. What it skips is how those pieces get arranged, and the arrangement is what decides whether Google has anything specific to rank.
One page per thing you sell
The body shop site runs a page each for collision repair, frame and structural work, paint, auto glass, towing and jet ski repair, and every one of those pages carries its own estimate form.
A page for every town you drive to
The appliance repair site runs fourteen of them under one service area hub, because somebody in Glen Burnie types Glen Burnie and somebody in Catonsville does not.
Your crew's own photographs
Both shops already photograph their work out of habit. Getting those shots onto the service pages costs nothing and does more for a stranger than anything I could buy.
License, warranty and carrier, printed
The body shop's New York State DMV registration, its lifetime warranty and its GEICO relationship used to come up on the phone. On the page they answer the question before anybody dials.
Nobody is shopping for a website. They're shopping for whoever can fix it.
Do I need a separate page for every service my crew sells?
Yes, and I have the search data from a trade I run to back it up. Across 400 days of Search Console on the appliance repair company, 49.8% of every search that surfaced the site named a specific machine. Searches carrying the city came to 9.3%. Refrigerator repair and dryer repair behave like two different markets, and a single services page is competing in neither of them.
I haven't measured a roofing account or an HVAC account, so I won't pretend those exact percentages carry over to your trade. What did hold across two unrelated shops is that people search for the specific thing that has gone wrong, and almost nobody searches for the industry that fixes it.
A homeowner with water coming through a bedroom ceiling searches for the leak, not for a general contractor.
Service area pages work the same way one level up. A Google Business Profile has a radius, and past the edge of it your listing simply stops appearing. Organic pages are how you reach the towns your trucks already drive to, so each town gets a page with its own work on it and not one page listing every zip code in a paragraph.
If you want the full intent split, the click rates under it and a 25 point map grid showing where one profile stops appearing, that all sits on the appliance repair marketing page.
How long before a new website starts bringing in work?
Months. The middle stretch is the part nobody warns you about, because it looks like nothing is happening right when you're paying the closest attention, and that's where most owners quit paying for it.
The auto body shop is the clearer story of the two. Six months where the line never moved, September 2025 through February 2026, before I started with the shop. Then the rebuild went up service page by service page, and by June and July the same site was earning 45 and 49 clicks a month.
That flat stretch belongs in the plan you agree to, up front, where you can see it coming. Thirty days is enough to get pages live and indexed. Earning a position that pays takes a good deal longer than that, and whoever is sizing a plan for you should say out loud which of the two they mean.
The whole body shop rebuild, service page by service page and month by month, is written up as an auto body shop marketing case study.
Six quiet months is what the work looks like before the numbers catch up.
Why does my site show up on Google and still not get calls?
Showing up in the results and ranking where people click are two different things, and a report full of impressions only tells you about the first. On the appliance repair account, positions one to three cover 1.2% of the times the site appeared, and they bring in about six clicks in every ten.
Positions 1 to 3
Only 1.2% of the times the site turned up in Google, at an 11.9% click rate. Those three spots are the ones worth fighting for.
Positions 4 to 9
Still page one, and the click rate has already dropped to 1.0%. Plenty of people see you down there and keep going.
Positions 21 to 49
59.7% of every appearance, converting at 0.05%. That's a lot of showing up for very few clicks.
For a contractor that changes what you ask your marketing company for. A service page that climbs from 24 to 14 draws a nice line on a chart and barely moves the click count. Get that same page from 14 into the top three and the schedule board fills up. Whoever reports on your rankings owes you an answer on which of those two they spent the month doing.
The other half of the answer is the map. A local pack listing sits above the organic results for nearly every repair search, and keeping it fed is its own weekly job: categories, service list, photos, and a reply on every review. The google business profile optimization checklist covers the whole listing.
Do I need a new website, or just better SEO?
This is the question I get asked most, and it's worth settling before anybody quotes you, because those two problems cost very different amounts to fix.
A content problem
A roofer on a fast three page template with no service pages and no town pages has a site that works fine and a structure that gives Google almost nothing to rank. Writing the pages and wiring the internal links fixes that, and it's the cheaper of the two years.
A platform problem
A remodeler on a drag and drop page builder that takes six seconds to load on a phone is fighting the thing the site is made of, and no amount of search work gets around it.
How I tell you which
I look at what you have, what you already rank for, and what it would take to fix it where it stands. If pages are all you need, I'll say so and quote you for pages.
Rebuild or repair, the search work behind it is the same work. The general web design side of this, the platform argument and the before and after videos from seven rebuilt clients sit on the the before and afters from the shop rebuilds page.
Busy in one town, invisible in the next?
Tell me what your crew does and which towns you cover. I'll look at where you're landing in those searches before I write back, usually within one business day.
- 450K+ search impressions across the sites we manage
- 5,800+ organic search clicks across the sites we manage
- 600+ leads and booking requests across the sites we manage
Last 90 days, across the sites and Search Console/GA4 accounts Another Monday manages. Figures as of August 2026.
What does a website for a contractor cost?
Mine runs from $800 a month for two pages up to $3,500 for ten, and the website gets designed and built inside that plan, so it never arrives as an invoice of its own. Four pages at $1,550 is where the slider puts most owners.
Whatever rate you land on, all of this is included:
- Google Business Profile management and optimization
- A Google Business Profile post with every new page
- Citation publishing across the directories that matter
- AI search optimization (AEO and GEO) on every page
- Conversion optimization that turns SEO traffic into calls
- A custom built website on your brand that loads fast
- Automatic replies to your Google reviews, handled for you
- A custom built analytics dashboard you can open any time
- A monthly video walkthrough of the work, in plain English
- A direct line to me for strategy and operations help
Now you're into a real growth phase, month over month.
What it has to earn back
The plan is an investment, so the only question that matters is how many jobs it takes to cover it. Work it out with your own numbers.
Break-even only, at the rate the slider is showing. Anything past that is margin, and a customer who comes back is worth more than the first job suggests.
If none of these numbers work for where the business is right now, tell me on a call. I'd rather put together something smaller that actually fits than lose the conversation over a number.
Ad budget is separate and goes straight to the platform, never through me.
Ad management sits on its own ladder, priced per channel, starting at $500 a month and climbing with how big the account gets. Google or Meta bill your ad budget straight to your own card, and it never passes through me. I quote a move after I've had a look at what you already have, because a five page brochure and a forty page site with a decade of rankings are nowhere near the same job.
Splitting a whole marketing budget across a website, search and ads is its own question, and the small business marketing budget guide runs that math for a local business. Everything I do alongside a website is listed on the marketing services page.
If you want the money question on its own, that's the website redesign cost page and the how much does a website cost for a small business page. The same plan written for small businesses generally is on the small business website design page.
What happens to your estimate form after the site goes live?
Two things go wrong with a contractor's estimate form after launch, and both of them cost jobs quietly. Spam is the first. Put a form on the internet with a trade address behind it and the vendors, lead sellers and bots find it fast, so a real customer's message ends up buried between two offers for cheaper insurance.
The fix is filtering that runs before any of it reaches you, without putting a puzzle in front of a homeowner who has already decided to call you. I don't publish a blocked count, because I don't have one worth publishing.
Submitted for real before you launch
Every form gets a live submission before the site opens, and I follow that message all the way to the inbox instead of assuming it arrived.
Backed up away from email
Every submission is stored away from your inbox, so if your email provider has a bad day it costs you a delay and never a customer.
Short enough that people finish it
A quote form asking eleven questions is a quote form people abandon. Ask for the job, the town and a way to reach them, and get the rest on the phone.
Counted, so you know what worked
Form submissions and phone taps get tracked as events, so you can say how many jobs the website brought you instead of guessing that it brought a few.
Measurement is the second one. The body shop had no Search Console and nothing watching where its leads went before the rebuild, so a strong month and a lucky month read the same on paper. Get that wired up before any ad money goes out, or you're buying traffic you can't grade.
Will I lose my rankings if I move off Squarespace or Wix?
A move keeps your rankings when the mapping is done first. I list every page you have live, what each one already earns in search, and where it lands on the new site. Then the site gets rebuilt page for page and the old addresses point at the new ones before the switch, so the credit you have built up follows you across.
I've moved sites off Wix and off Squarespace, and the checklist that governs it is a written runbook, so nothing depends on me remembering a step at eleven at night. I'm a Squarespace Circle member and still custom code most sites, which is a call about ranking and nothing personal about the platform.
If you're staying put and want to get more out of what you have, the what Squarespace can and cannot do for search guide covers what that platform can and can't be pushed to do.
What I'll put in writing, and what I won't.
You're about to spend money on my judgment, so you should know exactly where my proof stops.
licensed construction trades on my roster
Not one roofer, HVAC company, plumber or remodeler. An appliance repair company in Baltimore and an auto body shop in Brooklyn are the closest I've got.
Google reviews on the body shop's profile
It was showing in the 60s when I started with the shop in February 2026, and 8 arrived in July alone.
Search Console properties I manage
Across the ten of them with a full 180 days of history the last ninety days are flat to slightly down against the ninety before, at minus 0.8 percent on clicks. Across all twelve, counting the newer ones, it is plus 0.6 percent.
That last one is the easiest number to leave off a page selling websites, so I put it up. I publish volume totals from the accounts I manage because a portfolio wide growth percentage would have to be invented, and I'm not doing that.
There are two more gaps and I'd rather name them than have you find them. I don't have a lead count or a booked job figure for either contractor client, because search clicks and reviews are what I can see from where I sit. I don't have a revenue number either, so I'm not going to tell you that one signed job pays for the website.
I'll put the work itself in writing: the pages, the structure, the tracking, the migration, the monthly publishing, and a report you can read without a glossary.
If I can't show you where a number came from, it doesn't go on the page.
Who I build these websites for.
Mostly local service businesses, the kind where the customer already has a problem and no patience left for shopping around.
Home services
What a homeowner looks up the minute something stops working. On my roster that's an appliance repair company in Baltimore, with the website, the search work, the Google Business Profile and the ads all run out of one place.
Auto and body
A driver picks one of these on the worst day of their month and has to trust it fast. Mine is a Brooklyn, New York collision shop, rebuilt page by page around the services it sells and the credentials it holds.
Studios and practices
Therapists, wellness studios and medical practices. Nobody browses for one of those either, so the site has to be findable the moment somebody needs it.
I'm not a contractor and I'll never tell you I am. Before this I was the owner sitting on the other side of this exact purchase. I ran an event venue in Baltimore for about three and a half years, built it out for roughly $30,000 on a $20,000 personal loan and a credit card, did my own search work, my own ads and my own website, and grew it past 380 bookings, with 250 five star reviews across the platforms, before it closed.
Client names, live sites and what I run for each one are on the page listing the businesses I work with, and the longer write ups are in the case study collection. If you like the website you already have and only want the search side of this, that's the baltimore seo company page.
I ran my own business on this playbook before I sold it to anybody.
Should I run ads while the new site earns its rankings?
Usually yes. Contractor terms are expensive on both sides, and the months your service pages spend climbing are the months paid placement has to carry the phone. Below about $30 a day a local campaign never collects enough conversions to learn from.
Paid, while the pages climb
Covers the week you launch and every service you don't rank for yet, from the day you switch it on.
Search, once it lands
Keeps working after you stop paying. A service page published in March is still bringing people in the following March.
The full argument between the two channels is on the seo vs google ads guide, and how I build and run an account is on the google ads agency baltimore page. What a click really costs inside one trade account is on the appliance repair marketing page, printed as a monthly range with the expensive months left in.
Get the website right first, then buy the traffic to point at it.
Questions contractors ask me.
What should a contractor website include?
A contractor website needs a page for every service your crew sells, a page for every town you cover, photographs of your own finished work, your license number and warranty printed where a stranger can read them, a phone number a customer can tap to call, and a short estimate form that reaches you and gets counted. Those six pieces do the selling. The rest of the site is trim.
How much does a website cost for a contractor?
A contractor website comes with the monthly plan at Another Monday, so you never get a project invoice for it on top. Plans run from $800 a month for two pages up to $3,500 for ten, and the slider puts most owners at four pages for $1,550. There's a three month minimum and then it's month to month. Ad management is priced on its own, per channel, and Google or Meta bill your ad budget straight to your card.
Do I need a separate page for every service my crew offers?
Yes, and a trade account I run shows why. Over 400 days on one appliance repair company, about half of every search that surfaced the site named a specific machine, so refrigerator repair and dryer repair behave like two separate markets. One services page listing everything gives Google almost nothing to rank.
Do I need a page for every town I serve?
Service area pages earn their keep once you drive past your own zip code, because a Google Business Profile has a radius and organic search results are how you reach beyond it. The appliance repair site runs fourteen town pages under one service area hub. Write each one about the work you've done in that town, because the same paragraph with the name swapped fools nobody, Google included.
Do I need a new website, or does the one I have just need better SEO?
Some sites have a content problem and some have a platform problem, and the two cost very different amounts to fix. A roofer with a fast three page template and no service pages needs pages and structure, not a rebuild. A remodeler on a page builder taking six seconds to load on a phone is fighting the platform, and no amount of search work gets around it. Send me the address and I'll tell you which of the two you're looking at before you spend a dollar.
Will I lose my Google rankings if I move my site off Squarespace or Wix?
A move keeps your rankings when every existing page is mapped to its replacement first and the redirects go in before the switch. I map the live pages and the searches they already earn, rebuild page for page, then point the old addresses at the new ones so the credit you've built follows you. I've done it off Wix and off Squarespace.
How long does it take a new contractor website to start ranking?
Months, and the middle of it is quieter than you'd expect. The Brooklyn auto body shop sat between 14 and 20 organic clicks a month for six straight months while pages were going up, then reached 45 and 49. The appliance repair company held between 89 and 120 for about a year before a single month came in at 214. Paid ads bring calls in the first week, which is what the higher price per click is buying you.
Why does my contractor website get traffic but no calls?
Rank position is usually the answer. On the appliance repair account I run, 59.7% of the times the site appeared it was sitting between positions 21 and 49, and those appearances converted at 0.05%. Page three looks like traffic in a report and brings almost nobody to your door. Check where you rank for the words a customer types before you look at the impression count.
How do I stop my estimate form from filling up with spam?
Filtering handles it before any of it reaches your inbox, and a real customer never sees a puzzle. Every form on a site I ship gets a live submission before launch, every entry is backed up away from email, and I follow the message to the inbox to be sure it lands. Losing one estimate request costs you more than all of that.
Should I put my prices on my contractor website?
Price ranges belong on the page for any work you can honestly range, like a service call fee or a starting figure on a common job. They won't bring you traffic though. On the trade account I have measured, cost and price searches together came to under one percent of everything that surfaced the site, so pricing is there for the person who is already deciding.
How do I show my license, insurance and warranty on my website?
License numbers, insurance and warranty terms belong in the body of the service page a customer is reading, not buried on an about page. The body shop I work with has its state registration, its lifetime workmanship warranty and its insurance carrier relationship printed on the pages where somebody is deciding whether to hand over their car. Say exactly what is covered and for how long.
Do you build websites for roofers, HVAC companies and plumbers?
Yes, though no licensed construction trade is on my roster yet. The closest work I can show you is an appliance repair company and an auto body shop, both real, both measured, both running the page structure a roofing or HVAC company needs. If a portfolio full of roofs is what you're after, hire someone else. If you want the search work done the way it got done for those two, send me your site.
Can AI tools like ChatGPT recommend my contracting business?
Answer engines already route home repair questions, and they cite businesses whose pages they can read and whose facts line up everywhere they appear. For a contractor the work behind that is unglamorous. Plain pages that render without JavaScript, one consistent name, address and phone in every listing, and sentences a machine can quote straight out of a paragraph without them falling apart.
Search figures on this page come from Google Search Console for two clients: a Brooklyn auto body shop, pulled 2026-08-05, and a Baltimore appliance repair company, pulled 2026-08-18. Review counts come from Google. Plan pricing is the live curve every client is quoted from.
Your phone should be ringing more than it is.
Send me what you've got now and the towns you cover, and I'll look at where you're landing in those searches before I write back. If the website is fine and pages are what you're short on, I'll tell you that and quote you for pages.
También hablamos español.