SEO for Contractors

Homeowners rarely search for “contractor”. They search for the job — “basement finishing”, “deck builder”, “kitchen remodel cost” — or for the problem — “leaking roof”, “water damage repair” — usually with a town or “near me”. Before any page is written I pull the real search data for your jobs and towns:

• how many people search for each job in your area
• which searches show the map, which show lead platforms, which show AI Overviews
• which jobs you can realistically rank for in months, and which take longer

Pages are then built around the phrases homeowners use, not around how your office names the work.

A single “Services” page cannot rank for ten different jobs. Contractor SEO gives each job you want more of its own page — what is included, typical timing, a price range where you can give one, projects of that type and answers to the questions customers ask on the phone. Each town or area you cover gets a page with projects from there.

Area pages only work with real content: projects, reviews and details from that area. A hundred copies of one page with the town name swapped are a known pattern, and Google filters them out.

A general contractor competes with specialists in every service: the roofer for roofs, the remodeler for kitchens, the basement company for basements. Winning against them means each service page has to be as complete as a specialist’s — scope, process, prices, projects — and the site has to show that one company handles the whole job, from permits to finishing.

I start with the services that bring the most profit and have realistic competition, and add the rest one by one, instead of publishing twenty thin pages at once.

Most contractor sites lose positions on the basics: slow pages full of uncompressed photos, one title on every page, the phone number as an image, projects without text. The technical part of contractor SEO fixes this:

• titles and headings that name the job and the area
• pages that load in under 2.5 seconds on a phone
• project photos with text: the job, the town, what was done
• structured data for the business, its services, areas and reviews
• the same name, address and phone on the site, the profile and directories

If the website itself needs to be rebuilt, the websites for contractors page describes how I build them.

Homeowners read reviews before they let a contractor into the house, and reviews also move a business up in the map results. I set up a simple routine: the customer is asked at the end of the job, by text with a direct link; every review gets an answer within a few days; reviews mention the job and the area in their own words. Bought reviews and asking only happy customers break Google’s rules and are easy to detect, so neither is used.

Lead platforms such as Angi, HomeAdvisor or Thumbtack sell the same lead to several contractors, and the price per lead keeps rising. Google Local Services Ads charge per lead too and show only a few businesses. Both bring work from the first week; both stop the day you stop paying.

SEO is slower: new pages take two to four months to rank. But the calls it brings come to you alone, and they do not cost per lead. Many contractors keep a paid channel for the busy season and build SEO so that, a year later, they depend on it less. I do the SEO part; paid ads and lead platforms are not something I manage.

More homeowners now ask ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google’s AI Overviews “who is a good roofer near me” or “how much does a basement remodel cost” before they open any website. The answers are built from what the assistant can read and trust: your profile, reviews, directory listings and your own pages. Getting into them is called generative engine optimization (GEO) or answer engine optimization (AEO), and for a contractor it is part of the same SEO work:

• services, areas, licence, insurance and years in business written as plain facts an assistant can quote
• structured data that names the business, its services and the areas it covers
• answers to cost, timing and permit questions written on the service pages
• the same business details everywhere, so assistants do not confuse you with another company

I check how assistants describe your business before and after the work. More on the AI SEO and GEO optimization page.

A contractor marketing agency usually sells a package — ads, social media, sometimes leads — with SEO as one part. An SEO company for contractors focuses on search, but the work is often done from templates for hundreds of clients. I am a single SEO specialist who also builds websites. Whoever you choose, ask the same questions:

• Will you report calls and estimate requests, or only positions?
• Who owns the website, the profile and the content if we stop working together?
• Are the area pages written for real areas, with real projects?
• Is there a minimum contract, and why?

• SEO audit of the website and the Google Business Profile: from 250 €, one-off. You get a list of fixes in order of impact.
• One-off work — service and area pages, profile clean-up, structured data: 250–700 €.
• Monthly SEO for a contractor — new pages, maps, reviews routine and reporting: from 800 € per month; in very competitive cities from 1,300 € per month.

For many contractors a correct profile and a handful of strong service pages give most of the effect, and the audit shows whether monthly work is needed at all. Construction companies working on larger projects will find more on the SEO for construction companies page. Full price ranges are on the pricing page.