Claiming everything is why you rank for nothing
Open most general contractor websites and the services page is a list of twenty five items. Kitchens, baths, additions, decks, basements, siding, windows, flooring, tile, drywall, framing, painting, concrete. All on one page, three words each.
Google ranks pages, not businesses, and a page can compete for roughly one thing. A page listing twenty five services competes for none of them. Meanwhile the remodeler down the road who has an actual page about kitchen remodels takes the search.
The fix is not doing less work. Take the jobs you want more of, give each one a real page, and let the rest live as a line on a capabilities list.
Pick the four that pay
Most GCs make their money on a handful of project types even when they will do anything. Those are the pages:
- Kitchen remodeling. Highest search volume in remodeling and the longest research cycle.
- Bathroom remodeling. Smaller ticket, higher frequency, faster decision.
- Home additions. Biggest number, longest sales cycle, least competition online.
- Basement finishing. Heavily searched in this region and often poorly served.
If you do commercial fit-out or light commercial, that is a separate page and a separate buyer. It does not belong mixed in with residential remodeling copy.
The sales cycle is long, so the site has to do more work
An electrician's customer decides in a day. A kitchen remodel customer decides over three months, talks to three contractors, and reads everything you publish before the first meeting.
That changes what belongs on the site. Two things matter more here than in any other trade:
Project pages. Not a gallery. A page per completed job with the town, the scope, roughly what it ran, how long it took, and what came up mid-project. Homeowners read those start to finish.
A process page. What happens after they sign. Who orders what, how change orders work, how you handle the parts of the job that go sideways. Nobody writes this and everybody wants to read it.
Talking about price is an advantage, not a risk
Most contractors refuse to put any numbers on a website, on the theory that it scares people off or gets used against them in a bid.
What it actually does is filter. The homeowner with forty thousand dollars for a kitchen and the one with twelve thousand are both calling you right now, and one of those calls is wasted on both sides. A published range ends that before it starts.
Ranges are enough. "Full kitchen remodels in this area generally run x to y depending on layout changes and cabinet selection" costs you nothing and saves you a week of quotes you were never going to win.
PA HIC is not optional here
General contracting is squarely residential home improvement work in Pennsylvania. The Home Improvement Contractor registration applies and the number has to appear in advertising, which includes your website.
For your trade it is more than compliance. Homeowners handing over a deposit on a fifty thousand dollar addition are specifically looking for evidence you are registered and insured. Put the number and your insurance status where a nervous customer will find them without hunting.
What we do, month to month
- Build the page structure. A page per project type worth having, a page per town, and project pages for completed jobs.
- Handle the technical layer. Titles, descriptions, headings, schema, internal links, sitemap, image sizing, mobile behavior.
- Run the Google Business Profile. Photos, category accuracy, and Q&A seeded with the questions homeowners ask before a big remodel.
- Clean up citations. Matching business details across directories so Google trusts the data.
- Publish content. Cost ranges, process explanations, and project write-ups rather than generic blog filler.
- Report monthly. What moved, what is next, in plain English.
What it costs
Plans run $497, $997, or $1,997 a month with a one-time $499 setup. Six-month initial term, then month to month.
Most remodelers land on Growth, because project pages and town coverage add up quickly. A one-time build is $999 or $2,499 depending on page count and carries over if you move onto a plan later.
Common questions
I do everything. How do I choose four?
Look at last year's invoices and find where the margin actually was. That is usually the answer, and it is often not what you tell people you do.
Will publishing prices hurt me in bidding?
A range does not give a competitor anything they cannot already estimate. What it does is stop the calls from people who were never going to sign.
How many project pages do I need?
Start with six good ones. Six pages with real detail beat thirty photo galleries with captions.
Related
The broader picture: SEO for contractors. On the build: contractor website design. Why one page cannot rank for everything: location pages and local SEO.