Straight answers for local service businesses
Most contractors need five pages: a home page, a services page (or one page per main service), an about page, a service area page, and a contact page. If you want more calls after that, add individual service pages for your highest-value work and a reviews page. Everything else, including a blog, a gallery, and a FAQ, is optional and should only be added once the core five are done well.
Contractors overthink this. You do not need a 20-page site. You need a handful of pages that answer what someone is asking when they land on your site at 8pm with a leaking water heater.
Here is the real list, in order of importance.
Five. That is it.
A painter in a mid-size town can win plenty of work with exactly these five pages. I have seen it happen over and over. What sinks sites is not a missing page. It is a home page that never says what town you work in, or a phone number buried at the bottom in gray text.
The answer to "am I in the right place?" within the first two seconds of scrolling.
That means the top of your home page should say your trade and your area in plain words. "Licensed plumber serving Medford and the North Shore." Not "Quality craftsmanship since 1998."
Then, in order:
Most people find local contractors on Google, click the top few results, and skim for a phone number. Build for the skimmer.
Not every service. Just the ones that make you money.
Here is the logic. Someone searching "water heater replacement Medford" is a better lead than someone searching "plumber." They know what they need. They are closer to buying. If you have a page specifically about water heater replacement, you have a real shot at showing up for that search. If you have one services page that lists water heaters as bullet point number seven, you do not.
So pick your top three to five money jobs and give each one its own page. An HVAC company might build:
Leave the rest as bullets on a general services page. Do not build 40 thin pages that all say the same thing with a different keyword swapped in. Google has been ignoring that trick for years, and it makes your site annoying to navigate.
The pricing part is where most contractors bail. You do not have to publish a fixed price. But "most water heater replacements run $1,800 to $3,200 depending on tank size and whether we need to update the venting" filters out tire kickers and builds trust with everyone else.
Yes, if you cover more than one town. It tells both people and Google where you work.
Keep it simple: a list of towns and neighborhoods, plus a sentence or two about your coverage. If you charge a trip fee past a certain radius, say so. That saves you phone calls you did not want.
Some contractors build a separate page for every town. That works when the pages are genuinely different, with local photos, local jobs, and local specifics. It backfires when they are copy-paste clones. If you cannot write something real about working in that town, do not build the page.
More than you think.
A reviews page is worth adding once you have a dozen or more Google reviews. Pull the best ones, group them by service, and link to your Google profile so people can verify. Real names and real towns matter more than star counts.
A financing page earns its keep if you sell big-ticket work like roofs, HVAC systems, or full remodels. If your average ticket is $400, skip it.
Look at three things.
Build the five core pages first. Do them properly, with your own photos and your own words. Then add one strong service page a month for the work you actually want more of. That beats launching 25 pages of filler on day one, every time.
Five to ten pages covers almost every local contractor. Start with home, services, about, service area, and contact, then add individual pages for your three to five highest-value services.
No. Well-written service pages and a complete Google Business Profile do far more for local rankings than a blog. Only start a blog if you will actually keep it updated.
A range is usually better than nothing. Saying what a typical job costs and what changes the price builds trust and filters out people who were never going to hire you.
Only if you can write something genuinely specific about each one, like local photos, permit details, or jobs you have completed there. Duplicate town pages with swapped names do not help and can hurt.
The home page, because most visitors never go past it. Make sure it states your trade, your service area, and a tappable phone number above the fold on mobile.
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