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Guides
What a contractor's website has to do, with the evidence.
Each guide answers one question in the first paragraph, then shows the measurements, the sources and what we build. Written for an owner reading on a phone between jobs. New ones most weeks; dates are on every page.
The guides
What a contractor website costs
The four ways contractor websites are sold, the real three-year cost of each, what is missing from the cheap one, and the questions that expose a bad quote.
Guide: local searchGoogle Business Profile for contractors
What on a contractor's Google Business Profile moves it up the map (category, service area, reviews, photos, consistency) and what wastes an evening.
Guide: AI answersHow AI answers pick contractors
Ask ChatGPT, Google's AI or Perplexity for a roofer and you get three names. Where that list comes from, what gets a page quoted, which crawlers to allow.
Guide: the callThe first phone screen
What has to be on the first screen of a contractor website on a phone, what we usually find there instead, and how a pop-up or buried number loses the call.
Guide: speedWhy your website is slow on phones
Your site looks fine on the office computer and takes six seconds on a phone. Why, how to check it in 60 seconds, and what a slow load costs in jobs.
By trade
HVAC websites
What an HVAC website has to do on a phone when the house is 52 degrees: the call button, published repair prices, seasonal pages, the maintenance plan.
Websites for plumbersPlumbing websites
What a plumber's website has to do on a phone when there is water on the floor: call and text in one tap, an arrival time, flat-rate prices.
Websites for roofing contractorsRoofing websites
What a roofing website has to do on a phone to turn a storm search into a booked inspection: the first screen, the claim wording, the proof, the speed.
Short answers
One question, one answer, one source. The full list.
Call button or contact form?
For urgent trades the call button wins, the text button is second and the form is for the planned job. Where each goes on a phone and how short the form is.
Short answerDo pop-ups cost contractors calls?
On a phone a pop-up covers most of the first screen and lands on the call button; the homeowner backs out. What the audit measures and what to use instead.
Short answerDo town pages work for contractors?
Yes, one at a time, when each page has something true about that town: a real job, a real review, the drive time. Twenty copies with the name swapped do not.
Short answerDoes blocking AI crawlers hurt a local business?
Yes, for a contractor: a robots.txt or hosting rule that blocks GPTBot, ClaudeBot or PerplexityBot stops those assistants reading your pages. How to undo it.
Short answerGoogle's AI Overviews for contractors
When Google answers a local search with its own summary, the companies it names come from the map and web results you already compete for. What changes.
Short answerHow fast should a contractor website load?
Under 2.5 seconds to the first real content on a phone, by Google's own line; over 4 seconds is poor. How to check yours in a minute and what the gap costs.
Short answerHow many Google reviews does a contractor need?
Enough to match the other names in the map pack for your trade and town, and recent. Why recency and replies beat the count, and how to ask.
Short answerHow to test your website speed in 60 seconds
The one honest free test: Google's PageSpeed Insights on the Mobile tab. What to paste, which two numbers to read, and the mistakes that flatter the result.
Short answerIs WordPress slow for contractor websites?
WordPress itself is not slow; the theme, the page builder and the plugin pile are. What makes a WordPress contractor site take six seconds on a phone.
Short answerShould a contractor website show prices?
For service trades, yes: the visit fee, starting prices and ranges win the call and screen out the wrong callers. When a range is right and when to hold back.
Short answerHow many jobs pay for the website?
At typical ticket sizes one extra job a month covers a $700 to $1,300 site in most trades; in roofing and HVAC one a quarter does. The arithmetic per trade.
Short answerWhat does $700 a month include?
Every item in the Standard Engine fee, line by line: the rebuild, hosting with a second copy, SSL, backups, updates and fixes, the speed promise.
Short answerWhat is llms.txt?
A plain-text file at yourdomain.com/llms.txt that tells AI assistants what the business is and which pages to read. Ten minutes to add; not a ranking signal.
Short answerWho owns the website code?
Whoever the contract says, and most are silent. The four things to own in writing (domain, code, content, accounts) and what our terms say.
Data
What the audit pipeline measured across contractor websites, per trade and month. The data section and how it is measured.
Your site
Every guide, run on your own site.
The free audit measures the things the guides describe: speed on a phone, the first screen, the call button, the competitors, the AI crawler check. Written, back within one business day.