Do Contractors Need a Website? What a Site Does for You

Do contractors need a website? Not every one, and not on day one. A Google Business Profile with steady reviews books plenty of work for a crew that does one service in one town. A site starts to pay when the work spreads over more services or more towns, when commercial bids need a company behind the phone number, or when the phone itself is the bottleneck. This post says which is which, and what a site has to do to earn its keep.

The short answer for a one-crew company

Start with the profile. It is free, it puts you on the map for searches near the job, and Google's own help page says local results rank mainly on relevance, distance and prominence (its summary line calls the third one popularity), that complete and accurate information makes a business more likely to show up, and that there is no way to pay for a better local ranking. A website is a second thing to keep current, and a stale site does a kind of harm a bare profile never does.

The test is whether a stranger holding a phone can find the service they need in their town, see that you have done that work before, and send you the job without calling. If the profile does all three today, the site can wait.

What a Google Business Profile can hold, and what it can't

A profile holds more than many owners fill in. Per Google's help pages: a description of up to 750 characters with no URLs in it, services with a price and a description, hours, photos, and up to 20 service areas within about two hours of driving time from where the business is based. A business that goes to the customer, like a plumber working from home, should remove that address from the profile.

• It cannot hold a page per service. The description is one block of text for everything you do, and the services list is names, prices and a short description, not before-and-after photos.
• It cannot hold a page per town. Service areas tell Google where you work; they are not a page a person in that town reads.
• It cannot run a request form that asks for the address and photos. The profile offers a phone number and a website link.
• It is not permanent. Google turned off the free websites it built from Business Profiles in March 2024 and redirected visitors to the profile until June 10, 2024, as coverage of Google's notice reported.

Google Business Profile vs website: who owns what

The profile is Google's page about you. The site is your page. Google's guidelines ask that the profile's website link represent the individual business location and warn against URLs that redirect users elsewhere. That is the division of labor: the profile wins the map pack and holds the reviews; the site holds what the profile has no field for, and runs the request form the profile cannot.

When a profile and reviews are enough

A profile and reviews are enough when all of these are true: one service or a tight bundle, one town or a short drive around it, residential customers who search by service and town, and an owner who answers the phone. Then the reviews do the convincing. BrightLocal's 2026 survey of 1,002 US adults found 97 percent read online reviews for local businesses, 47 percent will not use a business with fewer than 20 reviews, and 74 percent look for reviews written in the last three months. Put the hours you would spend on a site into asking for a review after every finished job.

Keep the asking inside Google's rules. Its tips page says offering incentives, like free or discounted goods or services, in exchange for reviews is strictly prohibited, that customers must be signed in to a Google Account to leave one, and that replying to reviews, with a constructive reply and a follow-up on negative ones, shows customers their feedback matters; the same survey found 89 percent of consumers expect a business to respond. How to get Google reviews as a contractor has the script and the rules.

When a contractor needs a website: four signs

More than one service

A sealcoating company that also stripes, patches and crack seals needs a place where each service has its own explanation, its own photos and its own request path. The profile's description is one block of 750 characters for all of it. Google's mobile-first indexing page says Google uses the mobile version of a site's content for indexing and ranking, so a page per service that reads well on a phone is what gets each service found on its own.

More than one town

Distance is one of Google's three local ranking factors, and a profile sits at one spot. Service areas tell Google where you go, but a person in the next town over sees the businesses near them first. A page for each town you serve, with jobs done there, is how a site answers a search the profile cannot win on distance. Local SEO for contractors covers the page per town.

Commercial work and bids that need credibility

A property manager, an HOA board or a facilities buyer rarely picks from the map pack alone. They look for a company: who runs it, how long it has been around, insurance and license, the properties it has done. BrightLocal found 54 percent of consumers visit the business's website after reading positive reviews, up from 32 percent in 2019, and 66 percent do further research before they decide. A bid with no site behind it asks the buyer to trust a phone number.

The phone is the bottleneck

If leads come in while you are on a roof or under a truck, every missed call is a lead who dialed the next name. A request form asks what you would ask on the phone, the address, the job, a few photos, and lets you quote the easy ones from the pictures. The same survey found that after reading positive reviews, 20 percent of consumers contact the business and 20 percent make an appointment; a form catches those at midnight too.

What a contractor website should do

Three jobs. If a site does these three on a phone, it is enough; everything else is decoration.

Be found

One page per service and one per town, each with a plain title that names the service and the place. Phone, address (or service area) and hours as text on the page, marked up as LocalBusiness structured data, which Google's documentation says can carry hours, phone, address, coordinates and price range. Responsive design, which Google recommends as the easiest pattern to maintain. What pages a contractor website needs lists the pages and what to skip.

Show proof

Your own photos of your own jobs, with the town and the service in the caption. Your Google reviews pulled onto the site rather than retyped, so the count and the dates match what Google shows. License and insurance named. The owner's name and a face. BrightLocal found 92 percent of consumers care about star ratings, so the rating belongs on the site, not only on the map.

Take a request

A form on the contact page that asks for the address, the service, a few photos and the best way to reach the person, and that emails you the moment it lands. Reply the same day; a lead who filled in a form at noon is calling someone else by evening.

MakeHay does the request half for free: a request form to embed on any website or share as a link; every request lands in Requests with the customer's details, photos and the job site address, and the owner is emailed. A request with an address can start a draft quote in one tap. For the site itself, the Website add-on is $197 a month or $1,970 a year: a person at MakeHay builds it from your account, a short questionnaire and your photos, usually a first version within 1 to 2 business days, with a page per service and per town, the request form as the contact page, your Google reviews on the site refreshed weekly, hosting and HTTPS included, and a domain free for the first year. The editor is yours after the first version.

What a site must not be

• An under-construction page. A placeholder tells the buyer you are not ready and ranks for nothing.
• A brochure from the year you started, or stock photos of a crew that is not yours. Buyers compare the pictures to the truck in the driveway.
• A form that goes nowhere. Send a test request from your own phone every month.
• A page you do not own. A site built inside another company's product can be switched off on their schedule, as the Business Profile websites were.
• A desktop site shrunk down. Google indexes and ranks the mobile version, and Pew Research Center reports that 91 percent of US adults own a smartphone and 16 percent are smartphone-only internet users.

What to do Monday

1. 1Step 1: Fill every field on the profile: the description, every service with a price where you have one, hours, service areas, and remove the address if customers never come to you.
2. 2Step 2: Ask the last five customers for a review by the link Google provides, with no reward attached.
3. 3Step 3: Count the signs: more than one service, more than one town, commercial bids, missed calls. Two or more means a site this season; one means next year; none means keep the money.
4. 4Step 4: If a site is due, write the service list and the town list, gather your own job photos, and decide who owns the domain before anyone builds a page.