Vertical · General Contractors
Storm damage caller needs your number in two seconds. Kitchen remodel shopper needs your best photos in two minutes. Your site has to handle both, right now.
General contractors get two completely different customers from the same Google search result. One is on their phone in a panic because something structural just failed after a storm. The other has been planning a $50,000 renovation for eight months and is vetting contractors the same way they'd vet a surgeon. Most GC sites are set up for one of them and lose the other before they ever know the visit happened. A custom site puts a tap-to-call emergency number on every page, a project gallery organized by job type so the right photos are one click away, individual service pages that show up in Google for specific project searches, and license and insurance credentials where anyone can find them without having to ask.
What a general contractor site needs to do
24/7 emergency CTA: one tap from the first screen
A sticky click-to-call bar sits at the top of every page (not just the homepage) with a tap-to-dial number and explicit emergency language: "Storm Damage? Structural Failure? Call 24/7." On mobile it dials immediately with no modal, no confirmation step, no intermediate screen. The homeowner whose garage wall shifted after a heavy rain is not reading your service list. They need a number in the first three seconds, and it needs to be the largest tappable element visible when the page loads. The sticky bar doesn't annoy the renovation researcher scrolling through your gallery; it's invisible background until the moment it's the only thing that matters.
One dedicated page per project type instead of a master services list
Kitchen remodels, bathroom renovations, room additions, deck and patio construction, finished basements, whole-home renovations, ADU builds, storm damage repair: each gets its own page. A single "Services" page listing all of them gives Google nothing to rank for any specific search and gives homeowners no reason to stay. Dedicated pages rank independently for their own search phrases. Someone searching "room addition contractor [city]" has already moved past browsing and has a project in mind, a rough budget, and is comparing specific contractors. A page built around that search with your relevant photos, a scope process summary, and a project inquiry form converts that visitor; a general services list does not.
Project gallery organized by job type instead of one unsorted grid
General contractors sell primarily through their portfolio. A homeowner planning a bathroom renovation doesn't want to scroll past forty kitchen photos to find work that looks like their project. The gallery needs category navigation: kitchens, bathrooms, additions, decks, full renovations, each accessible from a single click. Photos are processed in WebP format, compressed for fast load times, and served in responsive sizes so a phone doesn't download a desktop-scale image. A gallery that's organized, fast, and shows clearly labeled project categories does more to win the estimate call than any amount of copy about years in business or commitment to quality.
License, insurance, and bond visible before anyone has to ask
Your state contractor license number, general liability insurance carrier and coverage amount, workers' comp status, and any specialty certifications belong above the fold or within the first scroll. General contractors enter homes, take on project liability, manage subcontractors, and sign contracts on behalf of a homeowner for work that can cost tens of thousands of dollars. The trust threshold is higher than it is for any routine service call. Homeowners comparing three GCs from Google will gravitate toward the one who shows credentials without being asked. A visible license number also separates you immediately from unlicensed operators who undercut on price and disappear when problems surface.
Quote form built for project scope instead of a service call form
A GC inquiry form captures different information than a plumbing dispatch form. For planned renovation projects, it collects project type, rough scope description, address, preferred start window, and budget range so you can triage by fit and walk into the estimate already knowing what you're looking at. For emergency repairs, it captures issue description, urgency level, address, and an option to attach photos. If you use Jobber, ServiceTitan, or Housecall Pro, form submissions route directly into your dispatch workflow via webhook or email integration so the lead doesn't age in an inbox while you're on a job site. Both inquiry types can live on the same site with separate flows.
Service area coverage and local SEO foundation
A map or city list of every area you serve, plus dedicated service area pages for major cities or counties in your market. GCs often cover a broader radius than single-trade contractors, sometimes spanning multiple counties or an entire metro, and the site needs to claim all of it in a way Google can read. LocalBusiness schema (the behind-the-scenes labeling that tells Google exactly what your business does and where), NAP consistency across the site and your Google Business Profile, sitemap submission, and Search Console setup are included with every multi-page build. Service area pages targeting specific cities by name extend your organic search footprint across the full range you actually travel to work in.
Mistakes general contractors make with their websites
These aren't generic web design mistakes that apply to any small business. They're specific to how homeowners shop for a general contractor, how the GC sales cycle works, and what makes a GC site succeed or fail in a way that no other trade has to deal with.
The site is a brochure, but homeowners use it as a screening tool
A homeowner planning a $45,000 kitchen remodel will visit four or five contractor websites before making a single phone call. They're not reading those sites; they're skimming for reasons to eliminate someone. No project photos: eliminated. Stock images or blurry low-resolution photos: eliminated. License number nowhere visible: eliminated. Site looks like it was built in 2012 and never touched since: eliminated. Looks like the same Wix template three other contractors in town are using: eliminated. The contractors who survive the skim and get the estimate call are the ones who built sites that pass a ten-second visual audit. That means project photos of actual work, visible credentials, and a design that signals "this is someone organized enough to manage a six-week renovation." Most GC sites are built for "we should have a website" rather than "we should win the comparison." Those two goals produce very different sites.
One "Services" page instead of seven different ranking opportunities
A general contractor who does kitchen remodels, bathroom renovations, room additions, deck construction, whole-home renovations, ADU builds, and storm damage repair has at least seven separate organic search opportunities. Each is its own keyword cluster with its own search volume, its own buyer intent, and its own competitive landscape. A single Services page listing all of them in bullet points competes for one loosely relevant keyword and earns close to no traffic for any specific project type. A dedicated page for "kitchen remodel contractor [city]" can rank for that phrase, for variations around cost and process, and for related searches that a renovation-minded homeowner would run. Most GC competitors in a given city have not built individual service pages. Building them now, before the market gets crowded, is the highest-ROI SEO decision a GC can make. A master services list wastes all of it.
A project gallery that's slow, unsorted, or three years out of date
The project gallery is the most important page on a general contractor's website. More important than the About page, more important than the testimonials section, more important than the contact form. Homeowners planning major renovation projects are visual buyers who want to see work that resembles their project in scope, style, and quality level. A gallery that takes five seconds to load because the images are full-size JPEGs uploaded from a phone loses that homeowner before they see a single photo. A gallery that puts sixty projects into one unsorted grid makes it impossible to find kitchen photos when you're planning a kitchen. A gallery with two jobs from three years ago signals a contractor who isn't actively building their business. GCs who let the gallery sit neglected are losing estimate calls to competitors with better-organized, better-lit photos that load in under two seconds on a phone.
No emergency CTA means storm damage and structural repair work goes to whoever had the number visible
General contractors are often the first call after storm damage, flooding aftermath, structural failures, and urgent situations that can't wait for a scheduled estimate. These customers behave like an emergency plumbing or electrical customer: they're searching on a phone, stressed, and they call whoever shows them a number first. A GC site without a sticky 24/7 call line because "we're a renovation company, not a repair service" is invisible to this customer. They call the next result. Emergency and storm damage work frequently comes with insurance backing, which makes it some of the most reliably paid GC work available. Losing those calls because the site wasn't configured for urgent conversions is an expensive oversight that never shows up in any report. It shows up as jobs you never knew were available.
No process or scope information means the homeowner goes to Google and finds a competitor who explains themselves
General contractor projects are longer, more expensive, and more complicated than most home service work. A homeowner researching a room addition has real questions before they pick up the phone: What does the process look like? How long does permitting take? Who manages the subcontractors? What does a realistic budget range look like for this scope? A GC site that has no process page, no FAQ, and no cost context sends that homeowner to Google to find the answers, and whoever shows up explaining the process clearly earns the inquiry. A homeowner who understands the process before calling is more committed to the conversation and better qualified as a buyer. Contractors who explain what working with them looks like (permitting, sub coordination, payment schedule, communication throughout the project) convert more estimate calls into signed contracts because the customer trusts the process before the first meeting.
No answer to "do you pull permits?" is what separates licensed GCs from unlicensed operators in a homeowner's mind
Permit-pulling is the clearest dividing line between a licensed general contractor and an unlicensed operator trying to undercut on price. A homeowner planning a room addition, a finished basement, or a structural repair knows this work requires permits. What they don't know is whether you pull them as a matter of course or avoid them to save time and offer a lower bid. If the site doesn't address it, they'll either assume the worst or grill you on the phone before the conversation gets to actual project scope. A process or FAQ page that states your approach directly (yes, we pull permits on all regulated work; yes, we manage the permit timeline; our license number is on file with the county) removes that doubt before the first call. The same page should cover subcontractor management: whether you use W-2 crew or subcontractors, how you vet them, and whether the homeowner ever interacts with a sub directly. No other trade needs to answer these questions this way. Most GC sites don't. The ones that do are already ahead before the estimate.
Two searches, two completely different customers, and why each one decides in seconds
It's Sunday morning. A homeowner comes downstairs and finds the crawlspace vent cover blown off and water pooled in the corner after Friday's storm. She doesn't know how bad the moisture damage is yet, but she knows she needs someone to look at it before it gets worse. She searches "contractor water damage inspection [city]" on her phone and taps the first result. The page starts loading. Three seconds pass. A large hero photo of a finished kitchen fills the screen and a headline fades in about remodeling services. She looks for a phone number. There's one in the nav bar, 11px, no indication anyone answers on a weekend. She hits back and calls the second result.
That call (potentially an insurance-backed job) went to whoever had a 24/7 emergency number pinned to the top of their page with language that matched what she was experiencing. Not to whoever does better crawlspace work. Not to whoever has more reviews. To whoever surfaced a phone number within two seconds of the page loading on a phone.
Now a different customer. It's a Wednesday evening. He's a homeowner who's been planning a master bathroom renovation for almost a year. His budget is $28,000 to $35,000. He has fifty saved photos on his phone from Instagram and Pinterest. He searches "bathroom remodel contractor [city]," opens four results in separate tabs, and starts working through them. He's looking for bathroom photos first, not just any photos—specifically bathrooms in the style and price range he's targeting. He wants to see a scope process. He wants to know if you pull permits. He wants a form that lets him describe what he's thinking before anyone calls him. He's going to spend four to ten minutes on a site before deciding whether to reach out.
Three of those four contractors will be eliminated before they ever know he visited. The one who wins the inquiry has a dedicated bathroom renovation page with organized project photos, a clear scope and permitting process, and a project inquiry form that captures enough detail to make the first phone call productive.
Same city, same contractor type, same week. One customer needed a visible phone number in two seconds. The other spent eight minutes evaluating before filling out a form. A site built for only one of them loses the other every single time.
What template builders get wrong for general contractors specifically
Wix, Squarespace, and GoDaddy Website Builder were built for photographers, small retailers, and service businesses with one kind of customer and a short menu of offerings. When a GC uses one of these platforms, the cracks show in exactly the parts of the site that matter most.
The project gallery breaks first. Template builders design galleries for photographers and event planners: every image in the same grid, same layout, no way to sort by project type without a paid plugin or a platform upgrade. A GC showing kitchens, bathrooms, additions, decks, and full renovations needs category navigation. A sixty-image grid with no sorting is worse than useless for a homeowner looking for bathroom work (they either scroll through everything or give up). Building a categorized gallery in a template editor means working against the platform's assumptions at every step.
The service page situation is worse. Creating ten individual service pages (one per project type, each targeting its own search phrase, each with a relevant gallery excerpt, scope summary, and inquiry form) in a drag-and-drop builder is painful. The template wants one Services page. That's what it was designed for, and the resulting pages when you work around that assumption are structurally messy in ways that affect both SEO and the visitor experience.
The emergency CTA is next. Adding a sticky click-to-call bar with emergency-specific language to every page in a template builder requires a paid plugin, a code injection that breaks on platform updates, or a workaround that behaves inconsistently across screen sizes. In a hand-coded site, a sticky bar that taps to dial on mobile is a small amount of HTML and CSS. On a page builder, it's an afternoon of troubleshooting platform limitations, and the result often looks wrong on a phone screen anyway.
Speed is where GC sites feel the most pain with template builders. A plumber or electrician can have a fast site with fifteen job photos. A general contractor showing ten kitchens, eight bathrooms, six room additions, and five deck projects is dealing with a hundred or more images across multiple galleries. Template builders don't handle that photo volume gracefully on mobile. A Wix or GoDaddy site with a full project gallery routinely scores in the 30s on Google's mobile PageSpeed test. That's a ranking penalty and a customer you lose before the page finishes loading. A hand-coded GC site delivers the same portfolio with WebP images sized for the visitor's screen, gallery photos that load only as someone scrolls toward them, and no page-builder JavaScript adding overhead between the server and the visitor's phone. The same hundred photos, loaded in under two seconds.
Pricing
Single-page contractor sites (service summary, service area, license and insurance display, and a quote request form) start at $1,200. They work well if you're primarily referral-based and need a professional presence for when someone looks you up.
Multi-page builds are the right fit for most general contractors who want to compete in organic search. A full build includes individual pages for each project type you offer, a project gallery with category navigation, a dual-path inquiry system (project form for planned work, sticky emergency call bar for urgent repairs), license and insurance credentials display, a scope and process page, and technical SEO setup. Multi-page builds run $2,800–$5,000 depending on the number of service pages and the gallery scope.
Technical SEO (LocalBusiness schema with service area declarations, NAP audit, Google Search Console setup, sitemap submission, and site speed optimization) is included with every multi-page build at no additional charge. The 24/7 emergency CTA system (sticky call bar, tap-to-dial on mobile, emergency-specific copy) is standard on every contractor site regardless of tier.
Optional managed hosting starts at $30/month (Core: uptime monitoring, nightly backups, SSL, DNS, and server-level security patches). Monthly content edits — useful for adding completed projects to the gallery as jobs wrap up — start on the Care plan at $50/month.
Contractor website questions
How much does a contractor website cost?
Single-page sites start at $1,200. That covers your service summary, service area, license and insurance credentials, and a quote or contact form. It works if you're getting most of your work from referrals and just need a professional presence for when someone looks you up online.
Most general contractors need a multi-page build to compete in search. That includes individual pages for each project type you do (kitchen remodels, bathroom renovations, room additions, deck construction, storm damage repair), a project gallery with category navigation, a dual-path inquiry system for planned work and emergency calls, a scope and process page, and technical SEO setup. Multi-page builds run $2,800–$5,000 depending on the number of service pages and how large the gallery is. Technical SEO and the 24/7 emergency CTA setup are included in every build at no extra cost (they're not premium add-ons). Full pricing breakdown →
My site needs to capture both renovation leads and emergency calls. Can it do both?
Yes, and the way it works is simpler than it sounds. A sticky bar sits at the top of every page (desktop and phone) carrying your 24/7 number with explicit emergency language like "Storm Damage? Structural Issue? Call Now." On a phone, one tap dials. That bar is always there: invisible to the homeowner browsing kitchen remodel photos, and immediately obvious to the homeowner who found a collapsed soffit after Saturday's storm.
Deeper in the page (below the hero, past the gallery and credentials) a longer project inquiry form captures the renovation lead. It collects project type, rough scope, address, timeline, and budget range so you have real context before calling back. Both paths sit on the same site. They don't compete or get in each other's way because they're designed for two completely different moments in a customer's decision process. The emergency caller never needs to scroll past the sticky bar. The renovation researcher fills out the form and ignores the bar entirely.
Do I need separate pages for every service I offer, or can I list them all on one page?
For getting found on Google for specific searches, separate pages per service type are one of the most valuable things a GC site can have. A single "Services" page listing kitchen remodels, bathroom renovations, room additions, and deck construction gives Google nothing to rank for any specific project search. It competes for one vague keyword and earns almost no traffic for any of the individual services on the list.
A dedicated kitchen remodel page can rank for "kitchen remodel contractor [city]," the variations around renovation cost and scope, and related questions that a homeowner planning that project would search. The person running that search is not window-shopping and has a project roughly scoped out with a budget allocated while comparing specific contractors. A page built for that search with relevant project photos, your scope process, and a project inquiry form converts that visitor. A bullet point on a services list does not. Most GC competitors in most cities have not built these individual pages yet, which means the rankings for those searches are still up for grabs in most markets.
Can the contact form connect to Jobber, ServiceTitan, or Housecall Pro?
Yes. The inquiry form can route new submissions directly into your field service management platform so leads land in your dispatch queue rather than sitting in a general inbox while you're on a job site. For Jobber, ServiceTitan, or Housecall Pro that means configuring a webhook (an automatic behind-the-scenes message that sends the form data to your platform the moment someone submits) or an email-to-job integration. No custom API build is required (these platforms already support the integration methods); it's a configuration, not a development project.
For general contractor projects, the inquiry form is designed to capture more than a standard service-call form. It collects project type, rough scope description, address, preferred start window, and budget range. That means when a lead hits your dispatch queue, you have enough context to triage it by fit and capacity before calling back. You walk into the estimate call already knowing what you're looking at instead of starting from zero on the phone.
How does local SEO actually work for a general contractor?
Local SEO for general contractors runs on two separate systems that work differently and that your website affects differently. The first is your Google Business Profile (that's what produces the map with three business listings that appears at the top of local searches). Those rankings are driven by your GBP signals: how many reviews you have and how recently they came in, how complete your profile is, and how active you are on it. Your website supports your GBP but doesn't directly control those map pack rankings.
The second system is the organic search results below the map (specific phrases like "kitchen remodel contractor [city]" or "room addition contractor near me"). Those rankings are driven by your website: individual service pages built around specific project types, LocalBusiness schema (behind-the-scenes labeling that tells Google exactly what your business does and where), consistent business name and address across your site and directory listings, and page speed. Technical SEO covering all of the on-site factors is included with every multi-page build. What's included in SEO setup →
Why does my site need to load fast when I have so many project photos?
Photo volume is precisely why speed matters more for GC sites than it does for most trade service sites. A plumber can have a fast site with twelve job photos. A general contractor showing kitchen remodels, bathroom renovations, room additions, deck builds, and full renovations is dealing with a hundred or more images across multiple galleries (and if those images aren't handled correctly, the site crawls on a phone). Template-builder sites with unoptimized images and plugin overhead routinely load in four to seven seconds on mobile. That's slow enough to directly cost ranking positions in local search, because Google uses page load speed as one of its ranking signals. It's also slow enough to lose the emergency customer before your phone number finishes loading on their screen.
A hand-coded GC site handles the photo volume differently: images are converted to WebP format (smaller files, same visual quality), sized so a phone loads a phone-sized image rather than a desktop-sized one, and set to load gallery photos only as someone scrolls toward them rather than all at once when the page opens. The result is a portfolio-heavy site that loads in under two seconds on a mid-range phone (fast enough to keep the emergency caller, fast enough for Google, and fast enough that your kitchen photos actually get seen).
How long does it take to build a contractor website?
Single-page contractor sites are done in 1–2 weeks once I have your content: your service list, service area, license number, insurance carrier name, and any project photos you want included. Multi-page builds with individual service pages, a categorized project gallery, and dispatch integration commonly take 3–6 weeks. The main variables are the number of service pages, how many gallery photos need to be processed and organized, and how quickly content review cycles move on your end.
I send a content checklist at kickoff so nothing stalls mid-build waiting on information I could have asked for at the start. The process is straightforward: scoping call to lock in the page list and feature set, design review, build and content load, your revision round, launch. One developer on your project from start to finish (no account manager, no hand-offs, no waiting on a team with a hundred other sites ahead of yours). Rush timelines are available if you're working toward a specific deadline, like a seasonal busy period or a trade show.
Also building for: construction companies · roofers · electricians · plumbers · all small businesses
Tell me your project types, your service area, and whether you want to capture emergency calls, just renovation inquiries, or both.
One custom-coded site. A project gallery that loads fast on any phone. An emergency number one tap away on every page. Individual service pages that rank for specific project searches in your market.
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