SEO for contractors: show the work, name the places.

Most renovation sites have a page of photos with captions like "Kitchen 4". Search engines cannot tell what the image shows, and a visitor cannot tell how hard the job was. The page ranks for nothing.

Treat each project as a short case page. Describe the home, the problem, what you changed, how long it took and what the owner had to decide. Add before and after photos with descriptive file names and alt text, and name the neighbourhood or town where the owner is happy for you to.

Basement finishing, kitchen renovation, additions, decks, bathroom remodels and whole-home renovations attract different customers. Each deserves its own service page, linked to the projects that prove it.

General contractors often write one page that says "we do everything". It ranks for nothing and tells a buyer little. Pick the three or four types of job you want most, and lead with them.

Homeowners comparing contractors want to know how the job felt, not only how it looked. Add a line on the schedule, how you communicated during the work and how you handled a surprise, such as hidden water damage behind a wall.

That detail also gives search engines text to read. A project page of two hundred honest words, with photos, outperforms a gallery of forty images. Get the owner's permission before publishing photos of their home, and leave out street addresses.

List the towns you work in and write a page for each major one. Say what is true there: older housing stock, how permits usually work, common problems. Describe the permit and inspection process in general terms and tell people to check their own municipality for details.

Skip pages for places you do not serve. They bring calls you cannot take and can read as doorway pages to a search engine.

Choose the primary category that matches your main work: general contractor, remodeler, home builder or kitchen remodeler. Add secondary categories sparingly. Fill in the services list with each type of job and add real project photos on a regular schedule.

If you work from home, set a service area and hide your address. Check Google's current guidelines before you do.

Update the profile when your services change. A contractor who stopped doing roofs two years ago and still lists them collects the wrong calls.

Photos should be recent and honest. A profile full of images from a decade ago, or of work you did not do, hurts you the first time a customer compares them with your crew.

Respond to questions posted on the profile too. Many homeowners ask about service areas and project size there before they ever visit your site.

A renovation is a large spend and a long relationship. Reviews that mention the type of job, the crew and how problems were handled are worth more than a row of stars. Ask at completion, and again after the final walkthrough, with a direct link.

Show your licence or registration number, your insurance and any warranty terms you offer, the way your province expects. Say who owns the company and show a face.

People want to know who pulls the permit, what the warranty covers and what happens if the work runs late. Answer these on the page in plain terms. If the answers vary by municipality, say so and point to the local office.

A short FAQ on each service page is worth the time. It matches the way people phrase their searches and it saves you repeating yourself on first calls. Keep each answer to a few sentences.

Avoid claiming you are the cheapest, the fastest or the best. Claims like that cannot be checked and add nothing. A specific fact, such as the warranty length you really offer, does more work.

Exterior work follows the weather, so deck and roofing pages should be ready in early spring. Interior projects book months ahead, so interior pages need to be live in the fall.

Not every lead is a good lead. A quote form that asks for the type of job, a rough budget range and the timeline filters out people you cannot help. Fewer, clearer enquiries beat a full inbox of tire-kickers.

Think about repeat and referral work as well. A homeowner who loved their kitchen may call you for the bathroom in two years. A short note after the job that asks for a review and mentions you take on smaller projects keeps you in mind.

Track where each enquiry came from. A simple question on the quote form, such as how did you hear about us, will tell you more than any dashboard about which pages and profiles earn their keep.

If you are weighing up an SEO company for contractors, ask three things: what will change on your site in the first month, which of your job types they will build pages for first, and who keeps the logins for your Google Business Profile and analytics. Vague answers, or a package name instead of page names, are your cue to keep looking. Hiring anyone is also premature if you have no finished project photos or no reviews yet, because there is little to build on. Get a few jobs documented first.

We start with a free SEO evaluation of your site and profile, no card and no commitment, back in about two to three days. If the site is the problem, a rebuild with real project pages may come first, and we say so. Any work after that has a fixed scope and a written price. We do not sell link packages and we do not guarantee rankings.

Technical fixes can show in weeks. Competitive renovation terms in a large city usually take months. Ongoing SEO is optional, with no retainer to sign.