One page for each service you genuinely want more of, one page for each town you genuinely serve, and nothing you cannot fill with something true. The number falls out of that. It is not a target to hit.
Why one services page is not enough
A single page listing fourteen services can only be about one thing, which is “our services”. Somebody searching for a water heater replacement in their town is looking for a page about water heater replacement, and a mention inside a list does not qualify.
A page that is actually about the job: what it involves, what it costs in shape, how long it takes, what usually goes wrong, can answer that search. It also gives your paid campaigns somewhere to land that matches the ad, which is worth more than the ranking on its own.
So: a page for each service that earns real money. Not fourteen, because most trades have four or five that matter and a long tail that can live on one combined page.
The trap on the other side
Having learned that services and towns deserve pages, the common next move is to multiply them: every service crossed with every town, three hundred pages, each one a template with the place name swapped in.
Search engines have spent a long time getting good at spotting exactly that, and it reads as thin to a human too, a homeowner who clicks two of your town pages and finds identical text learns something about how much attention you pay.
The test worth applying: can this page say something true that no other page on the site says? For a town, that means jobs you have actually done there, the neighbourhoods, the housing stock, the local conditions: hard water, coastal salt, the age of the pipework, whatever is genuinely different. If you cannot write that, you do not serve the town enough to justify the page, and one honest service-area page listing it is the better answer.
The pages nearly every trade site needs
- Home. Trade, area, phone number, and a route to everything else.
- A page per core service. The four or five that pay the bills.
- A service area page. Towns written as text, with individual pages only where you can say something specific.
- About, with actual people. Names, faces, how long they have been doing this. This page gets read more than owners expect, because it is where the “who is coming to my house” question is answered.
- Reviews. Substantive ones, not a rating widget alone.
- Contact. Phone, hours, service area, form. All of it.
A blog belongs on the list only if it will be maintained. Three posts from two years ago is worse than none, it dates the whole site.
Do not build a page you cannot fill
An empty service page is worse than a missing one. It ranks for nothing, it disappoints anyone who reaches it, and it makes the rest of the site look neglected by association.
If a service warrants a page but you have not got the material yet, leave it in the combined list until you do. Sites grow into their structure; they should not be scaffolded ahead of the content.
Why a one-page site fails a contractor
Single-page sites are clean and are fine for a business with one thing to sell. A trade has several services, several towns, and several distinct searches to be found for, and a one-page site gives you exactly one page to be found with.
It also has nowhere for paid traffic to land specifically, so every ad points at the same general page regardless of what it advertised.
Keep it three clicks deep
Whatever the count, nothing important should be more than about three clicks from the home page. Pages buried deeper get visited less by people and crawled less by search engines, and it is usually a sign the structure has grown by accretion rather than design.
What goes on each of those pages, and in what order, is the first-five-seconds question.
Frequently asked questions
How many pages should a contractor website have?
Usually somewhere between ten and thirty. It depends on how many services genuinely earn money and how many towns you can write about specifically, not on a number anyone should be aiming for.
Should I make a page for every city I serve?
Only where you can say something true and specific about that city. Identical pages with the place name swapped are recognisable as such, to readers and to search engines both.
Is a one-page website ever enough?
For a single-service business with one small area, possibly. For a trade with several services and several towns, it leaves you with one page to be found with, and nowhere specific for ads to land.
Do I need a blog?
Only if it will be kept up. An abandoned blog dates the entire site, and a stale most-recent post is more visible than owners expect.
Where to start
List the services that actually pay your bills. If any of them does not have a page of its own, that is the next page to build: before any new town page, and before anything is redesigned.
Real Time Marketing has worked with home service contractors since 2016: plumbing, HVAC, roofing, electrical and other trades, nationwide, from our office in Bradenton, Florida. Agreements are month-to-month. See our website design or book a strategy call.
