Here is the fact that should govern your entire marketing budget.
Around 70% of homeowners compare only two or three quotes before hiring. 42% compare exactly two. Only 15.6% compare four or more.
You are not in an open competition. You are competing for one of two slots, and the second one is often filled before anybody has looked at your portfolio.
Everything below follows from that.
It means you are being checked, not discovered
Search is usually not the first touch in remodeling. In one homeowner survey, 79% found their contractor through word-of-mouth referral against 62% through online search and 54% through repeat business.
So the ordinary sequence is: somebody gets your name from a neighbor, then looks you up. Your website's job is mostly to validate a name somebody was already given.
That reframes what it's for. It isn't competing for attention — it's being audited. And a site that looks dated or thin doesn't lose you the referral outright. It lowers how confident that homeowner feels about you, and that shows up later, in how hard they negotiate.
It means the shortlist is decided before the estimate
If only two contractors get quoted, the decision point isn't your bid. It's whatever happened before the call.
Which is why the single cheapest improvement available to you is one most contractors refuse to make. 78% of homeowners say they're significantly more likely to contact a contractor whose website shows pricing. Around 76% of contractors publish none.
You don't need a fixed price for a kitchen. You need something — a range, a per-square-foot band, a typical project size, a starting point — that lets somebody rule themselves in or out before they call.
The reason most contractors won't is fear of being shopped on price. The evidence says that isn't what happens. 72% of homeowners would pay up to 10% more for a contractor with a stronger service reputation. Around 70% worry about hiring someone unreliable, and 41% say they've been deceived by a service provider.
They aren't price-shopping. They're risk-shopping, and silence about price reads as risk.
It means credentials do more work than portfolio
Against a buyer who is 41%-likely to have been burned before, a verifiable credential outperforms another gallery of finished kitchens.
If you work in Middle Tennessee you have one most of your competitors aren't displaying. Tennessee requires a contractor's license for projects of $25,000 and over. Separately, a Home Improvement license is required for residential remodeling between $3,000 and $24,999 in nine named counties — including Davidson, which is Nashville — carrying a $10,000 surety bond.
Displaying the license number, the bond, and a plain explanation of what those thresholds mean is concrete, checkable and free. It's exactly the signal a risk-shopping homeowner is hunting for and can't find on the other two sites they're looking at.
It means bought leads are structurally wrong for you
If the homeowner only calls two people, a lead sold to five contractors is a lead where you're probably not one of them.
The FTC's March 2022 complaint against HomeAdvisor, resolved by a January 2023 order providing up to $7.2 million in redress, alleged the company falsely claimed providers would only receive leads matching the services they provide and their preferred geographic area, and overstated conversion rates beyond what it could substantiate. Contractors paid a $287.99 annual membership on top of per-lead fees.
Contractors have said much the same in public reviews — the Angi Leads listing on Trustpilot carries tens of thousands of reviews averaging around 2.5 out of 5, with complaints frequently describing leads from people who don't recall requesting service. Those are individual reviewers' accounts rather than findings, but the volume of them is itself information.
The economics explain the frustration. Paid search for general contractors runs about $165.67 per lead at a 2.61% conversion rate — the lowest conversion rate of any category in home services, across an analysis of 3,211 US campaigns. Against a median renovation spend of $20,000, with the 90th percentile at $150,000, a $165 lead is trivially cheap if it converts. It's ruinous if it went to five people and the homeowner never asked to be called.
Lead cost isn't your problem. Lead quality is, and it always was.
It means you want to be present for the whole window, not the first week of it
That 2.61% conversion rate is low because the decision takes months. Somebody researching a kitchen in February hires in June.
Paying for a click in week one of a five-month consideration window is expensive and forgettable. Being findable across the whole window — on the project searches, the cost questions, the "how long does this take" questions — is how you're still in mind when the shortlist gets made.
That's what the pages do. Project-shaped ones, because that's how people search: "kitchen remodel contractor," "basement finishing cost," "home addition builder." Not "general contractor."
One practical note on where to spend. The national head term for your trade is dominated by ranked-roundup articles rather than agency or contractor pages, which makes it a hard fight. The city-modified searches are where the winnable ground is, and that's where we'd start.
$500 to start, then no monthly fee until we hit the page-one target we agree on. If we never hit it, you never pay a monthly fee.
of pages we build rank on Google's first page
location pages built for a single client across 7 states
page-one placements for one client across 5 cities
growth in monthly search impressions for a Nashville client
Limitless Doors
Commercial automatic doors, five Alberta metros
- 63+ page-one placements across 5 cities
- 85%+ of 74 pages on page one
- 4,483 clicks in 12 months
PM2
MRO inventory and storeroom optimization, Orlando and Tampa
- 589 to 1,300 monthly organic visitors
- 85%+ of pages on page one within 90 days
- First inbound leads in the company's history
Haus of Sovereign
Somatic and spiritual wellness, Nashville
- 132 to 2,900 monthly impressions
- 1,903 organic clicks in 6 months
- 15.6% average click-through rate
We also built and ranked a 208-page location program for a security and surveillance company across 15 metros in 7 states, with 85%+ of pages reaching page one. That client has asked not to be named.
Common questions
Should we really publish prices?
A range, not a quote. The evidence is one-sided — 78% of homeowners are significantly more likely to contact a contractor who shows pricing, and roughly three-quarters of contractors don't. It also saves you estimates on jobs that were never going to close.
We get most work from referrals. Does this matter?
It matters at a different point than you'd think. Your site is where the referral gets checked. A weak one doesn't cost you the job — it costs you confidence at the negotiating table, which shows up in margin rather than volume.
Is paid search worth it at 2.61%?
Occasionally, against a $20,000 median job. But that rate is low because the buying cycle is long, which is the argument for organic instead — you need to be present across months, not pay for one click in week one.
What should the site actually say about our licenses?
The number, the bond, and one plain sentence about what the thresholds mean. Most contractors either omit it or bury it. Against a buyer where 41% report having been deceived before, it's the highest-value copy on the site.
How long does this take for a remodeler?
Typically sixty to ninety days for first placements on specific terms — and then the revenue lags that by however long your projects take to sell. It's the slowest of the trades we work in and it's worth saying so.
What happens if it doesn't work?
You don't pay a monthly fee. That's the arrangement — $500 upfront and nothing more until the agreed number of pages reach page one. We keep working either way.
Where we work.
We build for local service businesses across the US and Canada, with dedicated pages in every market you cover.
Other trades we work in.
$500 to start. No monthly fees until we hit the page-one target we agree on.
The $500 one-time setup fee covers page research, page development and the website build. Monthly billing only starts once we hit the page-one target we agree on before any work begins. If we never hit it, you never pay a monthly fee.