The next job is a photo and a phone that dials.

The first screen

Say the trade in the words a homeowner uses. Kitchen and bath is not the same search as a general contractor who also does additions, and neither is the same as a roofer. If you do more than one, the first screen should say the one you want the next call to be, and the page below can list the rest. Photos are of jobs you did, used with the owner's permission. A stock kitchen is a claim you did not make in words and should not make in a picture.

Name the towns you will drive to. One honest service area. The far-suburb URLs on this site were removed because a thin town page is not a service area. Your site should not grow that kind of pile either. The same town list belongs on the Google listing. If you have a yard or a showroom people can walk into, the listing can have that address. If you work out of a truck and meet at the client's house, you are a service-area business. Do not invent a shop front. BuiltBySam is one of those: based in Morton Grove, no street address on this site.

The listing

Pick the category that names the work you want. General contractor and remodeler are different labels, and a roofing category is a third. Extra categories only earn their place when you do that work. Hours are the hours a person answers, not the hours the crew is on a site with the phone in a pocket on silent. The website link opens the page with the phone and the photos, not a Facebook tab and not an expired builder login.

Services on the listing should be the jobs you want, written the way you say them on the site. If the listing says handyman and the site says custom homes, you will get the call you did not want and miss the one you did.

What I will build, and what I will not invent

A custom site with the photos, the service area, and one next step. That work is the websites service. Making the page readable to search is the SEO service. What a build in this trade tends to cost is a separate guide, general contractors and remodelers, and the places automation pays are the contractor playbook and the remodeler playbook. Those pages are the cost and the busywork. This page is the site and the listing.

Start with the free website and Google audit if you already have a page or a listing. One reply. No password. No promise of a ranking or a number of jobs. The $650 profile setup is there if you want the listing filled in after you have seen the reply, or instead of doing it yourself from the profile guide. I will not put a past client's name on a page like this.

The close-in villages, if that is where you work, are written up on their own: Morton Grove, Niles, and Skokie.

Straight answers

Common questions

What does the site have to do for a contractor or remodeler?

Show the work you want the next call to be about, name the towns you will drive to, and give one way to reach you. A kitchen remodeler and a general contractor who also does roofs do not need the same first screen. Photos should be of jobs you did, with permission, not stock rooms.

Which Google category should a remodeler use?

The category that names the work you want calls for. A general contractor and a remodeler are not the same label. Extra categories only help when they match work you actually do. You approve the list before it is published if I set the profile up.

Do you need a separate page for every suburb?

No. One honest service area beats a stack of near-copies. This site retired the far-suburb doorway URLs for that reason. Say the towns you cover on the page a customer lands on, and use the same list on the Google listing.

What does the free audit cover, and what does it promise?

One reply on the page you send and the public listing: the first screen, whether the phone is a tappable link, whether there is one next step, and which public listing fields are empty or stale. It does not promise a ranking, a number of jobs, or a review count.

Ready? Send the page and the business name through the free website and Google audit, or text them to (847) 387-0244.