PeakLeadsWeb design
How many pages does a small business website need?
There is no right number. A small business website needs a page for each service you want calls about and each area you genuinely work, plus the pages every business has: home, about, your work and contact. Google matches each search to a page, not to a whole website, so a job without its own page is a search you will struggle to win. A new business with one service in one town can start on a single page and add more as the work grows.
Your page count falls out of two lists you already have: the work you want, and the places you will happily drive the bakkie to for it. This post covers why Google wants separate pages, how the answer changes by trade, when one page will do and how to handle suburb pages.
Is there an ideal number of pages for a website?
No. Each page answers a search, and the searches worth answering differ from one business to the next. Two plumbers in the same town can need very different sites. One chases geyser work across the East Rand. The other only does bathroom renovations in a few suburbs.
Google's own guide to how Search works says that when someone searches, Google looks through its index for matching pages and returns the ones it judges most relevant. Each result carries one title, and Google's SEO Starter Guide says a good title is unique to the page and accurately describes what is on it.
So one page cannot be the best answer to "geyser replacement Boksburg" and "blocked drain Benoni" at once. Send both searches to your home page and both people have to hunt, while somebody else's page about exactly that job is one tap away.
The starter guide also says there is no magical word count for a page. We would say the same about page count: anyone who names a number before asking what you do and where is guessing.
What pages should every business website have?
The core is much the same for every trade:
- A home page that says what you do, where, and how to reach you.
- A page for each service you want calls about.
- A page for each area you work, once you have something true to say about it.
- Your work. Real jobs, your own photos, the suburb and what you did.
- About, because people want to know who is coming to their house.
- Contact, with your number, WhatsApp, hours and areas.
- A privacy notice if you have a quote form. POPIA requires you to take reasonably practicable steps to make sure people know your name and address, what you are collecting and why, before they hit send. The Act lists more than that, so have an attorney check yours.
Link each one from your menu. Google mainly finds pages by following links from pages it already knows, and a customer cannot click through to a page that nothing links to.
How does the answer change from trade to trade?
It changes with how your customers search and how big the decision is. Most home service businesses fall into one of three groups.
How many pages does a plumber or electrician need?
Usually the most of the three. The work is many smaller jobs, often urgent, in a defined patch of suburbs. People search the problem with the place attached: a burst geyser in Germiston, a tripping DB board in Alberton.
Say you are a plumber in Springs who wants more geyser and drain work. You need a page for geyser repairs and replacements, one for blocked drains and one for leak detection if you do it. Then a page each for Springs, Brakpan and Nigel, if you have something real to say about each. Small jobs you are not chasing can share a general repairs page. Electricians work the same way: fault finding, DB board upgrades, certificates of compliance and backup power are separate searches by different people.
Because the jobs are urgent, the first screen on a phone has to show your number and whether you come out after hours.
What pages do builders, roofers and solar installers need?
Fewer service pages, more proof. A new roof or a solar system is a big decision, so people take their time and compare a few companies before they phone. A roofer may get by with a page for re-roofing and one for leak repairs.
The weight goes on evidence. A page for each finished project worth showing, with photos, the suburb and what was done. A page on how you work, from site visit to handover. And straight answers to what people ask before they sign. How long will it take? Who deals with the plans and the municipality? What does the guarantee cover? Will the system run the geyser?
Project pages also do the work of area pages. A finished re-roof in Somerset West, with photos, is proof and local detail on one page.
What pages do borehole and water specialists need?
Pages that explain the process. Most of your customers have never paid for a borehole before. So they search the questions: how you choose where to drill, what a yield test tells them, what happens if there is not enough water, whether it is safe to drink.
Start with one page that walks through the job from first visit to first water, plus a page for each service you sell. If your customers are spread over smallholdings and farms, area pages work better by region than by suburb.
Is a one-page website enough?
It is when you are new, you do one thing in one town, and most of your work comes from people who already have your name. A referral does not need to find you by searching for the job. They need to see that you are real and find your number, and one good page does that. Whether a Google Business Profile could do that job on its own is answered in do you still need a website if you have a Google Business Profile.
It stops being enough once you want work from strangers, because strangers find you by searching for a job in a place. From then on, add pages in the order they earn money:
- The job you most want more of.
- Your work, once you have a few jobs worth photographing.
- Each other service, as you take it on.
- Areas, as you go further from home and have jobs there to show.
Before you build on a one-page site, check that the platform lets you add pages and that you hold the logins. If you are not sure who does, read who owns your website.
Can you have a page for every suburb you work?
Yes, if each page has something true to say about that suburb. No, if the only thing that changes from page to page is the name.
The second kind fits what Google's spam policies call doorway abuse: pages "created to rank for specific, similar search queries". One of its examples is pages "targeted at specific regions or cities that funnel users to one page". Suburb pages that differ only by name exist to rank for a string of near-identical searches, which is the definition. Google says sites that break these policies may rank lower or not appear at all. Penalty or not, Google groups pages with similar content and picks one to represent the group, so a stack of near-copies can end up counted as one page.
A real area page says things that are only true of that place. Which parts you cover, and how soon you can get there. The jobs you do there most. Photos of work you have done there, and reviews from customers who live there. If you cannot come up with a few such things for a suburb, list it on a wider area page until you have done enough work there to write one.
What makes a page worth having?
A page earns its place when it is the best answer you can give to one search and it makes the next step easy. A two-sentence page does neither. A geyser page that reads "We install and repair geysers. Call us today." gives Google nothing to rank and the customer nothing to go on, so they go back and pick someone else. Google's guide to how Search works lists low-quality content as one of the common reasons a page is not indexed at all.
A good service page covers what the job involves and the signs that you need it. It says what moves the price, how long the job takes and what people ask before they phone, with photos of your own work. Every page, whatever it is about, also needs your number near the top, set up so one tap on a phone calls you. Add the areas you cover and one clear next step: call, WhatsApp or a short quote form.
How does Peak Leads decide which pages to build?
We start from the same two lists: your services and the areas you work. That is why our website builds are quoted on the free call, once we know how many of each you need. Every build has a page for each service and each area you work, so there is something for Google to rank. Click to call, quote forms and booking go on every page, and the site is built for phones first.
The pages are not fixed at launch. Our SEO work adds location and service pages as you take on new suburbs, and prunes them where nobody searches.
How do you work out which pages you need?
Write the two lists: the jobs you want more of, and the places you will drive to for them. Search each job with your town on your phone, the way a customer would. Where the top results are pages about that exact job, you need one too.
Then hold your current site up against both lists. Every job and area on them should have a page that answers it. Any service or area page that matches neither list can probably go. If the gaps are bigger than the site, a new website built around your services and areas may beat patching the old one.
None of this needs an agency. It needs the two lists, your phone and an honest look at the site you have.