A land surveying firm we reviewed ranks third in Google’s local results for its main service in its home market. The company has operated for more than thirty years, holds licenses in five states, and does government contract work.

Its homepage had 173 words of visible text. No contact form. No tap-to-call link on mobile. The email address was built in a way that hides it from some phones and browsers, so a share of visitors saw no way to reach the company at all. All thirteen images were missing alt text, the page title was the company name and nothing else, and the site named none of the five states it is licensed in.

Being found was never that firm’s problem. Everything after being found was.

This pattern is expensive because it is invisible. Traffic reports look fine. The phone stays quiet. An owner can spend a year buying more visibility to fix a problem that visibility was never going to solve.

Why does my website get visitors but no phone calls?

Getting found and getting contacted are two separate systems, and a business can be strong at one while failing the other. If people reach your site and do not call, the problem is usually what happens after they arrive.

A visitor landing on a contractor’s website is deciding one thing: whether this is worth a phone call. They decide in a few seconds, on a phone, often standing in the room with the problem. What they need is obvious once you say it out loud. What do you do, do you work where I live, have you done this before, and what happens if I contact you.

A site can rank well and answer none of those.

How do I know if the problem is traffic or my website?

Search your own main service plus your city on a phone, logged out of Google. If your business appears in the map results or on the first page, you have visibility and the problem is on your website. If you do not appear at all, the problem is visibility, and rewriting your homepage will not fix it.

This takes two minutes and it decides where your money should go. Run it for each service you actually want more of, not just the one you are best known for. Businesses are often visible for the work they already have plenty of and invisible for the work they want.

One caution: do not run it from your own logged-in Google account or your office network. Google personalizes results using your history and location, so your own business will look like it ranks better than it does.

How much should a home service homepage say?

Enough that a stranger can tell what you do, where you do it, who you do it for, and what happens when they contact you. A homepage under 200 words almost never covers all four.

That is not an argument for long pages. It is an argument against pages that assume the visitor already knows things they cannot know. The land surveying firm listed its services as a set of names with no explanation of what each one involves, what it costs, what the client receives at the end, or how long it takes. A visitor who does not already work in that industry cannot act on a list like that.

The specific detail does the work. “Licensed in five states” is a claim. Naming the five states is proof, and it is also the thing a search engine can match against someone looking for a surveyor in one of them.

What makes someone call one contractor instead of another?

Usually whichever business made the decision easiest. Nobody is grading your website. They are trying to stop thinking about their problem, and they will pick whoever removes the most reasons to hesitate.

Those reasons are usually mundane:

  • No photos of actual completed work, so the visitor cannot picture the result
  • No recent reviews, or reviews that never mention the service they need
  • A phone number written as text instead of a tap-to-call link
  • No price range at all, even approximate, for the most common jobs
  • Nothing stating what happens after they make contact, or how fast
  • A form asking for more than a visitor will give a stranger

None of these require a rebuild. Most are an afternoon of work. They are also why a business ranking third loses the job to one ranking sixth.

What to check this week

Open your own website on your phone, as though you had never seen it, and try to hire yourself.

Can you find the phone number without scrolling? Does tapping it actually dial? Can you tell which towns are covered? Can you find one photo of finished work? If you submitted the form, would you know when someone gets back to you?

The gaps you find in five minutes are usually the ones a paying customer found last week and never told you about.