How many pages do I actually need?

One per service you want calls for, one per town you can write honestly about, plus the homepage. For most one-crew shops that's 8 to 15 pages. Build them over a few weekends. There's no penalty for adding pages gradually, and a good page you publish in August still counts in December.

Can I use ChatGPT or Claude to write these pages?

As a drafting tool, yes. Feed it your real jobs, prices, and towns, then cut anything you wouldn't say out loud to a customer. Google's spam policies target mass-produced pages that read the same on every site, and generic AI output is exactly that. The details only you know are what make a page rank and get calls.

How long before this shows up in Google?

It varies with your competition and how established your site is, so don't trust anyone who promises a date. Watch impressions in Search Console. They usually move before calls do, and rising impressions on the right searches means it's working.

No. Service pages and town pages do the ranking work for a local business. A blog only earns its keep if each post answers a real question customers ask and you'll actually keep it up. An abandoned blog with three posts from two years ago looks worse than no blog at all.

What to write on your site so your town finds you

Put your trade and your town where Google can read them

Google matches searches to words on pages. If someone in Delafield types "water heater replacement Delafield" and neither phrase appears anywhere on your site, you're not in the running, no matter how good your work is. That sounds too simple to be the real mechanism. It's the real mechanism.

Open your homepage and check three spots: the text in the browser tab (that's your title tag), the big headline at the top, and the first paragraph. Each should name your main trade and your main town. A title tag that just says "Home" or your business name wastes the most valuable 60 characters on your site.

A pattern that works: "Water heater repair and replacement in Delafield, WI | Kettle Moraine Plumbing". Keep the part before the pipe under 60 characters so Google doesn't cut it off in results.

Give every service its own page

Google ranks pages, not businesses. One "Services" page listing twelve things loses to a competitor who has a dedicated page for each one. If you want calls for furnace repair, sump pumps, and drain cleaning, that's three pages.

Each service page needs:

300 to 500 words is plenty if it's specific. Write it like you're explaining the job to a homeowner at their kitchen table, not like a brochure.

The service and the area in the page title and headline ("Sump pump replacement in Waukesha County")
What's included and what's not, in your own words
A real price range if you can give one, or what drives the price if you can't
Two or three photos from your own jobs, not stock
Your phone number and a short form, visible on a phone without scrolling

Write a town page only when you can make it real

A separate page for each town you serve works well, but only if each page couldn't have been written about any other town. Google has run spam updates aimed at sites that paste the same page fifty times with the city name swapped, and getting caught can demote the whole site, not just those pages.

The test: cover up the city name. If nothing else on the page would need to change, don't publish it. Real material for a town page looks like:

If you serve twelve towns but only have real material for four, publish four. Add the rest as you do jobs there.

Jobs you've done there ("replaced three furnaces on streets off Highway 83 last winter")
Local conditions that change how you work: hard well water, 1950s ranch homes with original panels, clay soil that shifts foundations
The neighborhoods and landmarks locals actually say out loud
Anything that town's permit office or inspector does differently

Answer the questions people call you with

Your phone log is a keyword tool. The questions people ask before booking ("how much does it cost", "do I need a permit", "how long does it take") are the same ones they type into Google first. A page or FAQ that answers one of them plainly can rank for it.

Two free places to find more: type your service into Google and read what shows under "People also ask", then start typing it again and read the autocomplete suggestions. Both are Google telling you, for free, what your customers search.

Write the question as a heading, then answer it in two to four sentences the way you would on the phone, with the number if there is one. "A typical water heater swap in Waukesha County runs $1,800 to $2,800 installed" beats three paragraphs of "it depends". Use your own numbers.

Set the title and description on every page

Every page gets its own title tag (under 60 characters) and meta description (under 155). The title is the biggest single lever you control. The description doesn't affect ranking, but it's the sales pitch that decides whether people click your result or the one below it.

Where to set them in the common builders:

Formula: "Service in Town | Business name" for the title. For the description, one plain sentence about the service plus a reason to pick you. "Furnace repair in Oconomowoc, same-week appointments, upfront pricing. Family run since 2009." That's 93 characters, with room to spare.

WordPress: install the free Yoast SEO plugin, then fill in "SEO title" and "Meta description" below each page editor
Squarespace: Pages > gear icon next to the page > SEO tab
Wix: Pages & Menu > three dots next to the page > SEO basics
GoDaddy Website Builder: Website > pick the page > Settings > Search engine optimization

Field note

To see what Google actually shows for you right now, search site:yourdomain.com. Every result is a page Google knows about, with the title and description it's using. Anything that reads "Home" or "Untitled" goes on the fix list.

Watch what's working in Search Console

Google Search Console is free and shows the exact searches where your site appeared, even when nobody clicked. Set it up at search.google.com/search-console, add your site, and verify it. The DNS option works for any builder, and most builders also have a spot to paste Google's HTML tag under their SEO or integrations settings.

Once data starts showing (give it a few days), open Performance > Search results and turn on "Average position", then sort by impressions. Searches where you sit at position 8 to 20 are your best writing targets: Google already thinks you're relevant, and one better page can move you onto the first page.

While you're in there, go to Indexing > Sitemaps and submit your sitemap (sitemap.xml on Squarespace and Wix, sitemap_index.xml on WordPress with Yoast). That tells Google about every new page instead of waiting for it to stumble across them.