Straight answers to the marketing questions owners ask us.

Yes, if you want to be found and chosen by people who do not already follow you.

Compare how many people reach your site with how many call, text or fill out a form, page by page.

A small business website can cost as little as $17 to $39 a month on a do-it-yourself builder such as Wix or Squarespace, billed yearly, plus the hours you spend building it.

Basic website upkeep can cost very little: a yearly domain renewal, hosting, and a free HTTPS certificate.

There is no fixed schedule.

Wix is a solid choice for a small business that wants to build and edit its own site for a modest monthly fee, and its speed has improved: 74% of Wix sites passed Google's Core Web Vitals on phones in 2025.

Elementor is a drag-and-drop page builder plugin for WordPress.

A PageSpeed Insights Performance score of 90 to 100 is rated good, 50 to 89 needs improvement and 0 to 49 is poor.

A contractor website should make three things obvious within seconds on a phone: what you do, where you work and how to reach you.

Most websites are slow on phones for a handful of repeat reasons: an oversized hero image or background video, too much JavaScript from page builders, plugins, chat widgets and tracking tags, slow hosting, and fonts that hold up the first screen.

WordPress is the better choice when several people publish content often or you need a large plugin library, for example to run an online store.

Yes, but less than many sales pitches claim, and only the right kind.

Usually not first.

There is no fixed timeline.

There is no standard price.

Usually, at least for the basics.

Local SEO is the work of getting a business found when nearby customers search for what it does, both in Google's local results on Maps and Search and in the regular results beneath them.

Usually it is one of a few fixable problems.

Often, yes.

Your ads can start showing within about a business day, because Google reviews most ads within one business day.

Google Ads has no minimum spend.

Work backward from the jobs you want.

Usually one of five things: the ads aren't showing much because of budget, Ad Rank, approvals, schedule or location limits; they show for the wrong searches; the call button is missing or appears when nobody answers; people land on a page that makes calling hard; or calls are happening but aren't being counted.

Not yet.

AI Overviews mostly change research-style searches, such as why does my furnace keep shutting off, where Google writes a summary and fewer people click through.

You cannot buy or request a recommendation in ChatGPT's answers, but you can make your business easy to find and verify.

Answer engine optimization (AEO) means writing and structuring pages so search features and AI assistants can lift a direct answer from them: featured snippets, People Also Ask boxes, AI Overviews and chatbot replies.

Generative engine optimization (GEO) is the practice of shaping web content so AI systems that write answers, such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google's AI Overviews, are more likely to draw on it and cite it.

Judge the agency on business results you can verify yourself: calls, forms and booked jobs tied to each channel, at a cost per job you can live with.

Choose on evidence and terms, not on distance or a polished pitch.

Agencies usually charge one of four ways: a flat monthly fee, a percentage of your ad spend, an hourly rate, or a fee tied to results, always on top of the ad budget you pay Google.

It depends on what the agency does each month, so compare scopes rather than headline prices.

Run them yourself if you can give the account regular, focused time every week, serve a compact area, and are willing to learn conversion tracking, search terms and bidding.

Ask who will own the domain, the code and the accounts; which platform they build on and why; how fast the site will load on a phone and how they will prove it; which pages are included and who writes them; how calls and form leads will be tracked; what support looks like after launch; and what it costs to leave.

You own what your contract and account records say you own.

Ask every real customer, right when the job is finished, and make leaving a review take one tap.

You can't pay or ask your way in.

Verify the profile, then make every field accurate and specific: your real business name with no added keywords, the most specific primary category, your address or service areas, hours, phone, website, services and a plain description, plus real photos.

Plan in three phases: build during the off-season, warm up a few weeks before customers start searching, and run hard while you are open.

Use winter for the marketing work that is impossible in July: fix or rebuild the website, add service and community pages, collect reviews from last season and book spring jobs early.