A Step-by-Step Framework for Auditing Your Contractor Website's SEO

Most contractors who call us have already tried something: they hired someone to build a new website, published some blog posts, or paid for a directory listing. The work wasn't necessarily wrong — it just wasn't targeted at the actual problem.

An audit answers the question that precedes every other question: what is actually suppressing your rankings? Without that answer, you're guessing. And in SEO, guessing is expensive. You can spend months optimizing page content while a technical crawl block quietly prevents Google from indexing your site at all.

The audit framework below is built around the four layers that matter most for contractor websites specifically. Contractors compete in local markets, so the layer weighting is different from an e-commerce site or a national brand. Local signals and Google Business Profile health carry more weight here than they would elsewhere.

Work through each layer in order. Technical issues get diagnosed first because they can make every other improvement invisible to search engines. Then on-page, then local, then authority. Each layer has a simple scoring rubric — by the end, you'll have a ranked list of issues, not just a vague sense that something is wrong.

Technical SEO is the foundation. If Google can't crawl and index your pages correctly, nothing else matters. For contractor websites, the most common technical issues fall into three categories.

Crawlability and Indexation

Use Google Search Console (free) to check your Index Coverage report. Look for pages marked as excluded or crawl anomaly. If your core service pages aren't indexed, they won't rank — period. Also check your robots.txt file to confirm you haven't accidentally blocked important sections of the site.

Page Speed and Core Web Vitals

Google's PageSpeed Insights tool gives you a score and a specific issue list. Contractor sites built on drag-and-drop builders often load large uncompressed images, which slows mobile load times significantly. Mobile matters more here than in most industries — a homeowner searching for a roofer at 7pm is almost always on a phone.

Mobile Usability

Open your site on your actual phone. Can you tap the phone number directly? Does the navigation work without zooming? Are forms usable on a small screen? Google's Mobile-Friendly Test tool also surfaces issues you might miss visually.

Score this layer: 0 critical issues = pass. 1-2 issues = needs attention. 3+ issues = this is your priority before anything else.

On-page SEO for contractors is less about keyword density and more about clarity of service and location. Google needs to understand exactly what you do and exactly where you do it. Most contractor sites we review fail this test — not because of bad writing, but because the pages were built to look good, not to rank.

Title Tags and Meta Descriptions

Open your browser, visit each core service page, and look at the tab title. Does it say something like "Roofing Services | [Your City] | [Company Name]" — or does it say "Services" or worse, just your company name? Every service page needs a unique, descriptive title tag that includes the primary service and the target city or region.

Service Page Specificity

Do you have individual pages for each major service, or one generic "Services" page? A single page trying to rank for roofing, gutters, siding, and windows simultaneously will usually rank for none of them. Each service that represents real revenue should have its own dedicated page with its own title, heading structure, and content.

Location Signals in Body Content

Beyond the title tag, does your page body mention the city, surrounding towns, or county you serve? Generic content that could apply to any market sends a weak local relevance signal. Reference the specific area you serve naturally within the content.

Heading Structure

Each page should have one clear H1 that matches the page topic. Sub-sections use H2 or H3. Broken or duplicated heading structure confuses both users and crawlers.

Score this layer: Check 5 of your most important pages. If more than two fail the title tag or service specificity test, this layer needs work before you invest in anything else.

For most contractors, the local layer is where the biggest wins — and the biggest gaps — live. This breaks into two parts: your Google Business Profile and your citation consistency across the web.

Google Business Profile Audit

Go to your GBP listing and ask these questions honestly:

• Is your primary category the most specific match for your trade (e.g., "Roofing Contractor" not just "Contractor")?
• Have you added all relevant secondary categories?
• Do your business hours reflect when you actually answer calls?
• Have you uploaded at least 10 photos of real projects — not stock images?
• Is your service area defined in the profile?
• When did you last publish a GBP post? (Consistency matters.)
• What is your current review count and average rating? How does that compare to the top-ranked competitor for your main keyword?

A GBP profile that's incomplete or stale is one of the most direct causes of map pack ranking suppression for contractors.

Citation Consistency

Citations are mentions of your business name, address, and phone number (NAP) across directories — Yelp, Angi, HomeAdvisor, Houzz, BBB, and dozens of local directories. Inconsistency across these (old addresses, wrong phone numbers, name variations) sends conflicting signals to Google.

Use a tool like BrightLocal or Whitespark to run a citation audit, or manually search your business name and check the top 10 results for NAP accuracy. Even small variations — "St." vs. "Street" — can accumulate into a meaningful trust problem.

Score this layer: GBP fully optimized and citations consistent = pass. Any incomplete GBP section or more than three citation mismatches = needs immediate attention.

Backlinks — other websites linking to yours — remain a meaningful ranking signal, but for most local contractors, this layer matters less urgently than the first three. A technically clean site with a well-optimized GBP and accurate citations will outrank a competitor with more backlinks in many local searches. Address layers one through three first.

That said, backlink audits do reveal two actionable things: toxic link risk and authority gaps relative to competitors.

Toxic Link Check

Use Google Search Console's links report or a tool like Ahrefs or Semrush to review your inbound links. Look for patterns that suggest spammy link schemes: large volumes of links from irrelevant foreign sites, links with exact-match anchor text from unrelated pages, or links from link farms. These can trigger manual or algorithmic penalties. If you see clear patterns of this type, document them for disavowal consideration.

Competitor Authority Comparison

Pick the top three organic results for your most important keyword — something like "roofing contractor [your city]". Run a backlink comparison using any free tool. You're looking at two things: total referring domains and the quality of those domains. If a competitor has 80 referring domains from local news outlets, trade associations, and supplier sites, and you have 12 from general directories, you have an authority gap that content and link-building efforts need to close over time.

In our experience, most contractor websites at an early SEO stage have low domain authority not because they have bad links, but because they have almost no links at all beyond a few directories. That's an opportunity, not a crisis.

Score this layer: No toxic patterns and a reasonable authority baseline relative to your market = pass. Visible toxic patterns or a major authority gap vs. top competitors = flag for a follow-up strategy conversation.

By the time you finish all four layers, you should have a clear list of issues scored by severity. Here's how to use that list.

Prioritize by Impact Layer

Fix technical issues first. A crawl block or speed problem upstream makes every other fix downstream less effective. Then address on-page clarity, then local profile completeness, then authority building. This sequence isn't arbitrary — it mirrors how Google processes and weights signals for local service businesses.

Separate Quick Wins from Projects

Some audit findings take 30 minutes to fix: updating a title tag, correcting a business name typo on a directory, adding hours to your GBP. Others — like building 20 quality backlinks or rebuilding five thin service pages — are multi-month projects. Separate these two categories explicitly so you're not paralyzed by the longer list.

Know When to Call in Help

If your audit surfaces three or more critical issues, or if you find problems you can't confidently diagnose (crawl errors you don't understand, penalty signals, complex technical architecture), this is a reasonable point to bring in a specialist. The risk of applying the wrong fix to a misdiagnosed problem is compounding: you can spend months on work that doesn't move the needle, or worse, creates a new problem.

A professional contractor SEO audit goes deeper than this framework can in a single article — it includes crawl data, competitive gap analysis, keyword opportunity mapping, and a prioritized action plan with time estimates. If you want that level of diagnosis, get a professional contractor SEO audit from a team that works specifically in the contracting vertical.