Most local business websites fail structurally before a single word gets read: one page trying to rank for everything, pricing hidden like a state secret, and proof scattered where nobody scrolls. The fix isn’t a redesign — it’s an anatomy: seven pages, each with one job, each built to catch its own search and close its own visitor.
This is the trade-agnostic blueprint. The industry versions below tune every page to how each trade’s customers actually decide — but the skeleton never changes.
Page 1: Home — the router
The homepage’s job is not to sell everything; it’s to pass the ten-second test and route. Above the fold, on a phone:
- What and where: “Seamless gutters & guards — Maplewood and Cedar Falls.” Plain words matching what people search, not a slogan.
- A price anchor or proof point — whichever your trade leads with
- A trust line: insured, review count, guarantee — pick the three you can prove
- One primary action: quote, call, or booking — a single terracotta-priority button, not four competing ones
Below the fold: a short services grid (linking to the service pages), proof, and the action again. Everything else lives deeper.
Page 2 (and 3, and 4): One page per service
The load-bearing rule of local site structure: every distinct service is a distinct search from a distinct buyer. “Deep cleaning” and “move-out cleaning” are different people with different deadlines; “roof repair” and “roof replacement” are different budgets and different fears.
Each service page carries the same skeleton:
- The service in plain words, and who it’s for
- Proof specific to that service — photos, before/afters, the reviews that mention it
- Price ranges or what drives the quote
- The objections answered (every service has two or three — name them honestly)
- The action, again, at the bottom
This split is usually the highest-ROI structural change a local site can make: it multiplies the searches you can rank for while making every page more persuasive. (How that ranking actually works.)
Page 5: Pricing — the trust page
The page owners resist and visitors reward. Publishing at least ranges (“most driveways run $150–250,” “weekly service from $180/month”) does three jobs: wins the comparison shopper who won’t call three businesses for numbers, filters budget mismatches before they cost you an estimate visit, and signals the confidence hidden prices undercut.
Genuinely scoped work (remodels, design-build) shows example projects with ranges instead — “this patio: $18k” qualifies inquiries without pretending a price list exists.
Page 6: Proof — reviews and work
One page that concentrates the evidence: embedded Google reviews (live, not pasted — recency is visible and it feeds the same review system that ranks you), the portfolio or gallery organized by service, credentials, and the guarantee stated once, plainly.
Then distribute proof everywhere: every service page gets its own slice. The proof page is the archive; proof itself belongs next to every decision point.
Page 7: About — the who-shows-up page
In trades where strangers enter homes or handle property, the about page is quietly a conversion page: real photos of the actual team, first names, years in business, the background-check/insurance language, and one paragraph of why the business exists that sounds like a person wrote it. Faces convert; stock photos of handshakes actively erode.
The service-area layer: town pages
If you serve multiple towns, one genuine page per major town — with that town’s jobs, that town’s reviews, and the neighborhoods you actually work — lets you rank beyond your home base. The emphasis is on genuine: three real town pages beat ten name-swapped clones, which modern Google ignores or worse. Grow this layer as your routes grow, not ahead of them.
Contact / quote — the shortest path
Every page should end in the action, but the dedicated contact page still matters — it’s where referrals land (“just look them up”). Requirements: tap-to-call, the quote form with as few fields as your trade allows (name, phone, what-do-you-need; collect the rest after they’ve said yes), your service area stated, and response-time expectations set honestly (“we reply within the hour, 7 days a week”) — then met.
The three site-wide rules
- Speed is a page. Most local traffic is mobile, often mid-errand. Compress every image, skip autoplay heroes, and test on cellular — a slow site pays a tax on every channel upstream of it.
- One primary action per page. Four competing buttons convert like zero buttons.
- Match the words people search. “Gutter repair,” not “moisture management solutions.” Your pages rank for the vocabulary they use.
Run your own site against this anatomy — or let the free audit do it in 60 seconds, scored the way Google sees you. And if you’d rather have all seven pages built, hosted, and maintained without touching any of it: that’s the service, live in 3 days.