For general contractors
Everybody knows somebody whose renovation stalled. That story is sitting in the back of the mind of every person who fills in your contact form, and almost no contractor website addresses it.
The short answer
General contractor SEO is the work of being found during a decision that takes months, and of proving you will finish what you start. In practice that means pages for the projects people actually search, honest cost ranges, licence and insurance published plainly, photographs of completed work with locations named, and a finished Google Business Profile. Impressions usually move inside two months and signed projects between month four and month nine, because the decision itself is slow. Muon Marketing charges from $195 per month plus a price per qualified lead, or from $395 per month flat.
The same sequence for a two crew builder and for a firm running several projects at once. None of it is a campaign and none of it finishes.
Search Console will usually show project and cost phrasing collecting impressions from a portfolio page nobody optimised. That is proven demand attached to a page that half exists, and in a trade with this ticket size a single recovered project pays for a year of work.
Homeowners do not search general contractor until quite late. They search kitchen remodel cost, basement finishing, home addition. Each of those is a page, and a site organised around your capabilities rather than their project misses the entire research phase.
This is the hardest thing to do in this trade and the most valuable. Homeowners are terrified of cost overruns and every contractor site refuses to talk numbers. A page giving honest ranges, with what drives them, wins the research phase outright.
A kitchen decision can take six months from first search to contract. Any reporting that judges this trade on monthly lead counts will misread it badly in both directions.
Fundamentals
Because the person searching today is not buying today. A homeowner planning a kitchen may research for six months, collect three quotes and sign in the spring. That means the content has to reach them early, in the research phase, and still be there when they come back. It also means monthly lead reporting is close to useless, and anyone judging this trade on a thirty day window will draw the wrong conclusion.
Not price. It is abandonment. Almost every homeowner knows somebody whose project stalled, whose contractor stopped answering, or whose budget doubled. That fear decides more contracts than any comparison of quotes, and almost no contractor website addresses it directly. Publishing your process, your payment schedule and how you handle change orders does more than any gallery.
Project plus location, cost questions and process questions. Broad terms are held by national lead aggregators who will sell your enquiry to four competitors. What is reachable is what a kitchen remodel costs in your area, whether a permit is needed for a specific job, and what the process actually looks like week by week.
More than the copy, and most contractors underuse it badly. Homeowners buy what they can see, and a photograph of a finished kitchen in a town they recognise does more than a paragraph about craftsmanship. Name the town, name the scope, and give a rough figure. Years of good work sitting unpublished on a phone is the most common wasted asset in this trade.
The general method behind all of this is the same one we apply everywhere, and it is described on our local SEO service page.
Architecture
A single services page listing carpentry, tiling, framing and project management competes for none of them, and none of them is what a homeowner types.
| Page | Who is searching | What it has to answer |
|---|---|---|
| Kitchen remodel | Homeowners researching, often six months out | Realistic cost ranges, how long the kitchen is unusable, what drives the budget |
| Bathroom remodel | Often a first renovation, smaller and faster | Cost by scope, timeline, whether they can stay in the house |
| Home additions | High ticket, permit heavy, long lead | Cost per square foot, permit process, how long from design to finish |
| Basement finishing | Homeowners adding space without adding footprint | Cost, egress and code requirements, moisture, timeline |
| Whole home renovation | Rare, very high value, extremely cautious buyers | Process, payment schedule, how change orders work, references |
The whole home renovation row is rare and worth an enormous amount. The buyer is more frightened than any other customer in home services, which means the page that wins is the one about process and payment rather than the one with the prettiest photographs.
Publish your payment schedule and how you handle change orders. This is the single most reassuring thing a contractor can put on a website and almost none of them do it. Every homeowner has heard the story about the builder who took a deposit and vanished, and a clear written answer to how money moves through a project separates you from that story instantly.
Not like other local businesses
We apply the same method across every industry we work in, but the differences below change the order of the work.
Somebody searching today may sign in six months. Content has to reach the research phase and still be there at the end of it.
Everybody knows a stalled renovation story. Addressing it in writing does more than any gallery or any discount.
Homeowners buy what they can see. Most contractors have years of finished work sitting unpublished on a phone.
Order of operations
Evidence, not vibes
| When | What moves | Where you check it |
|---|---|---|
| Month 1 to 2 | Impressions rise on project and cost phrasing | Search Console, filtered to the new pages |
| Month 2 to 4 | Average position climbs for project plus town terms | Search Console, same filter |
| Month 3 to 6 | Enquiries and consultations rise | CallRail and your form, kept separate from paid traffic |
| Month 6 to 12 | Signed projects attributable to organic search | Your CRM, matched against first contact date rather than signing date |
Three numbers matter more than traffic, and almost nobody reports them.
Not enquiries. In a trade with a six month cycle, enquiry counts move long before revenue does and it is easy to declare victory far too early.
Whether the content is reaching the projects you want. A rise in bathroom enquiries while additions flatline means you are winning the wrong research.
Track it. If it is lengthening, the process and payment content is not doing its job and the fear is going unaddressed.
Impressions before clicks, clicks before enquiries, enquiries before contracts, and in this trade that last gap is measured in months rather than weeks. If you are already paying someone and cannot tell whether it is working, see how to tell if your SEO company is doing anything.
What it costs
Which one suits you depends mostly on whether you are filling a schedule or protecting a fixed budget through a slow stretch.
The trade offs between the two are set out in retainer versus pay per lead. Full pricing is on the pricing page. We publish it because the two questions every company asks first are what it costs and how long it takes, and hiding either one wastes both our time.
Questions we get
The questions that come up on almost every first call, answered plainly.
Muon Marketing runs two structures. The performance model starts at $195 per month plus an agreed price per qualified lead. The flat model starts at $395 per month with nothing charged per lead. The scope of work is identical and both are month to month with no setup fee.
Impressions and average position usually move inside two months and enquiries follow between month three and month six. Signed projects lag considerably further, because a renovation decision commonly takes six months from first search to contract. This is the slowest trade on our list to judge and the easiest to misread.
Yes, and it is the hardest and most valuable thing you can do in this trade. Homeowners are frightened of cost overruns and every competitor refuses to discuss numbers. A page with honest ranges and the factors that move them wins the research phase, and the research phase is where the decision is actually made.
It will lose you the enquiries that were never going to become projects, which is a benefit rather than a cost. What it wins is the homeowner who has read four contractor sites that all said contact us for a quote and is grateful somebody finally answered the question.
The process and payment page. What happens week by week, how the payment schedule works, and how change orders are handled. Every homeowner has heard a story about a contractor who took a deposit and disappeared, and a clear written answer separates you from that story faster than any photograph.
More important than the copy. Homeowners buy what they can see, and a finished kitchen in a town they recognise is worth more than any description of your craftsmanship. Name the town, describe the scope, and give a rough figure. Most contractors have years of this sitting unpublished on a phone.
Not on their terms and you should not try. They buy volume and sell the same enquiry to four contractors, so competing there means paying to be one of four quotes. Where they cannot compete is on specific local content, real photographs and a written process, because they have no projects and no town.
For every town you genuinely want work in, yes, and permit differences give you real material for each one rather than swapping a name into the same paragraph. Contractors are also more geographically constrained than most trades, so a disciplined list matters.
It matters, but less here than in emergency trades, because this decision is researched rather than resolved in the local results. Finish it properly, then put your effort into the project pages and the portfolio, which is where a six month decision is actually won.
There is no threshold number and any agency quoting one is guessing. In this trade the content matters more than the count. A handful of detailed reviews describing a project that finished on time and on budget outweighs fifty short ones, because they speak directly to the fear that decides the contract.
Search rewards specificity, so even a genuinely general contractor should publish specific project pages. You do not have to narrow the business to narrow the pages. A firm that takes anything but publishes a strong kitchen page will win kitchen searches that a firm advertising everything will not.
They matter for the cost, permit and process questions, which are exactly the kind Google now answers directly and exactly what a homeowner researches first. Plain, specific, self contained answers get quoted, and this trade publishes less of that than almost any other.
They do different jobs and the fit is poorer here than in emergency trades. Paid buys immediate visibility, but a six month decision cycle means you pay for clicks long before anyone signs. Search compounds and sits there through the whole research period, which suits this trade better.
Record the source at first contact and match it against the signing date months later rather than the month the enquiry arrived. Report signed projects, average project value, and time from first contact to contract. Anything measured on a thirty day window will mislead you.
Publishing your licence, your insurance and your photographs, yes, and those are among the highest return actions available. What is harder internally is the sustained writing, particularly the cost and process pages, which are the ones that actually win the research phase.
We will read what the site already ranks for and tell you which of it is worth building on. If the answer is that publishing your photographs and your payment process is the whole job this quarter, that is what we will say.
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