Most contractors think about their website from the customer's side. Does it look professional? Is my phone number easy to find? Do the photos look good? Those things matter a lot once someone lands on your site. They don't decide whether Google shows it.
Google looks at a different set of things: how the page works for real visitors, whether the content is genuinely useful, whether it can read your business details, and how the site works on a phone. If Google can't read your site, or it's painful on a phone, good looks won't save it.
Core Web Vitals: Your Site's Speed Report Card
Core Web Vitals are three measurements of how a page feels to a real visitor. Google says they're used by its ranking systems (Search Central, "Understanding page experience in Google Search results"). Its bar for "good" comes from web.dev's "Web Vitals" guide.
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) measures how fast your main content shows up. Good is within 2.5 seconds.
Interaction to Next Paint (INP) measures how fast your site responds when someone taps a button or fills in a form. If your site freezes for a moment when someone taps "Request a Quote," that's a bad INP. Good is 200 milliseconds or less.
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) measures whether things jump around while the page loads. Ever tried to tap a button and had an image load and push it down? That's layout shift. Good is 0.1 or less.
Google's free PageSpeed Insights shows you these for your own site. Run it on the Mobile tab and look first at the real-visit numbers at the top. Keep it in proportion, though: the same Google page says good scores don't guarantee a top ranking, and the most relevant page still wins.
E-E-A-T: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness
E-E-A-T is the yardstick Google's search quality raters use when they judge whether results are helpful. Google is clear about what it isn't: it says E-E-A-T isn't a specific ranking factor, that raters have no control over how pages rank, and that rater data isn't used directly in its ranking algorithms. Raters tell Google whether its systems seem to be working. Google also says trust is the most important part (Search Central, "Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content").
For a contractor, that means showing you're a real business with real experience: an About page with your story and who does the work, real reviews, photos of your own jobs, your licence and insurance facts if you have them, your phone number on every page, your address if customers can visit you, and memberships or certifications you really hold.
Google also says it helps when it's clear who created the content. A homeowner is about to let a stranger into their house and hand over real money. Make it easy for them, and for Google, to see who you are.
Schema Markup: Speaking Google's Language
Schema markup is structured data in your site's code that tells Google exactly what your business is: name, phone, services, service area and hours. Instead of guessing from your page text, Google gets the facts in a form it can't misread.
For some kinds of content Google can show a richer listing, but it says structured data only makes a page eligible for that; it doesn't guarantee it (Search Central, "General structured data guidelines").
The sites I build add schema for the business, its services, breadcrumbs and any FAQs on the page, built from your business details so it stays accurate. I don't add star-rating markup: Google doesn't show star ratings a business marks up about itself.
Mobile-First Indexing: Google Reads Your Phone Version
Google indexes the version of your site that people see on a phone. It finished moving the web to mobile-first indexing in 2023 (Search Central blog, "Mobile-first indexing has landed," October 31, 2023). If something is missing from your phone version, as far as Google is concerned, it's missing.
Think about who's searching. A homeowner standing in a garage looking at a cracked floor is Googling "epoxy flooring near me" on a phone. If your site is clunky on that phone, you can lose them before they ever call.
Mobile-first means more than a layout that shrinks. Buttons big enough to tap with a thumb, text you can read without zooming, tap-to-call at the top, and pages that don't make a phone wait.
Helpful Content: Write for the Homeowner
Google says it has no preferred word count. What its guidance asks is whether content is helpful and written for people first. A service page that answers a homeowner's real questions beats one padded out to hit a length.
Each service page on your site should cover what the service is, the problems people call about, your process step by step, and real answers to the questions you get asked on every estimate.
Blog posts work the same way. Answer questions your customers actually Google, like "how long does a roof replacement take" or "do I need a permit for a new driveway" in your town, with what you know from doing the work.
The bottom line: Google says it rewards sites that are useful, trustworthy and work well for real visitors. All of that is fixable, and most of it you can check yourself today.
