Contractor SEO and Google Ads: Paying per Call, Not per Click

Most contractors we talk to have paid for clicks that never became an estimate. The fix is rarely a bigger budget. It is a website and an ad account set up around calls, because a call is where a contractor’s job starts. Here is how that works for construction company marketing in Ohio, from the page an ad lands on to the searches you stop paying for.

One service page per job type and town

An ad for basement waterproofing should land on a page about basement waterproofing. Not the home page, and not a page listing every service you offer. Someone who clicks an ad decides in seconds whether they are in the right place. A page that matches the job they searched for keeps them long enough to call.

Take a foundation contractor. Waterproofing, bowed basement walls, foundation settlement and tuck pointing are four different searches from four different homeowners. Each gets its own page, with the questions people ask about that job, photos of real ones and the phone number at the top.

The towns go on those pages rather than getting pages of their own. List the towns you drive to on every service page, and name the town in each project photo and write-up. A separate town page earns its place only where something real differs, such as a second yard or a commercial market with its own rules. Twenty pages that change only the town name look like doorway pages to a search engine. Our page on digital marketing for construction covers how we set these up for contractors.

What a contractor pays per call from Google

There is no honest single figure. What a call costs depends on the trade, the town, the season and how well the account is built. Anyone who quotes a contractor cost per lead before seeing your account is guessing. What you can work out is what a call is worth to you, and that sets your ceiling:

1. What a booked job is worth to you in gross profit, on average.
2. How many estimates turn into jobs.
3. How many calls are real prospects once wrong numbers and sales pitches are taken out.

Multiply those together and you have the most you can pay for a call and still come out ahead. Write that number down before the first ad runs, or every month gets judged by feel. Our post on why cost per call is the only PPC metric that matters works through the arithmetic.

Two contractor habits make calls look cheaper or dearer than they are:

• Short calls counted as leads. Set a minimum call length in the tracking so wrong numbers and robocalls don’t count. If they do, the account learns to buy more of them.
• Calls nobody answered. The crew is on a roof and the office is at lunch. Call reporting lists the missed calls, and you paid for every one. Pull that report before you raise the budget.

Then mark each answered call as a booked estimate, a booked job or neither. A campaign that rings often for work you don’t do costs more than it looks.

Our own fee is published. Managed Search + Paid is $1,600 a month for management, covering Google Ads, Microsoft Ads and Local Services Ads where your trade qualifies. Your ad budget stays separate: you pay it to Google from your own account and set the amount yourself.

Local Services Ads vs Google Ads for trades

Google sells contractors two kinds of ad, and they charge differently. Local Services Ads charge per lead and sit at the very top of the page with a Google badge. Google Ads for contractors charge per click and sit below them. Which one to start with comes down to the jobs you want more of:

• Steady residential calls: Local Services Ads, if your trade is eligible. Google checks your license, insurance and background first, and your position depends on your reviews and how fast you answer.
• Commercial bids, or one job type you want to grow: Google Ads. You choose the searches and the page each one lands on, which Local Services Ads don’t let you do.
• Both: common for contractors with a busy residential side and a commercial line. Compare them on cost per booked job rather than cost per lead, because Local Services Ads leads include wrong numbers you have to dispute every week.

Our full comparison of Local Services Ads vs Google Ads covers the screening and the order we usually start in.

Negative keywords every contractor needs

A negative keyword stops your ad from showing on a search you don’t want. In a contractor’s account, the same few kinds of search waste money almost everywhere. Open the search terms report, sort by cost, and you will likely find some of these:

• Jobs and training: hiring, jobs, salary, apprenticeship, certification, school. People looking for work in your trade search often and never hire you.
• Do it yourself: how to, DIY, tutorial, video. Someone searching “how to fix a bowed basement wall” plans to do the work themselves.
• Materials and equipment: supply, wholesale, rental, used. Those people want a product, not a contractor.
• Places you don’t serve: towns and states outside your drive. Location targeting leaks near a state line, and much of the Ohio Valley sits on one.
• Work you don’t do: a foundation company that doesn’t pour driveways should block “driveway,” and a commercial builder can block homeowner searches.

Be careful with single words. “Repair” can be waste on a new-build campaign and the whole point of a service campaign, so add it to the campaign where it is wrong, not to the whole account. Check the report weekly for the first couple of months, then monthly. Our post on negative keywords covers match types and where each list goes.

Case study: Kelly Lang Contractors

Kelly Lang Contractors, Inc. is an Ohio foundation contractor: waterproofing, bowed basement walls, foundation settlement, tuck pointing and more. Their website was static HTML, so changing a phone number took a developer.

That matters more than it sounds once ads are running. Every ad needs a page that matches the job, and those pages need new photos, new towns and the right phone number as the season moves. If each edit waits on a developer, the pages fall behind the ads.

We rebuilt the site in WordPress, kept the design and the user flow their customers knew, and carried over every function of the original. Staff now make their own updates without much training, and we provide the hosting and ongoing support. The write-up covers the website, not ads or rankings, and we won’t claim numbers it doesn’t publish. What it shows is the groundwork: a site the contractor can keep current without calling anyone. Read the full Kelly Lang Contractors case study.