Write-ups from campaigns I actually ran and properties I actually manage. Where there are numbers, they came out of my own accounts — including the ones that did not go the way I expected.
The full arithmetic from a $179 campaign — and why most advertisers spend months optimizing the wrong half of the equation.
I made the ask harder and the leads got cheaper. Plus the rewrite for six local trades.
What should a roofing website have? The homepages of 46 West Michigan roofers Brave Search lists, read 23 September 2026: all on HTTPS, 40 offer a free estimate, 37 have tap-to-call — but only 4 show a price, 4 print a Michigan licence number, 11 have an FAQ and 14 show reviews. The baseline, the gaps, and what to put on yours.
What should a plumbing website have? The homepages of 37 West Michigan plumbers Brave Search lists, read 23 September 2026: all on HTTPS and built for phones, 29 have tap-to-call, 29 name water heaters and 28 drain or sewer work, 21 invite online booking — but only 2 say what a job costs, 6 print coupons instead, 5 print a licence number, and 12 of 54 listings name no website.
What should an HVAC website have? I read 43 West Michigan HVAC company sites from Brave Search’s local listings on 23 September 2026: all on HTTPS and phone-ready, 40 with tap-to-call, 32 mentioning 24/7 or emergency service — but 18 offer a maintenance plan and only 1 prices it, 3 show any real price, 7 print a licence number and 7 have an FAQ. The baseline, the gaps, and what to put on yours.
What should an electrician website have? The sites of 38 West Michigan electricians Brave Search lists, read 23 September 2026: all on HTTPS and built for phones, 30 have tap-to-call, 18 mention emergency or 24/7 service, 14 generators and 9 EV charging — but not one prints its electrical licence number, 2 show a review rating or count, none shows a price, and 19 of the 60 listings name no website at all.
What should a landscaping website have? The 62 West Michigan landscapers Brave Search lists, checked 23 September 2026: 13 listings name no website and 2 link a Facebook page instead. Of the 43 homepages I could read, 30 have tap-to-call, 22 mention snow removal and 20 landscape design or hardscaping — but only 14 offer a free estimate or quote, 4 show reviews, 2 have an FAQ, 1 shows a price and none prints a licence number.
What should a painting company website have? I checked the 48 painters Brave Search lists for six West Michigan towns, read 23 September 2026: only 31 listings lead to a live website, and of the 30 sites I could read none shows a price, 5 have an FAQ, 11 show reviews and 1 prints a licence number — while 26 mention commercial work and 16 cabinets. The baseline, the gaps, and what to put on yours.
What should a remodeling website have? I checked the remodelers Brave Search lists for seven West Michigan towns on 23 September 2026: for 17 of 52, the listing leads to no working homepage. Of the 34 sites read, 24 point to a gallery or portfolio, but only 6 show reviews, 5 have an FAQ, 3 print a licence number and 1 says what a remodel costs.
What should a dental website have? The homepages of 55 West Michigan dentists Brave Search lists, read 23 September 2026: all on HTTPS and built for phones, 47 with tap-to-call, 40 asking for the appointment — but only 10 connect to a scheduling service, 13 say they take new patients, 26 mention insurance and 2 have an FAQ. The baseline, the gaps, and what to put on yours.
Measured, not recommended by a vendor: the platforms under 266 West Michigan trade websites read 23 September 2026 — WordPress 130 (49%), hosted builders 82, agency platforms 11, custom builds 9. Which platforms' sites carry schema, tap-to-call and reviews, and what actually matters when you pick one.
Not by itself. Of 384 West Michigan contractors Brave Search lists for seven trades, read 23 September 2026, 76 have listings that name no website — common in some trades. A listing whose website no longer shows the business is the bigger warning. How to check a Michigan contractor's licence instead, with the statutes.
Measured on 23 September 2026: 16 of 266 West Michigan contractor websites and 10 of 55 dentists load a call-tracking script, and 120 of all 321 sites load no working visit counter. How call tracking works, whether it hurts local SEO, and how to tell if your local SEO is working.
Home pages of the 39 top-ranked Grand Rapids trade sites read 16 September 2026: 9 pull reviews in through a live widget, 10 print a star rating, 9 print a count from 37 to 1,283, 6 show nothing. Google’s rule on self-serving stars, the FTC’s rule on testimonials, and the cheapest honest version.
robots.txt of the 40 top-ranked Grand Rapids trade sites read 16 September 2026: 36 have one, 4 name an AI crawler, all 4 allow it, 0 block any. What GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended and PerplexityBot do in their owners’ words, our own ChatGPT referrals, and the one case for blocking.
The 39 top-ranked Grand Rapids trade home pages read 16 September 2026: 23 carry a lead form, 4 to 21 fields, median 6; 32 have a tap-to-call link; 3 offer no route a crawler can see. Which fields the winners ask for, and what belongs on yours.
Twenty-four pages read 16 September 2026: seven sellers publish a plan price, from $30 software to $499 and $500 a month per location for a person; six of the eight page-one guides quote a range with nothing to buy at it. What the money buys at each tier.
Every query on eight Search Console properties, 90 days to 14 September 2026: 1,170 queries, 8,452 impressions, 15 clicks. What average position means in Google’s own words, why the map pack is the page one that matters locally, and what to ask instead.
Price, term, time to results, who owns the work, report cadence. Eight page-one agency pages read 16 September 2026: one answers four, one answers one, six answer none, and no page says who owns the pages and profile if you leave.
Eight agency pages on page one for the search, read 16 September 2026: two state a timeline, six say nothing about time. What Google’s own guidance says, the four clocks that make it months, and what you can check yourself at month one and month three.
Thirty-nine ranked home pages checked on 15 September 2026: 32 carry structured data, 23 declare a business type, 8 still carry an FAQ block Google retired in May. What it actually does.
Of 39 top-ranked Grand Rapids trades checked on 15 September 2026, 32 have a tap-to-call link, 26 have a form and none has a text link. How the two links work and where to put them.
HTTPS on all 39, tap-to-call on 32, structured data on 32, a privacy page on 23, a blog on 23 and a text link on none. The measured checklist, by trade.
23 of the 39 top-ranked Grand Rapids trade sites have one. Of the 26 that serve a form, 20 link a privacy page and six do not. What the analytics and pixel terms actually require.
FAQ markup no longer earns a Google rich result (dropped May 2026), but the answers still win the call. Per-trade counts from the 39-site sweep and the five questions a plumber's page should answer.
Median 5 service pages linked from the home page; plumbers and HVAC companies a median 12.5 and 15.5, roofers and electricians 2. The nine with none still rank in the map pack, and four of them have no form and no tap-to-call. The arithmetic for your own page count.
Eight agency pages on page one for the search, read 16 September 2026: one states its term, one states its own price, six say nothing about either. What a fair term looks like, the three things to ask before signing, and what you should keep when you leave.
Domain, free static hosting, Wix and GoDaddy plans, business email and a care plan, every price from the vendor's own page read 16 September 2026, added up per route — and the two vendors whose prices could not be read that day, named as such.
Read from Google Maps on 15 September 2026 for plumbers, roofers, HVAC and electricians: every top-ten listing carried a website link. What the profile does, what a site does, and when the profile alone is enough.
Twenty-six directories opened one by one on 15 September 2026: which exist, which are free in their own words, which are local, and four that are dead or wrong.
Median mobile score 59, six of ten took more than 13 seconds to show their main content, and one third-party script was costing our own home page 24 points.
We read the first ten map results for four trades on 15 September 2026. The twelve top-three spots hold 22 to 12,142 reviews; three have under 60; every one is rated 4.4 or higher.
The platform behind all 40 map-pack trade sites, read 16 September 2026: 6 on Wix, Squarespace or GoDaddy, 18 on WordPress, 5 on an agency-hosted builder, 3 on a franchise platform, 7 custom. What the six DIY sites carry and skip, and when to hire instead.
Nine plumber-website seller pages with a stated price, read 16 September 2026, in one table: price, term, who owns the site when you stop paying, what is bundled, pages. Four say it is yours, one says the code cannot leave, four do not say.
Page one quotes ranges and never a price. The arithmetic behind a fixed one, what moves it, and when the cheap tier is not enough.
The case for, the case against, the middle path — and the one campaign I have measured: 47 booked leads at $3.82 against a $17 median.
What the contract has to say, how to look up who holds your domain, what to ask before signing, and what to do if a designer registered it in their name.
The handover checklist: domain, hosting, source, content, accounts, records and the written termination terms — how to check each today.
It's almost never the developer. It's a content request that's been sitting in an inbox since March — and the fix is to invert who drafts first.
The standard quote is 8–12 weeks. The standard build is under a week. Where the gap comes from.
Published local rates, what each tier includes, and an honest account of why my starter price is below the freelancer floor.
$11,113 at a 4.08% conversion rate, ~68% of it from an Instagram audience grown organically to 15,000 — with the caveats that matter.
$179 of spend, roughly 4× below the real-estate median — with the campaign-by-campaign numbers and the caveats.
Ask it directly. If the answer is useful to more than one person it usually turns into the next article.