A Step-by-Step SEO Audit Framework for General Contractor Websites

This audit is for general contractors who already have a website and want to understand why it's not generating consistent leads from search — or who want to verify that an agency's work is actually holding up.

You don't need to be technical to complete most of it. Several steps use free tools (Google Search Console, PageSpeed Insights, Google's mobile-friendliness test) and take under 30 minutes. Others require a bit more digging or a tool like Ahrefs or Semrush for backlink data.

Run this audit if any of the following apply:

• Your organic traffic has dropped or flatlined over the past 90 days.
• You recently launched a new website or migrated to a new domain.
• You've added new service lines or service areas and haven't updated the site to match.
• You're paying for SEO but can't tell what's actually been done.
• A competitor you've never heard of is now outranking you for your core terms.

This is an evaluative exercise, not a prescriptive setup checklist. If you're building SEO from scratch, the General Contractor SEO Checklist is a better starting point. This audit assumes you have existing pages and history to assess.

Work through the five layers in order. Each layer builds on the last — there's no point optimizing content if the site can't be crawled, and local signals won't matter if the underlying pages are thin.

Technical issues are invisible to visitors but not to Google. A site with slow load times, broken internal links, or crawl errors can rank poorly regardless of how good the content is.

What to Check

• Page speed: Run your homepage and top service pages through Google PageSpeed Insights. Aim for a mobile score above 70. Scores below 50 indicate issues that need a developer — typically uncompressed images, render-blocking scripts, or missing caching.
• Mobile usability: Use Google's Mobile-Friendly Test. Most contractor leads come from mobile searches; a site that breaks on a phone loses those visitors before they read a word.
• Crawl errors: Open Google Search Console (free) and check the Coverage report. Pages marked as "Excluded" or "Error" may not be indexed at all.
• HTTPS: Every page should load securely. A mixed-content warning or an HTTP URL signals trust issues to both Google and visitors.
• Broken links: Use a free crawler like Screaming Frog (up to 500 URLs) to find internal 404s. Broken links waste crawl budget and create dead ends for users.
• Duplicate URLs: Check whether www and non-www versions of your site both load — if so, one should redirect to the other with a canonical tag in place.

One or two minor issues here is normal. A pattern of errors — dozens of 404s, multiple duplicate URLs, consistent mobile failures — suggests the site was built or migrated without technical SEO in mind, and fixing content before addressing this layer wastes time.

Once Google can crawl your site, it needs pages worth ranking. Most contractor websites fail this layer not because they lack content, but because the content they have is too thin, too generic, or structured so that Google can't tell which page to rank for which query.

What to Check

• Service page depth: Each core service (roofing, additions, remodels, etc.) should have its own dedicated page. A single "Services" page listing everything ranks for nothing specifically.
• Title tags and meta descriptions: Open any page, right-click, and view source. Find the <title> tag. It should include the service and your city (e.g., "Kitchen Remodeling Contractor — Austin, TX"). Generic titles like "Our Services" are a missed signal.
• H1 tags: Each page should have exactly one H1. It should match or closely reflect what the page is about. Multiple H1s or missing H1s are a basic structural problem.
• Thin content: Pages under 300 words rarely rank for competitive terms. That's not a rule — a very authoritative domain can rank short pages — but for most contractors building authority from scratch, depth matters.
• Keyword cannibalization: If you have multiple pages targeting "general contractor [city]", they compete against each other and dilute ranking potential. Consolidate or differentiate.
• Image alt text: Project photos are common on contractor sites. Check that they have descriptive alt text, not blank fields or file names like "IMG_4821.jpg".

After checking these, score each major service page honestly: does it answer what a homeowner would actually want to know before hiring you? If not, that's a content gap, not just an SEO gap.

For most general contractors, the majority of valuable search traffic is local — people in a specific city or region looking for a contractor right now. This layer audits how well your site and off-site presence are aligned with local intent.

What to Check

Google Business Profile

• Is your GBP claimed and verified?
• Are your business name, address, and phone number (NAP) identical to what's on your website?
• Have you selected the most accurate primary category ("General Contractor" rather than something broader)?
• Do you have at least 10 recent reviews with an average above 4.0?
• Are your service areas set correctly in GBP?

NAP Consistency

Search your business name on Google and compare the address and phone number across your website footer, GBP, Yelp, Houzz, Angi, and any other directories where you're listed. Inconsistencies — even minor ones like "St" vs "Street" — dilute local trust signals. In our experience working with contractor sites, NAP inconsistency from an old address or a rebranding is a common silent ranking suppressor.

Service Area Pages

If you serve multiple cities, each deserves its own page with unique content — not copy-pasted with the city name swapped. Thin location pages hurt more than they help if Google interprets them as doorway pages.

Local signals interact directly with your GBP performance. For a more detailed breakdown of GBP optimization, see the GBP Optimization for General Contractors guide in this cluster.

Authority is how much trust Google extends to your domain based on who links to it. A technically clean site with good content can still underrank if it has no external signals pointing to it.

This layer requires a tool. A free Ahrefs Webmaster Tools account or the free version of Moz Link Explorer will give you enough data for a basic picture.

What to Check

• Domain Rating / Domain Authority: These are proprietary metrics, not Google metrics — but they correlate reasonably with ranking ability. A contractor site with a DR of 5 competing against one with a DR of 30 for the same keyword is at a structural disadvantage, all else being equal.
• Referring domain count: Industry benchmarks suggest that local contractor sites with meaningful organic visibility typically have links from at least 20-40 distinct referring domains. A site with 3-5 referring domains, all from low-quality directories, has an authority gap.
• Link quality: Are the sites linking to you relevant — local news outlets, trade associations, supplier directories, or satisfied commercial clients who linked back? Or are they spammy link farms? A handful of quality links outperforms dozens of low-quality ones.
• Anchor text distribution: Over-optimized anchor text (e.g., every link says "best general contractor Austin") is a red flag Google associates with manipulation. Natural link profiles have varied anchor text.
• Competitor comparison: Search your primary keyword and pull the backlink profile of the top two or three results. Compare their referring domain count and DR to yours. This shows you the gap you're actually trying to close.

Link building is the hardest layer to self-diagnose and fix — it requires outreach, relationship building, or PR. If this layer is clearly underdeveloped, it's one of the strongest signals that professional help will move the needle faster than DIY effort.

After working through all four layers, you have a picture of where your site stands. Use the following to decide your next move.

Self-Score Each Layer

• Technical Health: No crawl errors, fast mobile load, HTTPS, no duplicate URLs = Pass. Any critical issue = Needs work.
• On-Page Content: Dedicated service pages, keyword-aligned titles, unique content, no cannibalization = Pass. Thin or generic pages = Needs work.
• Local Signals: Verified GBP, consistent NAP, service area pages with unique content = Pass. Missing or mismatched = Needs work.
• Authority: 20+ quality referring domains, no spammy links, competitive gap under 15 DR points = Pass. Thin link profile or large gap = Needs work.

When to Handle It Yourself

If you found one or two isolated issues — a missing title tag on a secondary page, a few broken image links, one outdated directory listing — those are straightforward fixes you can handle without outside help. Use the General Contractor SEO Checklist to work through them systematically.

When to Hire a Professional

Consider bringing in professional help when:

• Multiple layers are failing simultaneously and you can't determine root cause.
• You've made fixes before and traffic didn't recover.
• The technical issues require CMS or server-level access you don't have.
• Your authority gap relative to competitors is large and requires a structured link acquisition strategy.
• You're spending time on SEO that should be spent running jobs.

A professional audit goes deeper than this self-assessment — it includes crawl data at scale, keyword gap analysis, and a prioritized remediation roadmap. If you want that level of diagnosis, contractor SEO experts who can diagnose your site and build a plan from what they find.