For most local businesses, the pages that earn their keep are the service pages. Someone searching for “boiler repair Cheltenham” or “kitchen fitter Bristol” is not looking for your life story. They want to know whether you do the job, whether you cover their area, and how to get hold of you. A good service page answers those three things quickly, and a weak one makes the visitor go back to the search results and try the next business.
Plenty of small business websites squeeze everything into one “Services” page with a bulleted list. That can work as a menu, but it rarely ranks for anything specific and gives a visitor very little reason to trust you. Writing one proper page per main service is one of the more reliable improvements you can make to a website.
Start with one service and one search
Each service page should be about one thing. If you are a plumber, “boiler servicing” and “bathroom installation” attract different customers asking different questions, so they deserve separate pages. If you put both on one page, neither is as clear as it could be, to Google or to a person.
Before writing, decide the main phrase the page is for, and check it against how people actually search. Typing the service into Google and looking at the suggestions and the “People also ask” box will show you wording you may not have thought of. Our guide to keyword research for small businesses covers this in more detail, using free tools.
Then write the page for a person, not a phrase. The phrase belongs in the title, the main heading and the first paragraph, and should come up naturally a few more times where it fits. If you find yourself repeating it in every sentence, stop. Google’s own guidance on creating helpful, people-first content is a good reminder that pages written for readers do better than pages written to tick off search terms.
Open with the answer
The first few lines should confirm the visitor is in the right place. Say what the service is, who it is for and where you offer it. For example:
“We repair and replace boilers for homeowners and landlords in Cheltenham, Gloucester and the surrounding villages. Most callouts are covered within a couple of days, and we can often attend sooner when a heating system has failed completely.”
That is plain and specific. Compare it with a paragraph about how passionate you are about customer service, which tells the reader nothing they can use. If a claim like “within a couple of days” is not true for your business, do not write it. Only promise what you can deliver, because a service page that over-promises produces unhappy customers rather than enquiries.
Explain how the job actually works
This is where your experience shows, and it is the part competitors cannot easily copy. Walk through what happens from the first call to the finished job: what you need to know before quoting, whether you visit first, what affects the price, how long it usually takes, and what the customer needs to do beforehand.
Say you run a roofing firm in Stroud. A page that explains the difference between repairing a few slipped tiles and re-roofing, what you look for when you inspect the roof, and why a quote might change if you find rotten timber underneath is far more useful than one that says “all roofing work undertaken”. It also filters out the wrong enquiries, which saves you time on the phone.
Pricing deserves a thought. You do not have to publish a price list, but giving a sense of what drives the cost, or a starting point where that is honest, makes visitors more comfortable getting in touch. Silence on price often makes people assume the worst.
Show that you are real, local and trustworthy
Trust is what turns a reader into an enquiry. A few things help, and none need to be elaborate:
- Your business name, address or service area, and phone number somewhere obvious, matching what is on your Google Business Profile.
- Photographs of your own work and your own team, rather than stock images.
- Accreditations and memberships you genuinely hold, such as Gas Safe registration or a trade body, described accurately.
- A couple of real customer reviews or testimonials that relate to this service, with permission.
If you cover a handful of towns, mention them where it is natural, perhaps in a sentence about the areas you work in. Resist the temptation to create dozens of near-identical pages that only swap the town name. Those read badly and add little. A single well-written page with a clear service area is better than twenty thin ones. Where there is a genuine reason for a separate local page, such as a distinct offering or a base in that town, our own Cheltenham and Bristol pages show the idea.
Answer the questions people ask before they ring
Near the bottom, add a short section answering the questions you hear most often. Is a survey free? Do you provide a guarantee? Will you remove the old fittings? Do you work at weekends? These are the things that stop someone picking up the phone, so deal with them in plain sentences rather than hiding them.
Use your real answers, not generic ones. If you are unsure what to include, look back at the last ten enquiries you received and note what people asked first.
Make the next step obvious
Every service page needs a clear way to act, and it should not be hidden in the footer. A phone number that can be tapped on mobile, a short form asking only for what you need, and a sentence that tells the visitor what happens next (“send us a few details and we will reply within one working day”) all make a difference. Again, only say what you will actually do.
Check the page on your own phone before publishing. Many local searches happen on mobile, and a page that is hard to read or has a call button you have to hunt for will lose enquiries. Our post on getting more enquiries from your website goes into forms and the other small details that affect this.
Get the basics right behind the scenes
The visible copy matters most, but a few technical details are worth setting up properly. Write a page title that includes the service and your area, and keep it readable rather than stuffed with keywords. Google explains how it creates title links and what makes a good title element, which is useful if Google keeps rewriting yours. Add a sensible meta description, use a single main heading, and give images descriptive file names and alt text. Link to the page from your main menu and from related pages, so that both visitors and search engines can find it.
If you are redesigning at the same time, take care not to lose existing rankings in the process, which is covered in our post on redesigning your website without losing Google rankings.
Give it time, then look at the numbers
A new page will not appear at the top of Google overnight. Check Google Search Console after a few weeks to see which searches are bringing impressions and clicks, and look at which pages lead to calls or form submissions. If a page gets visits but no enquiries, the problem is usually the copy or the call to action rather than the ranking. If it gets no visits, look at whether the page answers the search better than the ones already ranking.
If you would rather have an experienced person look at your pages, our SEO consultancy service starts with exactly this sort of review, and you can get in touch to talk through what your site needs.
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