01
One thing to do, above the fold
A visitor decides in about five seconds. If the top of your page has a slideshow, three buttons, and a welcome paragraph, they leave. One sentence saying what you do and where, then your phone number.
Costs you: Most sites lose over half their visitors here before reading a word.
02
Your phone number, tappable, on every page
Not an image, not buried in a footer, not on a contact page two clicks away. A real tap-to-call link in the header of every page, because people call from whatever page they landed on.
Costs you: Every customer who wanted to call and had to go hunting for the number.
03
Loads in under two seconds on a phone
Run your own address through Google PageSpeed Insights right now. Free, takes a minute. If mobile scores under 50, that's the most expensive problem you have, usually giant photos nobody resized.
Costs you: A third of people leave a site that takes more than three seconds.
04
Every service listed as its own line
Owners undersell constantly. If you do gutter cleaning and it is not written down anywhere, nobody knows you do gutter cleaning. Write out every job you take, in the words your customers use for it.
Costs you: Work you already do, going to somebody who bothered to list it.
05
Every town you serve, named in writing
Google can not show you in Cranston if nothing on your site says Cranston. Not a list of links in the footer, but real sentences about the work you actually do there.
Costs you: Being invisible in every town except the one you are sitting in.
06
Your Google profile filled in completely
Free, takes an afternoon, and it's where most of your calls come from. Right primary category, every service entered separately, service area set, every attribute ticked: free estimates, emergency service, all of it.
Costs you: This one alone is often the gap between the top three and page two.
07
A system that asks for reviews
Not remembering to ask. A system. Text every customer when you are finished with them. Reviews decide both whether Google shows you and whether the customer picks you over the next listing.
Costs you: Losing to competitors doing worse work who simply have more reviews.
08
The same name, address, and phone everywhere
Search your own business name and look at every listing that comes back. An old phone number on Yelp or a dead suite address tells Google your information can not be trusted.
Costs you: Lower rankings, plus customers calling a number you do not answer.
09
Proof that you are real and you are good
Photos of your actual work, not stock. Your license number. How long you have been doing this. Reviews on the page itself. This is what turns somebody who found you into somebody who contacts you.
Costs you: People who found you, believed somebody else, and went there instead.