Why a project write-up beats a tips post

Labor Day weekend is here, which in remodeling means the phone is about to get serious. Kitchens and baths booked in September are the ones homeowners want finished before the holidays, and the estimate requests arriving over the next six weeks are the highest intent ones of the year.

It also means search results are being reshuffled underneath you. Google started a core update on 22 August and it is still rolling out. Across the contractor sites we look after and the ones we audit for other people, the pattern in who lost ground is not subtle. The sites that slipped are the ones carrying two years of general advice posts and almost no evidence of actual work.

So here is the case for the one kind of page most remodeling sites do not have, and a process for producing them without hiring a writer.

The two kinds of pages on a contractor site

Nearly every remodeling site is built out of the same two things.

The first is the tips post. “Ten things to consider before a kitchen remodel.” “How to choose the right countertop.” Useful in a general way, indistinguishable from the version on every other contractor site in the county, and usually written by someone who has never carried a cabinet up a staircase.

The second is the project write-up. One job. Where it was, what the house was, what the homeowner wanted, what you found when the wall came down, what you did about it, how long it took and what it looks like now. Photographs taken on a phone by whoever was on site.

Most sites have thirty of the first and none of the second.

Why the project page is the one that works

Four reasons, and only one of them is about Google.

• Nobody else can publish it. Ten contractors can write the countertop post. Only you did that 1970s ranch off the main road with the surprise behind the plaster. Having content nobody else has is the whole game in a market where everybody is publishing.
• It matches how homeowners actually search. People search their own situation: their era of house, their layout problem, their neighborhood. A project page is made of those words honestly, without anyone stuffing them in.
• It carries the proof that closes the job. Your estimator already texts photos of similar work. A page does that at scale with the story attached, and it is what people sit and read before they call.
• It is what Google’s quality systems keep asking for. The helpful content system has been running for a year now and it weighs whether a site reads like first hand experience or like something assembled for search. First hand experience is exactly what you have and almost never publish.

How to produce one without a writer

The blocker is never the writing. It is the collecting. So make collecting somebody’s job on the job.

1. Photos from the start. Before, during and after. During is the one people want and almost nobody has: framing, the mess, the unexpected repair. Wide shots, same angle before and after where you can manage it.
2. A ten minute voice memo from the lead on the job, recorded in the truck on the last day, answering six questions.
3. Someone writes it up to six hundred words or so in plain language, using the crew’s words rather than marketing words.
4. Publish it with a title a homeowner would type, alt text on every photo, and the town named once because that is where the job was, not because it is a keyword.
5. Link it from the matching service page and from the estimate page, and send it to your email list while it is fresh.

The six questions for the voice memo:

• What did the homeowner want, and why now?
• What was the house? Age, style, what had been done to it before.
• What did you find once you opened it up?
• What was the hardest decision on the job and what did you choose?
• How long did it take start to finish, including waiting on anything?
• What would you tell the next homeowner thinking about this?

One of these a month is enough. Two is plenty. Twelve real ones in a year beats a hundred tips posts and takes less of everyone’s time than the content calendar you are already ignoring.

What to do with the tips posts already there

Do not go on a deletion spree in the middle of a core update.

Sort them into three piles instead. Posts that answer a real question a buyer asks before hiring: keep them, and improve them by adding a finished project and real photos. Posts that overlap each other: merge them into one better page and redirect the rest. Posts that exist only because a package included four a month and say nothing: remove them and redirect to the nearest service page.

Then leave the site alone for a few weeks. Changes made while an update is rolling out are impossible to read afterwards.

What to do this month

• Write up the last two jobs you finished, even if the photos are imperfect. Imperfect and real beats stock photography every time.
• Put photography in the job checklist so the next project documents itself: before, during, after, one person responsible.
• Record one ten minute voice memo this week with the lead on your best recent job.
• Sort the blog into keep, merge and remove, and get the redirects right before you touch anything else.
• Add a visible estimate request and a click to call button to every project page, because these pages get read late at night.
• Check that the service pages your project pages link to are the ones you actually want work from this fall.

We build contractor sites around this now: a short set of service pages that sell, and a growing library of finished jobs sitting behind them. It is slower than buying a content package, and it is the only kind of website we have seen hold its position through one update after another, because it is made of things that actually happened. If the listing and the map results need the same attention, that is what local SEO is for.