The 10-point contractor website checklist. Does your site get calls?
Ten checks for Massachusetts and New Hampshire electricians. You can do most of them yourself, on your own phone. Every fact links to an official source.
Or request a written fit review of your website.
No sign-up: the whole checklist is on this page, and it prints.
Mark each one yes or no.
Ten checks, one phone.
Open your website on your phone, go through the ten checks, and mark each one yes or no. Every "no" is something to fix or ask your web person about.
Can a customer tap your number to call?
Check: On your phone, open your website and tap your phone number. Your phone should offer to start the call.
Why it matters: A customer standing in a dark basement shouldn't have to copy your number by hand. A web person makes a number tappable with a
tel:link that uses the full number with country code (for exampletel:+16035550123).Sources: RFC 3966, The tel URI for Telephone Numbers · web.dev: Click to Call
Does the phone version show everything that matters?
Check: Compare your site on your phone and on a computer. Your services, phone number, license number and the towns you serve should all be on the phone version, not only on the desktop version.
Why it matters: Google says it uses the mobile version of a site's content for indexing and ranking, and asks that the mobile site contain the same content as the desktop site.
Source: Google Search Central: Mobile-first indexing best practices
Are your license type and license number easy to find?
Check: Your license type (for example Master Electrician) and your license number appear on your website, for example in the header or footer, and the business name matches the name on your license.
Massachusetts: the Board of State Examiners of Electricians' rule 237 CMR 18.01(2) says any sign, advertisement or other business communication of a Master Electrician, Journeyman Electrician or Systems Contractor "shall indicate the type of license and the license number." It also says a licensee may do business only in the name printed on the license. The rule doesn't mention websites by name; ask the Board if you're unsure how it applies to yours, and check the current version of the rule.
New Hampshire: we did not find an NH rule that requires a license number in advertising. Showing it is still a simple way to let customers confirm you're licensed. Customers can look licenses up through the state.
Sources: 237 CMR 18.00: Rules governing practice (mass.gov) · 237 CMR 18.00 text (mass.gov PDF) · Massachusetts: check a license · NH OPLC license lookup
Does each page say what you actually do, in your customers' words?
Check: Your services are listed by name, the way a homeowner would search for them (for example "panel upgrade" or "EV charger installation"), and only services you really offer. Each page has its own clear title, such as "Panel Upgrades in Nashua, NH | Your Business Name".
Why it matters: Google's guidance is to think about the words people use to search, and its systems are designed to prioritize helpful, reliable information created for people. Google says to write descriptive, concise titles and avoid repeating the same boilerplate title on every page.
Sources: Google SEO Starter Guide · Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content · Influencing your title links
Does your site name the towns you serve, without copy-paste town pages?
Check: The towns or area you serve are named on your site. If you have a separate page for each town, each one has real, useful information for that town, not the same text with the town name swapped.
Why it matters: Google's spam policies describe doorway abuse as pages "created to rank for specific, similar search queries," and give "pages targeted at specific regions or cities that funnel users to one page" as an example.
Source: Google Search Central: Spam policies (doorway abuse)
Do your website and Google Business Profile match?
Check: Your business name and phone number are the same on your website, your Google Business Profile, your truck and your invoices. The profile links to your own website, not to a social media page. If you work from home and customers don't come to you, your address is hidden on the profile and your service area is set instead.
Why it matters: Google's guidelines ask businesses to represent themselves as they are consistently represented and recognized in the real world, to use a website that represents the individual business, and say a service-area business should hide its address from customers.
Sources: Guidelines for representing your business on Google · Manage your service areas
Does your address start with https:// ?
Check: In your phone's browser, your site's address starts with
https://and the browser doesn't warn that the site is not secure.Why it matters: Google's page experience guidance asks whether pages are served in a secure fashion, and Google's web.dev guidance is to protect all websites with HTTPS, even ones that don't handle sensitive information.
Sources: Google Search Central: Understanding page experience · web.dev: Why HTTPS matters
Does the site load quickly and stay still on a phone?
Check: Run your home page through Google's free PageSpeed Insights and look at the mobile result. Then load the site on your phone: the main content should appear quickly, buttons should respond when tapped, and the page shouldn't jump around while it loads.
Why it matters: Google's published targets ("Core Web Vitals"), measured across most page loads, are for the main content to load within 2.5 seconds, for the page to respond to taps within 200 milliseconds, and for a layout shift score of 0.1 or less. Google says these are used by its ranking systems, but that good scores don't guarantee top rankings.
Sources: PageSpeed Insights · web.dev: Web Vitals · Google Search Central: Understanding page experience
Is it easy to read and easy to tap?
Check: Text is easy to read against its background, buttons and links are big enough to tap without zooming, and photos of your work have a short text description (alt text).
Why it matters: The W3C's accessibility standard (WCAG 2.2) sets a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 for normal text (3:1 for large text), a minimum tap-target size of 24 by 24 CSS pixels with some exceptions, and a text alternative for images. Alt text lets someone who can't see a photo have it read aloud.
Sources: WCAG 2.2 (W3C Recommendation) · Understanding target size (minimum) · Understanding non-text content
Are your reviews and claims honest?
Check:
- If you ask for reviews, you ask all your customers, not only the happy ones.
- You never pay for reviews, offer discounts for them, write your own, or have family or employees post them.
- Testimonials on your site are from real customers, in their own words.
- "Licensed and insured" appears only if it's true right now, and you can show a customer your insurance certificate.
Why it matters: The FTC's rule on consumer reviews and testimonials (16 CFR Part 465) bans fake reviews and incentives conditioned on a review expressing a particular sentiment. Google's Maps content policy prohibits selectively asking happy customers for reviews, offering incentives for reviews, and reviews written with a conflict of interest. The FTC's small-business advertising guidance says advertising must be truthful and non-deceptive.
Sources: FTC final rule on fake reviews and testimonials · 16 CFR Part 465 · Google Maps user-contributed content policy · FTC Advertising FAQs: A Guide for Small Business
The 10-point contractor website checklist · www.gabrielfenton.com/contractor-website-checklist.html · iam@gabrielfenton.com
Talk it through, or ask for a written fit review.
Website Care from Gabriel Fenton is $199/month, with $0 setup and month-to-month service. It covers a managed website for a one-location electrical business. It includes mobile and accessibility checks, search foundations, HTTPS, and call and job-request routes checked on desktop and mobile. Your license details, services and towns appear as you approve them. Google Business Profile work and review requests are not part of Website Care.