Channel advice written for contractors in general is worth roughly what it costs, because the economics change completely between trades. What follows is local SEO applied to one trade only, roofers: what it costs per enquiry and per signed job, where the ceiling sits, what it demands of you, and an unhedged answer at the end.

The numbers that govern the decision: projects run EUR 6,000 to EUR 15,000, the buyer is typically a homeowner with a leak or a roof past twenty-five years old, demand peaks after the first autumn storms and falls away in February, and 4 to 6 genuine enquiries are needed for each customer signed.

The numbers, at a glance

• What one enquiry costs once it works: nothing in media spend, against a permanent cost in review collection, photography and page upkeep

• The resource this consumes instead of money: about two hours a week for six months on reviews, photography and area pages, dropping to a lighter routine that never quite stops

• Time from a standing start to the first enquiry: three to nine months, assuming you begin with nothing in place

• Straight answer for roofers: The best long-term investment a roofing business can make, and useless as a way to fill next month.

The shape of local SEO for this trade

Intent on Local SEO and the map pack is as high as paid search, and the click is free. Once it works it is the cheapest enquiry source that exists, and it compounds rather than stopping the day you stop paying.

The limit that rarely appears in a sales conversation: a verified address in the service area, which excludes anyone running a genuinely virtual operation. For a roofing business covering one metro, check that before anything else, because a channel you cannot feed will underperform its own benchmarks indefinitely.

The downside is worth stating plainly. It is slow, it is hostage to review velocity and proximity, and none of it puts a job in the diary this week. Skill required: Moderate but relentless. Reviews, service-area pages and photographs, forever.

The map pack ranks on three things and you control only two

Relevance, prominence and proximity. Proximity to the searcher is the one you cannot change without moving, and it is why a business two towns away will never outrank the local firm for a search made on their doorstep, however good the profile is. That is not a reason to skip local search. It is a reason to be realistic about which suburbs are winnable and to concentrate effort there rather than spreading it evenly across a map.

Why your roofing quote is double the other one

It is the most common objection in the trade and it usually has a factual answer: the other quote is a repair where yours is a replacement, or it assumes the existing battens and felt are sound. Rather than defending the number, set the two scopes side by side and let the household choose. Roofers who itemise win a share of the jobs they would otherwise lose on price, and stop competing against work they were never quoting for.

Matching volume to the capacity you actually have

Volume is only useful up to the point your team can quote and deliver it. At 4 to 6 enquiries per customer, ten enquiries a month in this trade produce roughly one or two signed jobs, which at a typical EUR 10,500 project is a meaningful amount of work landing in the diary.

Buy or generate past that point and the extra enquiries do not become extra jobs, they become slower callbacks on all of them. The pattern is consistent: businesses that raise volume before fixing quoting capacity watch cost per signed job rise while cost per enquiry stays flat.

The primary category is the single biggest lever on the profile

Changing a primary category can move a profile further than months of other work, and having the wrong one caps everything else you do. Secondary categories add reach without diluting anything when they are accurate, and the services list underneath them is what lets a profile match longer queries. Most contractor profiles are set once at registration and never revisited, which leaves the largest available gain untouched.

What it actually costs, since it is not free

Local SEO has no cost per enquiry, which makes it look free and makes it easy to under-resource. The real cost is time and it is paid up front against a return that arrives months later.

1. Months 1 to 2: claim and complete the business profile, add real photographs of roofing work on local properties, and build one page per service and one per major suburb.

2. Months 2 to 6: collect reviews on every completed job, ideally naming the suburb and the specific work. Recency matters more than total count.

3. Months 3 to 9: the first sign of traction, which in this trade looks like emergency calls during the first bad weather after your review count passes roughly twenty, because urgency searches convert on the map pack more than on any website.

4. Month 9 onward: steady enquiry flow at effectively zero marginal cost, which is the only acquisition asset that appreciates.

One caveat, stated plainly for roofers: none of this fills next month. The timing mismatch catches out every contractor who starts local work because the diary has gone quiet. The correct moment to begin is while you are busy, which is exactly when nobody wants to.

Profile categories, service area and review motion for a roofing business

Primary category roofing contractor, with gutter service and, where you offer it, flat roofing contractor as secondaries. The services list should separate emergency leak repair from full re-roofing, because those are different searches made by different people in different states of mind.

• Service area: keep it tight. Roofing is won on proximity more than any other trade in this set, because the emergency half of the market chooses on who can attend today

• When to ask for the review: on the day the leak stopped. Emergency jobs produce the strongest reviews in the trade and they produce them within forty-eight hours, after which the relief fades

• What to prompt the review to mention: the street or suburb, how quickly you attended, and the weather at the time

• Photographs: scaffolded roofs mid-job and finished ridge lines, always as before and after pairs, because a finished roof on its own communicates nothing to a homeowner

The insurance path changes who you are actually selling to

Storm and escape-of-water claims put a third party into the conversation. The homeowner is still the customer but the loss adjuster sets the scope and often the timescale. Roofers who can produce a written scope with photographs, moisture readings and a clear separation between insured damage and pre-existing wear get approved faster and argue less. Roofers who submit a single-line quote get sent back. Administrative competence is worth more than pricing in this segment.

Work through this before committing to local SEO

1. Start with your gross margin on a typical roofing job as a percentage. Not turnover, margin.

2. Multiply that gross margin by the share you are willing to spend on acquisition, usually 10 to 20 percent, to get your ceiling per signed customer.

3. Compare your maximum per enquiry against what a paid or purchased enquiry would cost you, because local search is only the right first priority when the alternatives sit above your ceiling.

4. Name the person responsible for the first call attempt and the target time. Every number on this page assumes contact inside minutes rather than hours.

How these figures were built

These figures are a benchmark model, not a survey. They combine an industry base range observed across Western European home-improvement campaigns with a country multiplier for local auction pressure. Treat them as a band to negotiate against, not a quote.

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