Worked example
Worked example: a groundworks contractor whose site spoke to homeowners, and the two buyers it should have spoken to
A worked example, labelled as one: no groundworks client is published here yet. The firm is a composite of the groundworks sites we audited for the groundworks page on this site; the plan is what we would do; the results are expectations, marked as such.
The starting point: a groundworks contractor with two excavators and a dumper, work from three house builders and a main contractor on repeat, and a one-page website with a photograph of a patio that reads like a landscaper\u2019s. The buyers who matter never searched it; the homeowners who found it wanted a patio.
By Daniel Stoychev, Webso Digital · 6 October 2026
2
buyers the site should speak to
1
page the site has, written for neither
5
capability facts a site manager checks
0
domestic patios the firm wants to quote
The two buyers
A site manager and a self-builder, and what each reads
| Buyer | What they search | What they check | The page |
|---|---|---|---|
| A site manager or main contractor | groundworks contractor [county], groundworks sub-contractor, foundations contractor | Plant held, CPCS cards, insurance levels, CHAS or equivalent, RAMS, the jobs done for firms like theirs, the lead time | A capability page: the plant by name, the services (foundations, drainage, slabs, roads, muck away), the accreditations with numbers, five jobs with the contractor named where allowed |
| A self-builder or an architect on a one-off house | groundworks for new build, foundations and drainage for self build, groundworks cost per square metre | That you have done a whole plot from the dig to the slab, the drainage and services, how you price, whether you work with their engineer | A self-build page: the sequence on a plot in order, what you need from the engineer, the cost drivers, two plots with photographs from the dig to the slab |
What changes, and what is left out
The patio goes; the plant list and the accreditations come in
The patio photograph goes, along with the word \u201clandscaping\u201d, because every search it attracts is a job the firm does not want. In their place: the plant by make and size, because a site manager pricing a job thinks in machine sizes; the operators\u2019 cards and the insurance in figures; the accreditations with numbers and expiry; and five jobs with the contractor named where allowed, the plot size, what was done and the weeks on site. The self-build page explains the sequence on a plot and what the firm needs from the structural engineer, because the self-builder has never done this and the page that explains it is the one they trust.
The Google profile is corrected to the right category and left alone; a site manager does not search \u201cnear me\u201d. The reviews are not chased; the case studies do the proving. The measure is one the firm already has: enquiries by email from contractors it has not worked for, with a programme attached, and the contact page asks where they found the firm.
What we would expect, labelled as expectation
Few searches, each worth a programme
Groundworks searches are few and the field is thin; we would expect the capability page to show for \u201cgroundworks contractor [county]\u201d within weeks on an established domain and the self-build page to be found by the long questions over a season. Clicks will be small and stay small. The number that matters is a main contractor the firm has not worked for sending a tender enquiry, and one of those a year pays for the site many times over, which is the honest scale of this market.
Your site, the same way
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Search Console, the coverage sweep and a page-by-page crawl are free to repeat on any builder's site. We run them before quoting, and you get the numbers whether or not you hire us.
How to read this page
- The firm is a composite; no contractor is named, described or implied.
- The plan is the one we would run, and the results are expectations, labelled as such.
- The measure is enquiries from contractors the firm has not worked for, with a programme attached, which the contact page asks about.
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