If you own a painting company, you get pitched SEO constantly. Cold calls, emails, someone on LinkedIn promising page one in thirty days. Most painters either ignore all of it or pick one, pay for a year and see nothing. Both are expensive.
Here is how to tell a real plan from a sales pitch, in painter's terms.
The mistakes I see most
- Paying for a blog nobody reads. Four posts a month about “color trends” do not get calls. Six strong service pages do. See the six pages guide.
- Buying a new website before fixing the Google listing. The map box is where most painting calls come from. The listing is free. Fix it first.
- One page for everything. Interior, exterior and cabinets on one page is the most common problem in painting and the easiest to fix.
- Fake service-area pages. Twenty town pages with the name swapped. Google can tell, and it can hurt the whole site.
- Guaranteed rankings. Nobody can guarantee a Google rank. Anyone who does is guessing or planning to rank you for a word nobody searches.
Questions to ask before you sign
“Which searches will you go after first?” The answer should be specific: “exterior painters [your city],” “cabinet painting [your city],” “painters near me” on the map. If they cannot name three, they have not looked at your business.
“What will you do in the first month?” A good answer is boring: fix the Google listing, split the service pages, set up a review routine, build the first town pages. A bad answer is “backlinks” with no explanation.
“Do I own the website and the listing?” The answer must be yes. If a company builds you a site you cannot take with you, you are renting, not buying.
“How will I know it is working?” Calls. Not “impressions.” Ask for call tracking and a monthly list of which pages people landed on before they called.
“Have you done this for a painter?” Painting has its own seasons, its own money search (cabinets) and its own trust signals (before-and-afters). Someone who has only done it for lawyers will learn on your dime.
What a good first ninety days looks like
Month one: the Google listing is complete, photos are going up weekly, and the review routine is running on every job. Month two: interior, exterior and cabinet pages each live on their own address with real photos. Month three: the first five town pages are up and the first reviews mentioning towns are coming in. Rankings follow that work. They do not come before it.
What it should cost
I will not give you a number, because it depends on your area and how much of this you already have. What I will say is this: if the price is very low, you are getting a template and a blog. If it is very high with no plan, you are paying for a sales team. Ask for the plan first. Judge the price against it.
Red flags in the first call
- They have not looked at your website or your Google listing before the call.
- They promise a number of “keywords” or “backlinks” per month instead of calls.
- They want a long contract before showing you a plan.
- They cannot explain, in plain words, why your competitor is in the map box and you are not.
- They want to build a new site before the Google listing is finished.
What you can do yourself first
You do not need to hire anyone to finish your Google listing, start a review routine, or split your interior and exterior pages. Those three things are the first month of any good plan, and they are free except for your time. Do them. Then, if you want someone to build the cabinet page, the town pages and the gallery, and keep it all moving, that is where paying for help makes sense. You will also be able to tell a real plan from a pitch, because you will know what the first month should have looked like.
Want this done for you?
I run a painting site in Tampa Bay myself, so I have done every step above on my own money first. If you want a second opinion on a pitch you got, or just want to know where your site stands, the audit is free and there is no contract.