The technical SEO checklist for a home-service website

Four, plus your own phone. Google Search Console shows how Google sees your site. PageSpeed Insights (pagespeed.web.dev) measures speed. The Rich Results Test checks your business markup. Your Google Business Profile holds the link Maps customers tap. If someone else set these up, ask for owner access in your company's name.

In Search Console, URL Inspection is the search bar at the top; the other reports used here are Page indexing, robots.txt, Core Web Vitals and Sitemaps. Skip tools Google has retired. Its notice, dated December 1, 2023, says "The Mobile Friendly Test and the Mobile Usability report have been retired," yet older checklists still point to them. Our guide to who owns your website and Google profile covers getting access.

Check this first, on your own phone, because a site that ranks well still loses work if the call button fails. Open the home page and a service page, tap the number, send a test form and look for anything covering the page. In our study, 3,941 of 4,433 contractor homepages had a click-to-call link; 2,605 had a form.

1. The site opens on a phone, securely. Type your address into your phone's browser. It should open quickly with a padlock and no security warning. HTTPS is the secure version of a web address, and it's on Google's page experience checklist. An expired security certificate shows visitors a warning instead of your site, so ask your host when yours renews.

2. Tapping your number starts a call. Tap the number in the header and on a service page. It should dial, and the call should reach someone who answers. If you use call tracking numbers, check that each one still forwards to your line.

3. Forms reach you. Send a test request from every form. It should arrive within minutes, in an inbox someone checks. A form that sends to a former employee's email loses estimates silently.

4. Nothing covers the call button. Google's checklist asks whether pages avoid "intrusive interstitials," meaning pop-ups that cover the content. On a phone, a chat window or coupon pop-up can sit right over your number. Make sure it can be closed and doesn't open on top of the call button.

Site counts: Mindflow contractor website study, saved homepages, October 2026, from the saved files as collected.

It should, and it's a two-minute check. Open your Google Business Profile, find the website link and tap it. It should land on a live page, usually your home page or that location's page, not an error, an old domain or a chain of redirects. After a rebuild or domain change, this link is easy to miss.

5. Your Business Profile links to a working page. Check any appointment or booking link on the profile too. The rest of the profile is covered on our Google Business Profile page.

Google has to be able to visit a page, called crawling, before it can show it. Two things commonly block it: a robots.txt file telling search engines to stay out, and a firewall or content delivery network (CDN), the service that sits in front of many sites to speed them up and filter traffic, turning crawlers away.

6. robots.txt isn't blocking key pages. robots.txt is a small file at yourdomain.com/robots.txt that tells search engines which parts of the site to skip. Open Search Console's robots.txt report and look for errors. Then paste a key page into URL Inspection; it tells you whether robots.txt blocks that page.

7. Your host or firewall lets search crawlers in. In URL Inspection, run the live test on your home page; it "fetches and examines the URL in real time." If it fails while the page opens fine for you, something between Google and your site, such as a firewall, CDN or server setting, is likely stopping it. Google's AI-features guidance asks owners to make sure crawling is allowed "by any CDN or hosting infrastructure." ChatGPT's crawler is a separate setting, covered in our guide on how to show up in ChatGPT answers.

Being indexed means Google has stored the page and can show it in results. Google's stated goal is "to get the canonical version of every important page indexed." For a contractor, that means the home page, each service page and each town page. Two free reports tell you which pages are in and why the others aren't.

8. No "noindex" on pages you want found. A noindex tag tells Google not to show a page. It's often left on by accident after a redesign. On WordPress, the setting "Discourage search engines from indexing this site" adds one to every page. Paste each key page into URL Inspection; "URL is on Google" means it's eligible to appear. Don't block a page in robots.txt and add noindex at once: Google says that for noindex to work, the page "must not be blocked by a robots.txt file."

9. Service and town pages are indexed. The Page indexing report lists pages that aren't indexed, each with a reason. On an important page, act on "URL marked 'noindex'", "URL blocked by robots.txt", "Server error (5xx)", "Soft 404" (a page that says "not found" but tells Google it's fine) and "Crawled - currently not indexed."

10. Each page has one version. The same page can often load at several addresses: with and without "www," or over http and https. Google picks one to show, called the canonical. In URL Inspection, compare the "Google-selected canonical" with the address you'd choose. If they differ, ask your developer to redirect the extra versions to one.

They should send visitors and Google to the closest matching page. When a page moves or is renamed without a redirect, anyone following an old link, bookmark or search result hits a "not found" error, a 404. Google recommends "a permanent server-side redirect whenever possible," such as a 301, for pages that move.

11. Old links still go somewhere useful. In the Page indexing report, look at "Not found (404)." A 404 is fine for a page you removed on purpose with nothing to replace it. It isn't fine for a service page you renamed. Send the list to your developer with the new address for each. Planning a full rebuild or a new domain is a bigger job; our website redesign page explains how to protect what already brings calls.

It has to, because Google judges your site by its phone version. Google says it "uses the mobile version of a site's content, crawled with the smartphone agent, for indexing and ranking." A service list, area list or price note that shows on a computer but is cut from the phone layout may as well not exist for Google.

12. The phone version shows everything. Open a service page on your phone and on a computer, side by side. The text, towns, photos and contact details should match. Google also says "Don't lazy-load primary content upon user interaction": text that loads only after a tap or swipe may never be seen by Google. Tabs and accordions are fine.

Fast enough means "good" on Google's three Core Web Vitals, measures of real visitors' experience. Google's targets: the main content loads within 2.5 seconds, the page responds to a tap within 200 milliseconds, and the layout doesn't jump around, with a shift score of 0.1 or less. Search Console reports them from real visits; PageSpeed Insights tests one page.

13. Pages load and respond quickly. Open Core Web Vitals in Search Console and start with the mobile report, which groups your pages as good, needing improvement or poor. web.dev, Google's site for developers, judges each measure at "the 75th percentile of page loads," so most visits must meet the target, not only your fastest. Our guide to whether site speed affects SEO and AI answers explains each measure and what to fix first.

Keep speed in proportion. Google says it "always seeks to show the most relevant content, even if the page experience is sub-par." Speed fixes, such as resizing photos or trimming plugins, are usually developer work.

If your site uses structured data, it should pass Google's test and say the same thing as the page. Structured data is code, invisible to visitors, that labels facts such as your business name, phone and hours. Google says "Don't mark up content that is not visible to readers of the page."

14. Business markup is valid and true. Paste your home page into the Rich Results Test. Fix anything listed as an error, and check the facts: name, phone, hours and address should match the page and your Business Profile. Remove star-rating markup about your own business; Google recommends it only for sites that review other businesses. Our local business schema guide has a worked example and the common mistakes.

Many small contractor sites don't strictly need one. A sitemap is a file listing the pages you want found. Google says you may not need one if your site has "about 500 pages or fewer" and every important page is linked from others, and it doesn't rely on lots of videos or images to be found.

15. A sitemap, if your site needs one. In Search Console, open Sitemaps and submit the sitemap address, often yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml. Check that Google read it without errors. A sitemap helps Google discover pages, but Google says it "doesn't guarantee that all the items in your sitemap will be crawled and indexed."

Run the whole list after any change to the site: a redesign, a new theme or plugin, a hosting move or a new domain. Between changes, a monthly look at Page indexing and Core Web Vitals in Search Console, plus a test call and form, catches most problems. That schedule is our view, not a Google rule.

Items 1 to 5, 8 and 15 are usually owner or office-manager jobs. Redirects, duplicate versions, firewall settings and speed are developer jobs. When you hand one over, send the page address, the exact label from the Search Console report and a screenshot.

Once the site is healthy, our home-service SEO handbook covers what comes next.

Here is how Mindflow does it. Technical checks are part of our one marketing program for home-service businesses, which includes SEO with AI search optimization, your Google Business Profile, reviews and conversion work on your current site. We check that calls and forms are tracked. Conversion work runs on WordPress, Webflow, Wix, Squarespace and custom sites.

If you'd rather have the checks done and put in order for your own team, our Audit & Roadmap is $1,500 for one metro or $2,500 multi-metro or multi-location: "A full audit and a 90-day plan you can run yourself or hand to us." If the site needs replacing, a website project starts at $5,000, larger sites from $8,500, and you own the files and copy once paid. Youssef Hodaigui has done SEO since 2004.

How long after a fix does Google notice? It varies by page and site. In URL Inspection you can ask Google to recrawl a fixed page, but Google says a request "does not guarantee that the page will appear in the Google Index," and there's a daily limit on requests. For many pages at once, submitting a sitemap is the better route. Check the report again after a few weeks.

Does site speed affect calls or rankings? It can affect both, but relevance comes first. Google says its ranking systems "look to reward content that provides a good page experience," and also that it shows the most relevant content even when the experience is sub-par. A slow page that frustrates visitors on a phone can lose a call before rankings matter.

Is there still a Google mobile-friendly test? No. Google retired the Mobile-Friendly Test and Search Console's Mobile Usability report in December 2023. To check the phone version now, open your pages on a phone, read the Core Web Vitals report and PageSpeed Insights, and run URL Inspection's live test to see whether Google can fetch the page.

Should I block AI bots from my website? Decide bot by bot. Blocking Google's crawler removes you from Google Search, including its AI features. Google offers a separate control, Google-Extended, "To limit AI training and grounding in some of Google's other systems." OpenAI's search and training crawlers are also separate. Block training if you want; keep search crawlers allowed if you want to be found.

All read November 1, 2026.

• Google Search Central, Understanding Core Web Vitals and Google search results (last updated December 10, 2025)
• Google Search Central, Understanding page experience in Google Search results (last updated September 22, 2026)
• Google Search Central, Mobile site and mobile-first indexing best practices (last updated December 10, 2025)
• Google Search Central, Introduction to robots.txt (last updated December 10, 2025)
• Google Search Central, Block Search indexing with noindex (last updated December 10, 2025)
• Google Search Central, Redirects and Google Search (last updated April 14, 2026)
• Google Search Central, Learn about sitemaps (last updated December 10, 2025)
• Google Search Central, AI features and your website (last updated December 10, 2025)
• Google Search Central, General structured data guidelines (last updated July 10, 2026)
• Google Search Central Blog, The Search Console mobile friendly testing tool (retired) (retirement notice dated December 1, 2023)
• Search Console Help, URL Inspection tool, Page indexing report and robots.txt report
• web.dev, Web Vitals (last updated October 31, 2024)
• WordPress.org, Settings Reading Screen
• Mindflow, Contractor website study (sites crawled October 2026)

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