How Often Should You Update Your Contractor Website

62% of contractor websites haven’t been meaningfully updated in over two years. Outdated pricing, old phone numbers, discontinued services, and project photos from 2019 sit there silently killing your credibility while you wonder why the phone doesn’t ring.

Google’s freshness algorithm measures how recently your content was updated. Pages updated within the last 90 days rank 6-12% higher on average for local service queries compared to identical content that hasn’t been touched in a year.

Your website isn’t a billboard you set and forget. It’s a living sales tool that needs regular maintenance to keep generating leads.

The update schedule that actually works

Different sections of your website need updates at different intervals. Trying to overhaul everything at once leads to burnout and abandoned efforts. A structured cadence keeps your site fresh without consuming your weekends.

Weekly: 15-30 minutes

Google Business Profile posts and website blog content benefit from weekly attention. You don’t need to write a 2,000-word article every week. A 300-word post answering a common customer question counts.

“How much does a water heater replacement cost in [your city]?” takes 20 minutes to write and captures a search query that homeowners type into Google every day.

A roofing contractor on Reddit started publishing one blog post per month answering common customer questions — “how much does a roof replacement cost in [city]” and “signs you need a new roof.” Within 6 months, those posts ranked on the first page of Google and generated 15-20 organic leads per month. Total content investment: about 2 hours per month of writing.

If weekly blog content feels unsustainable, even bi-weekly posts put you ahead of 91% of contractor websites that haven’t published a new page in six months or more. Check our guide on content that actually ranks for topics that drive traffic.

Monthly: 1-2 hours

Project photos and testimonials should be refreshed monthly. Finished a kitchen remodel last week? Add it to your gallery. Got a five-star Google review? Pull the best quote and add it to your homepage or service page.

73% of homeowners say recent project photos influence their hiring decision more than any other website element. A gallery full of jobs from 2021 tells visitors you either stopped doing good work or stopped caring about your website. Neither message helps you.

Contractors on ContractorTalk consistently emphasize that real job site photos outperform stock photography. One contractor described replacing all stock images on his website with actual before-and-after photos from his last 20 jobs. His bounce rate dropped 18% and time-on-page increased by 40 seconds — both signals that visitors trusted the site more.

Monthly is also the right cadence for checking your site’s technical health. Run a speed test. Click every link. Submit your own contact form. Fill out a quote request as if you were a customer. You’d be surprised how many contractor websites have broken contact forms that have been silently losing leads for months.

Review your website speed and its impact on lead conversion to understand what benchmarks to hit.

Quarterly: 2-4 hours

Service pages need quarterly reviews. Pricing changes, new services you’ve added, services you’ve dropped, updated warranties, and seasonal adjustments all belong in a quarterly refresh.

Google’s crawlers revisit pages on a schedule influenced by how often those pages change. A service page updated quarterly gets recrawled more frequently than one that hasn’t changed in 18 months. More frequent crawling means ranking changes from your SEO improvements show up faster.

Each quarterly update should also check your service area information. Expanded into a new zip code? Added a new city to your territory? Your service area pages need to reflect where you actually work, and new areas need their own pages.

Review competitor websites quarterly too. If three competitors added online booking and you still only list a phone number, you’re falling behind in ways that directly impact conversion rates.

Annually: full audit

Once a year, do a complete website audit. This isn’t a redesign. It’s a systematic review of every page to identify what’s outdated, what’s performing, and what’s missing.

Your annual audit should cover:

Check every phone number, email address, and physical address for accuracy. 23% of visitors bounce within 10 seconds when they encounter outdated contact information.

Review Google Analytics data to identify your top-performing pages and your worst-performing pages. Double down on content similar to what works. Fix or remove what doesn’t.

Verify that every service you offer has its own dedicated page. If you added panel upgrades to your electrical services eight months ago but never built a page for it, you’re invisible for “panel upgrade [your city]” searches.

Test your site on multiple devices. What looked great on a phone two years ago might have layout issues today as screen sizes shift. Mobile traffic accounts for 68% of home service website visits. A broken mobile experience means a broken business.

Update your about page with any new certifications, awards, team members, or equipment. Read about which pages your contractor website needs to make sure you’re not missing anything structural.

What Google rewards when you update

Google’s freshness signals aren’t just about changing the copyright year in your footer. The algorithm looks at several specific factors.

Content changes to the main body text carry the most weight. Updating a paragraph on your AC repair page with current pricing and a reference to a recent job signals relevance more than changing a sidebar widget.

New pages signal an active, growing business. A contractor adding one service area page per month tells Google this is a business that’s expanding and worth ranking. A static site with the same 8 pages for three years tells Google nothing new is happening.

An HVAC company featured on the FeedbackWrench blog added one city-specific service page per week for 3 months (12 pages total). Each page targeted “[service] in [city name]” keywords. After 6 months, those pages generated 35% of the company’s total organic traffic. Companies with specific service pages saw 3x more organic traffic than those using a single “service areas” page.

Backlink growth matters alongside content freshness. Updated content that attracts new links from other websites gets a double freshness boost. Write a pricing guide for your trade, and local real estate blogs or home improvement sites might link to it.

Frequency of changes establishes a crawl pattern. Google allocates crawl budget based partly on how often your site changes. A site updated weekly gets crawled more frequently than one updated annually, which means your new content gets indexed and starts ranking faster.

Pages that rank on the first page of Google for local service queries were last updated a median of 47 days ago. Pages ranking on page two were last updated a median of 142 days ago. Freshness alone doesn’t guarantee rankings, but stale content correlates strongly with declining positions.

When you need a full redesign vs. incremental updates

Not every website problem is solved by updating content. Some sites need to be rebuilt from scratch.

Signs you need a redesign

Your site isn’t mobile-responsive. If it was built before 2018 without responsive design, patching it with CSS tweaks costs almost as much as rebuilding. Google’s mobile-first indexing means a non-responsive site is actively penalized in rankings.

Page load times exceed 4 seconds. If your site runs on an outdated platform with bloated code, no amount of image compression fixes the underlying architecture. A fresh build on a modern platform can cut load times by 50-70%.

Your design looks dated. Rounded glossy buttons, stock photo headers, and Flash elements (yes, some contractor sites still have them) scream 2012. Homeowners associate outdated design with an outdated business. 48% of consumers say website design is the top factor in judging a business’s credibility.

You can’t easily add or edit content. If updating a service page requires calling your web developer and waiting three weeks, your site’s content management system is a bottleneck. Modern platforms let you make changes yourself in minutes.

The cost comparison

A full contractor website redesign runs $5,000-15,000 depending on page count, custom features, and the platform. A basic 8-10 page site on a modern builder costs $3,000-5,000. A custom-designed site with online booking, chat, and advanced SEO starts at $8,000-12,000.

Ongoing maintenance costs $100-300/month if you hire someone, or just your time if you do it yourself. That maintenance includes hosting, security updates, content updates, and technical monitoring.

Redesigning every 5-7 years is typical for contractor websites. Between redesigns, consistent updates keep the site performing. 90% of contractors don’t even have a functional website, according to industry estimates shared on the Owned and Operated podcast. For the 10% that do, simply keeping it updated puts you ahead of virtually every competitor. John Wilson (Wilson Companies) described his website as “the one marketing asset that works 24/7 whether I’m on a job or not.”

The contractors ranking highest in local search aren’t the ones with the newest websites. They’re the ones with the most consistently updated websites.

Your SEO foundation depends on a site that’s both technically sound and regularly refreshed with relevant content.

The content update that moves the needle most

If you only do one thing, update your service pages with current pricing ranges. Pricing content ranks disproportionately well because homeowners search for costs constantly, and few contractors provide the information.

“How much does AC repair cost in Denver” gets searched 2,400 times per month. If your AC repair page includes a section with current pricing ranges, you capture searches that competitors sending visitors to a generic “Contact Us for a Quote” page never will.

68% of homeowners say they research costs online before contacting a contractor, according to data shared across multiple contractor forums. A plumber on Reddit added pricing ranges to every service page and saw his organic traffic increase by 31% within 90 days — primarily from “[service] cost in [city]” searches that his competitors weren’t targeting because they refused to show prices.

Add a pricing section to each service page with realistic ranges. “AC repair in [City] typically costs $150-800 depending on the issue. Capacitor replacement runs $150-300. Refrigerant recharge runs $200-500. Compressor replacement runs $600-1,200.” Update these numbers annually.

This single change can increase organic traffic to service pages by 15-25% and improve conversion rates because visitors get the information they came for before deciding to call.

Common mistakes when updating

Changing URLs without redirects. If your water heater page lives at /water-heater-installation and you rebuild it at /services/water-heater, the old URL dies. Every link pointing to the old page breaks. Every search ranking for the old page evaporates. Always set up 301 redirects when changing page URLs.

Deleting pages that rank. Before removing any page, check Google Search Console to see if it generates impressions or clicks. A page you forgot about might be quietly driving 50 visitors per month. Delete it and those visitors go to a competitor.

Updating dates without updating content. Changing “2024 Pricing Guide” to “2026 Pricing Guide” without changing any actual content is something Google’s algorithm detects. The freshness signal applies to substantive content changes, not cosmetic date swaps.

Ignoring broken images and links. Every broken element on your site reduces trust. A single broken image on a service page reduces form submissions by 8% because visitors question whether the rest of your business is similarly neglected.

Your 30-day action plan

Week 1: Update your top 3 service pages with current pricing, recent project references, and a clear call-to-action. Check that all phone numbers and contact forms work.

Week 2: Add 3-5 new project photos to your gallery or service pages. Pull your best recent Google review and add it to your homepage.

Week 3: Write one blog post answering a question customers ask you every week. Publish it and share it on your Google Business Profile.

Week 4: Run a technical audit. Test page speed, check for broken links, verify mobile display, and submit your updated sitemap to Google Search Console.

Repeat monthly, and your site stays fresher than 95% of competitor websites in your market. That consistency compounds. Six months of regular updates builds a freshness pattern that Google rewards with incrementally better rankings each quarter.

Your website is the hub everything else connects to. Your Google Ads, your SEO efforts, your Google Business Profile, and your review strategy all drive traffic to a site that either converts visitors or loses them. Keeping that site updated isn’t optional maintenance. It’s the difference between a website that generates leads and one that just exists.