What should an electrician's website have?

An electrician's website needs the same seven things a plumber's does, with two differences. It needs a phone number that dials when tapped, a line for each job people search for, your license wording the way the state writes it, the towns you drive to, six real photos, a link to your Google reviews, and a short form. The first difference is that electrical work splits into emergency calls and planned jobs more sharply than most trades, and the page has to serve both. The second is that Nebraska licenses electrical contractors at the state level, so the license line is a state matter, not a city one. Here is what goes on the page, in the order a visitor sees it.

Two people. The first has half the house dark, a breaker that won't reset, or an outlet that's warm to the touch. They search on a phone, they're worried, and they call the first local result that looks like it answers. The second is planning: a Level 2 charger for the new car, a panel upgrade before the basement finish, a standby generator, a hot tub circuit, a kitchen remodel. That person reads the page, checks the reviews, compares two or three, and might fill out a form. The emergency visitor needs the top of the page. The planner needs the rest of it.

• A tap-to-call phone number, the same one on the van and the Google listing
• The business name as it appears on the invoice and the license
• The towns you drive to, by name
• Hours, and whether the phone gets answered on nights and weekends
• One photo of the van or a tech on a job, not a stock photo

If you take emergency calls, say the hours you actually answer. A page that says 24/7 and goes to voicemail at midnight earns a one-star review by morning. A page that says "we answer until 9pm and first thing the next morning" gets the call the next morning.

People search for the thing that's broken or the thing they want installed, not for "electrician". Each of those is a search someone types, and each should be a line on your site with a sentence under it that says you do it, in the words a homeowner would use. "Panel upgrade" and "service upgrade" are the same job; the homeowner searches for the first one.

• Troubleshooting: lost power, tripping breakers, dead outlets, flickering lights
• Panel upgrades and replacements, including the old brands the insurance company asks about
• EV charger installation, Level 2, in the garage or outside
• Standby and portable generator hookups and transfer switches
• New circuits: hot tubs, kitchen appliances, shop and garage power, basement finishes
• Lighting, ceiling fans, outdoor and landscape lighting
• Whole-house rewires and knob-and-tube replacement in the older neighborhoods
• Commercial: tenant finishes, service calls, lighting retrofits, if you do it

Leave off the jobs you don't want. If you never want to crawl another attic in July, don't list rewires. A site that lists a job gets you the calls for it.

A homeowner with a dead outlet and a property manager with a tenant finish are reading for different things. If you do both, give each its own section with its own list, or its own page on a five-page build. A homeowner who lands on a page about tenant finishes and lighting retrofits assumes you don't do houses. If you mostly do one, say so and put the other in a sentence at the bottom. Don't write "residential and commercial" as one phrase and hope both visitors find themselves in it.

Nebraska licenses electrical contractors and electricians through the State Electrical Division, and the license is what a customer can check. Put the line on the page, near the phone number or in the footer, and write it the way the license reads: the license type and the number, exactly. Copy it from the license the state issued you, not from memory, and check it against the renewal each year. The division's site (opens in a new tab) is where the license types, the renewal dates and the lookup live; go there for the wording rather than trusting a page that was written years ago.

Whether "licensed, bonded and insured" belongs on the page depends on whether all three are true today. If you carry liability insurance, say so. If you're bonded, say so. Don't put the phrase on the site because other sites have it. A customer who asks for the certificate and gets a pause remembers the pause.

"Serving the Omaha metro" tells a customer in Gretna nothing. Name the towns: Bellevue, Papillion, La Vista, Gretna and Springfield on the Sarpy side, then Ralston, Elkhorn and Plattsmouth if you go there. If you cross into Council Bluffs, check what Iowa requires before you put an Iowa town on the list. Use the same list you gave Google when you set up the listing; that setup is its own guide. The list is for the customer first, so they know you'll come, and for search second, so the town names are on the page.

A customer can't judge electrical work, but they can tell a tidy panel from a mess of wire, and they can tell a real photo from a stock one. You need about six: the van, a tech at work, a finished panel with the door open, a charger on a garage wall, a generator install, and the crew if there is one. Take them in daylight, hold the phone level, and don't stage them. If the van isn't lettered yet, that decision is here; the lettered van is the photo that gets used everywhere.

Link to them instead of pasting them. A "Read our reviews on Google" link near the phone number lets the customer see they're real and leave one of their own. A carousel of quotes with first names does neither. If you have four reviews, link to the four; the planner reads every one. Getting the first ten is its own guide.

Yes, a short one, and it's for the planner. Four fields: name, phone, town, and a box for what they want done. Don't ask for a preferred date or how they found you; every extra field is a reason to call somebody else. Put a line above it that says when you reply, and mean it. Send yourself a test the day the site goes live and once a month after, because a form that lands in an inbox nobody reads is worse than no form.

1. 01

   One page is enough when

   Every job fits on one list, the service area is one metro, and the person updating the site is the person answering the phone. Most shops with one or two vans are here.

2. 02

   Five pages earn it when

   You do enough EV charger or panel work that each wants its own page with its own photos and its own questions answered, or the commercial side needs a pitch of its own.

3. 03

   What doesn't earn it

   A blog, a gallery page with four photos, and a services page that repeats the home page. Every one of those goes stale, and a stale page reads worse than no page.

• Tap the phone number from a phone and make sure it dials
• Send the form to yourself and check it lands somewhere you read
• Read the hours line out loud and ask whether it's true on a Saturday night
• Check the license line against the license the state issued you
• Make sure the name, the number and the towns match the Google listing and the van door
• Confirm the domain is registered in your name, not the web company's

A website is $100 a page, so a one-page site is $100 and a five-page site is $500. Local SEO is $50 a page on top. Ignition, at $375, is the logo, the one-page site with its SEO and the Google Business Profile setup together, which is usually the right buy for a new company with nothing built yet. The price sheet has the rest, and every line includes the files.

WEBSITES ARE $100 A PAGE ON THE SHEET, SEO $50 A PAGE. IGNITION IS $375 WITH THE LOGO AND THE GOOGLE LISTING.

The business name as it's licensed, the phone number you answer, the towns, the list of jobs you want calls for, your license line copied from the license, whatever logo you have, and six phone photos of the van and the work. If you'd rather write the copy, send it; if not, we write it from what you send and you approve it before it goes live. It all runs by email, and you get a price and a date back.