From 7 to about 37 indexable pages: service pages for a trade business.

Why page count matters

A trade business with a seven page website usually has one page trying to cover every service. Google sees one page about many things and struggles to show it for any one of them. A customer searching for a specific job in a specific town lands on a general page, if they find the business at all.

Separate pages for separate services and areas give each search a page that answers it. But more pages only help if each one is genuinely useful. Thirty near-identical pages with the town name swapped are worse than seven good ones, because they spread the site thin and can be treated as low quality.

Planning pages without thin copies

We planned the new pages from three questions, answered with the business rather than guessed. First, what services does the business actually provide? Each distinct service with its own customers, process or price gets its own page. Services that are really the same job described differently stay together.

Second, where does the business genuinely work? Only areas where it takes jobs, can show work and wants enquiries. A location page for somewhere you don't serve is a promise you can't keep.

Third, what would a customer need to know that differs by page? This decides whether a page deserves to exist. If the answer for a service or area is the same as on another page, the pages are merged, not multiplied.

That gave us four page types. Service pages for each distinct service, covering process, uses, finishes, maintenance and typical questions. Area pages for each area genuinely covered, with local projects and property types common there. Supporting articles answering questions customers ask before buying. And project pages for finished jobs worth showing, with photos, the brief and what was done.

How we built them

The rebuild covered a redesign in Figma, a rebuild on a staging site, the new service and area pages, a blog, SEO setup and lead tracking in Google Tag Manager.

Each page type got a template, so visitors know where to find things and the team can add pages later without starting from scratch. AI drafted each page from the template and the business's own notes. A person then checked every service detail, location and claim against what the business actually does, and rewrote anything generic.

Every page was then compared with the others, and where two said the same thing, one was rewritten or they were merged. Internal links tie area pages to the services offered there and service pages to the areas and relevant articles. And every quote form and call button was tracked from day one, so we can see which pages produce enquiries, not just visits.

Area pages done properly

Area pages are where most trade sites go wrong. Ours follow a few rules. Only real areas, where the business works and wants work. Real local content: projects completed nearby, property types common in the area, and practical details such as travel or access, written for that place. No town name swapping: if the only difference between two pages would be the place name, there is one page, not two. And one clear, tracked next step, either a quote form or a call button.

If a business can't say anything specific about an area, it shouldn't have a page for it yet. Add one when there is a project to show.

Google's guidance warns against pages made mainly to rank for many places with little unique content. Location pages with real local detail are a different thing.

Measuring whether it worked

Page count is an input, not a result. After launch we watch indexed pages in Search Console to check Google is including the new pages, impressions and clicks by page to see which services and areas are starting to appear, and enquiries by page from the tracked forms and call buttons. Pages with no impressions after a few months are candidates to improve or merge.

How many pages should a trade business have? As many as it has distinct services and genuine areas, plus useful articles. For some that is 15, for others 50. The test is whether each page says something the others don't.

If your site has a handful of pages trying to cover everything, start with a website sprint from £3,500. We plan the pages with you, build the templates and get the site measured from day one.