The short answer
Most roofing work you don’t pay per lead for starts on Google. Get your Google Business Profile complete and busy, ask every customer for a review on the day, and give each job and each area you cover its own page with your number on every screen. Turn Google Ads up when storms hit. Lead sites can top up quiet weeks, but the enquiries are usually shared and they end when the membership does.
This guide is written from what we do on our own trade firms and what we build for clients. We sell this work, so read it knowing we’re not neutral. Our first roofing client’s site launches soon, so the results we quote come from our own emergency electricians, where demand arrives in sudden spikes the same way storm work does.
1. Make your Google Business Profile the busiest one in your area
For a lot of local searches, the map comes before any website. The profile is free, and most roofers leave theirs half done.
- Category: “Roofing contractor” as the main one. Add the others that match real work, such as gutter cleaning or chimney services.
- Service area: list the towns you actually cover, not the whole county.
- Hours: real ones. If you offer emergency cover, say so in the description rather than setting 24 hours you won’t answer.
- Services: add each job with a “from” price where you’re happy to commit to one.
- Photos and posts: one job a week, before and after from the same spot. It shows you’re working and gives people a reason to pick you.
2. Ask for a review on the day the job finishes
People pick from the map by stars and how recent the reviews are. The best time to ask is while the scaffold is coming down and the customer is pleased. Send a short WhatsApp with a direct link to your review form, and reply to every review in your own words. A run of recent reviews does more than a big total from three years ago.
Never buy reviews or only ask the customers you know are happy. Google can remove reviews or suspend a profile for it.
3. Give every job people search for its own page
Someone with a leak searches differently from someone planning a new roof. A single “Services” page can’t answer both. The pages that earn their keep for most roofers are storm damage, leaks and missing tiles, flat roofs, full replacements, chimneys and leadwork, and fascias and gutters. Each one needs your number first, photos of that job, what it usually costs and how quickly you come out.
Storm pages have to exist before the weather turns. A page written the morning after a storm is too late to rank.
4. Show the towns you cover properly
“Covering Greater Manchester” in the footer tells Google very little. A section or page for each area you work in, with how long it takes you to get there and jobs you’ve done nearby, gives searchers in that town a reason to ring you rather than someone further away. Copying one page and swapping the town name does more harm than good.
5. Make it easy to ring from a phone
Most people searching for a roofer are on a phone, often outside looking up at the problem. Put a call button and a WhatsApp button on every screen, and a quote form that lets them send a photo. Every extra tap loses some of them to the next roofer on the list.
6. Turn ads up when the weather turns
Google Ads let you be at the top the day after a storm, while your pages and reviews are still building. Keep a small budget running, turn it up in storm weeks and down in dry spells. Pay Google directly so you see every penny, and track which ads bring calls rather than clicks.
Where lead sites fit
Lead sites and directories can be worth it when you’re new and need work in weeks, or to fill quiet months. The catch is that the reviews and visibility stay on their site, and the work stops when you stop paying. We’ve looked at what Checkatrade actually costs if you’re weighing one up.
What to measure each month
Your Google Business Profile shows calls, website clicks and direction requests under Performance. Write those down on the first of every month, along with form enquiries and WhatsApps. If a number isn’t going up after three months, something in the steps above isn’t working, and you’ll know which.
If you’d rather we ran it
This is what our monthly plans do for roofers, from £119 a month: the profile, reviews, storm and area pages, and ads that follow the weather, with a short report on your calls each month. See what we’d run for a roofer.