Marketing Support
SEO for roofing contractors
The work happens in March and the answer arrives in August, by which time four other things have changed. The delay is the whole problem.
Something you can audit later
A written record of what was changed and when. Not a report of activity — a log precise enough that a movement six months out can be lined up against a specific decision rather than against a general effort.
A baseline captured before anything is touched. Where the pages stood, what traffic arrived, what people were searching for to reach you. Taken first, because it cannot be taken afterwards, and its absence is the most common reason nobody can tell whether the last engagement worked.
And pages that each answer one question. Written for somebody who typed something specific and needs an answer, rather than assembled to contain the right words in the right density.
Cause and effect are separated by a season
Ordinary business decisions come with feedback. Change a price and you learn something that month. Change a crew’s route and Friday tells you whether it helped. Search does not work like that: the work is done now, the effect appears over months, and it is delivered by a system that publishes no formula and revises itself without telling anyone.
The consequence is not that measurement is hard. It is that the ordinary method of learning — try it and watch — is simply unavailable, because by the time the result appears, the season has turned, a competitor has rebuilt their site, and the platform has changed how it ranks. Any movement has several honest explanations, and picking one is a guess dressed as an insight.
This is also why the field is so full of confident numbers. When causation cannot be observed directly, statistics arrive to fill the space, and almost none of the widely repeated ones survive a search for their primary source. We could not trace them, so this page does not use them — neither to sell the work nor to describe it.
What is left is unglamorous and actually reliable: change one thing at a time where you can, write down the position before you start, date every change, and accept that the answer arrives late. That will not make the loop fast. It makes it possible to run at all, which is the difference between the second engagement and the first.
Written to be found is still written to be true
Content produced for search is subject to the same rules as any other advertising, and two classes come up constantly in roofing. The first is the broad environmental claim. Under 16 CFR 260.4, “It is deceptive to misrepresent, directly or by implication, that a product, package, or service offers a general environmental benefit.” A page about energy-efficient roofing is squarely inside that.
Naming a manufacturer certification programme is the other. At 16 CFR 260.6, “It is deceptive to misrepresent, directly or by implication, that a product, package, or service has been endorsed or certified by an independent third party.” Roofing content names manufacturer programmes constantly, and naming one is a claim about a relationship rather than a decoration on a page.
Both are guides addressed to the marketer — you, and this desk when it publishes on your behalf. Neither tells you what you may install or what any programme requires. The practical rule we work to is narrow: if a page would say it, you have to be able to support it before it goes up, and a claim nobody can support gets cut rather than softened. That is a publishing standard, not a legal opinion about your circumstances.
This describes two federal guides in general terms. It is not legal advice, it makes no determination about your products, your certifications or any claim you make, and other rules may reach the same page. Those questions belong with your own counsel; the department page below sets out where this work stops.
Where the pages come from and go
This desk is one part of Marketing Support, which carries the department boundary — including the line on reviews and endorsements that this page does not restate.
What owners ask before spending again
How long before this shows anything?
Longer than anyone wants and longer than most of the industry admits. We deliberately do not publish a timeframe, because any number we gave you would be a marketing claim rather than a commitment, and because the honest answer depends on your market, your existing site and what your competitors are doing while you wait. What we will do is write the starting position down so the question can eventually be answered with your own evidence.
Why is there no data on this page?
Because we could not source it. Search marketing runs on a handful of endlessly repeated figures about click-through by position and how many people never reach the second page, and we could not trace those to a primary document we would put in front of you. So they are not here. The argument on this page does not need them.
Can you guarantee a position?
No, and nobody honestly can — the ranking decision belongs to a platform that publishes no formula and changes it without notice. What can be guaranteed is the record: what was changed, when, and what the position and traffic were beforehand. That is the part within anyone’s control.
We tried this before and could not tell if it worked.
That is the normal outcome, and it is usually a measurement failure rather than a work failure. If nobody wrote down where things stood before the work started, then any later movement has several plausible causes and no way to choose between them. Starting again is often cheaper than trying to reconstruct what happened.
What do you actually write?
Pages that answer one question a real person typed, in language a homeowner would use rather than the phrase an industry uses internally. The test is whether somebody who arrived with that question leaves with an answer. Content assembled to contain words rather than to answer anything tends to age badly and is increasingly obvious to everyone, readers included.
Do you make claims about energy savings or manufacturer certifications?
Only ones you can support, and we will ask you to support them before publishing. Both are regulated claim classes with their own guides, set out below. A page that ranks and then cannot back up what it says has not helped you.
The claim guides referenced above
- 16 CFR 260.4 — General environmental benefit claims — U.S. Office of the Federal Register (eCFR)
- 16 CFR 260.6 — Certifications and seals of approval — U.S. Office of the Federal Register (eCFR)
Ask what your position was a year ago
If nobody wrote it down, the last engagement cannot be judged — and that is worth knowing before commissioning another.