Most trades do not need a fancy website. They need to be found when someone nearby searches for their service, to look like a real operation when that person taps through on a phone, and to make asking for a quote easy. Here is the setup we would pick at each stage of a trade business, including the stages where you should not hire us.
What a trade website has to do
- Show up in the map pack for your service and town. For most local service businesses the map pack drives more enquiries than the ordinary listings below it.
- Load fast and read well on a phone. Over half of local traffic is on a phone, and a lot of local searching happens in a vehicle.
- Say what you do, where you work and how to get a quote on the first screen.
- Keep the quote request short, and answer it quickly. A request left until the evening often goes to whoever replied first.
- Carry your reviews, which weigh heavily with people who are new to the area.
Our picks, by stage
1. New or sole-operator trade: Google Business Profile and a one-page site
If you work one town, mostly from referrals, start with the Google Business Profile. It is free: set the right categories and your service area, add photos of real jobs, and ask every customer for a review. Add a one-page site on a website builder ($0–600 a year) with your services, your area and a quote form. In much of Haldimand County, where few businesses compete seriously in search, this alone can be enough to show up.
2. Established trade in one market: a freelancer-built brochure site
Once referrals are steady and you want search to add to them, a five-to-eight page site from a freelancer ($1,500–4,000) gives each main service its own page. Make sure the quote names who writes the copy, and includes page titles, analytics and a working quote form.
3. Trade covering several towns or competing in Hamilton: an agency build with service-area pages
If you serve Hamilton, Burlington and the towns around them, you are in the most contested local search market in the region. That takes a page per service and per area with real local detail, SEO foundations from day one, and a Google Business Profile built around the neighbourhoods you actually serve, because proximity does a lot of the ranking in a city this spread out. An agency build runs $4,000–10,000, and local SEO on top runs $800–2,000 a month if you want ongoing work.
Prices at a glance
| Stage | Setup | Typical cost |
|---|---|---|
| 1. New or sole operator | Google Business Profile + one-page builder site | $0–600 a year |
| 2. Established, one market | Freelancer brochure site, 5–8 pages | $1,500–4,000 |
| 3. Several towns or Hamilton | Agency build with service-area pages | $4,000–10,000, plus optional local SEO at $800–2,000 a month |
Hamilton-area ranges published on this site for 2026. Checked 2026-10-23. Hosting and domain run roughly $150–500 a year on top of stages 2 and 3.
Keep comparing
- Agency vs freelancer vs doing it yourselfThe three ways to get a business website, side by side, with who should pick each.
- What a website costs in HamiltonReal 2026 price ranges by tier, what moves the number, and how Haldimand County compares.
- What SEO costs in HamiltonMonthly ranges for Google Business Profile, local SEO and full SEO, and when it pays off.
- Compare website options and costsEvery cost guide, comparison, service and town page in one place.