The 10-Point Roofing SEO Services Checklist I Run Before I Quote Retainer Work

Every roofing contractor who calls me has already been burned at least once by a vendor who promised SEO results and delivered ranking reports. Before I quote any retainer work, I run through the same 10-point checklist on every site. Not as a sales exercise — as a diagnostic. It tells me where the work is, how long it will take, and whether the problems are fixable in a 3-month window or require a 12-month rebuild.

Here is the full checklist, exactly as I run it.

The 10-point roofing SEO services checklist

1. Google Business Profile health

I check the number of photos (minimum 50 geotagged job photos), the last post date (should be within 7 days), service categories (should include every core service, not just "Roofing Contractor"), and the Q&A section. A neglected GBP is the fastest and cheapest leak to fix — and often the one with the highest return.

2. Schema markup accuracy

I paste every page URL into Google's Rich Results Test. I'm looking for LocalBusiness, Service, and BreadcrumbList schemas without validation errors. Missing schema is a missed signal to Google about what you do and where you do it.

3. NAP citation consistency

I pull your listings from BrightLocal or Whitespark against your current business name, address, and phone number. Any mismatch — old address, old phone, DBA vs. legal name — fragments your local authority. I typically find 15–40 inconsistencies on the first audit of a site that's been live for 5+ years.

4. Page speed (mobile LCP)

Largest Contentful Paint on mobile. The target is under 2.5 seconds. Most roofing sites I audit are hitting 5–9 seconds because of uncompressed hero images, render-blocking fonts, and third-party chat scripts loading on the critical path. Every second over 2.5 suppresses your mobile map pack position.

5. Content silo architecture

I map every service page and check whether they link to and from a topical hub. A roofing site needs a clear hierarchy: roof replacement → shingle replacement, flat roof, metal roofing, TPO, modified bitumen. Each sub-service page needs to internally link back to the parent and to related sub-services. Flat architecture means thin authority distribution.

6. Local link profile

I pull the backlink report from Ahrefs or Semrush and count domain-relevant links: local chamber, roofing suppliers, building material associations, local news mentions, contractor directories. A roofing site with 200 backlinks from generic link farms and zero from local sources is being penalized, not rewarded, for its link count.

7. Review velocity and recency

Google's local algorithm weighs recency heavily. A roofing company with 200 reviews and the last one six months ago loses map pack ground to a competitor with 40 reviews and three in the last 30 days. I check the trailing 90-day review rate and the average star rating. Under 3.5 stars requires a reputation repair plan before any SEO work makes sense.

8. Internal linking structure

I run a crawl of the full site and flag orphan pages (pages with zero internal links pointing to them) and link equity dead-ends (pages that receive links but link nowhere useful). Both are common on roofing sites that have had blog content added by multiple vendors over time without a coherent architecture review.

9. Conversion tracking fidelity

SEO without conversion tracking is guesswork. I check that Google Analytics 4 is firing on every page, that form submissions and phone call clicks are tracked as goal conversions, and that the data is being read correctly in Google Ads if the account is running paid campaigns. At least 40% of the roofing sites I audit have broken or missing conversion tracking — meaning their vendor has been optimizing blindly.

10. Mobile user experience

I load the site on an iPhone SE (the smallest common viewport) and walk through the buyer journey: can I read the headline, find the phone number, and submit a form without pinching or zooming? If any of those fail, the mobile conversion rate is suppressed regardless of how well the site ranks. Mobile UX is an SEO issue because Google uses mobile-first indexing.

If you want to understand what these services cost and how an independent specialist delivers them differently from a traditional vendor, start with the breakdown of what a roofing SEO company actually does. And if you're ready to run these audits yourself, the 10 DIY roofing SEO plays covers the items you can act on this week without hiring anyone.

Want me to run the same audit on your live site? Thirty minutes, every leak named, fix-list yours to keep.