How many pages does a small business website need? Fewer than most quotes assume, and more than a one-page site gives you if you offer several things people search for separately. The number falls out of one question per page: would a customer look for this on its own?
Is there an ideal number of pages for SEO?
No. Google’s own SEO starter guide says the length of content alone does not matter for ranking, and that there is “no magical word count target, minimum or maximum”. It sets no number of pages either. What it asks for is content that is “helpful, reliable, and people-first”, and a site organised in a way that makes sense to the people using it.
Pages matter for a different reason. Google ranks pages, not sites, and a page can only be the best answer to one or two searches. A plumber whose boiler repair, bathroom fitting and blocked drain work all share one services page has one page trying to answer three different searches, and it will usually answer none of them as well as a competitor with a page for each.
So the count is an output, not a target. Decide which pages earn their place, and the number is whatever that comes to.
The five pages almost every business needs
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Home
Home says what you do, where, and how to get in touch, on the first screen of a phone. Most visitors decide here whether to read on.
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Services
Services gets a page per main service, or one page if you do one thing. More on the rule below.
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About
About is who is behind the business, how long you have done it, and anything a stranger can check: registrations, memberships, insurance.
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Contact
Contact gives a phone number that taps to call, a form, your hours, and the area you cover or the address customers come to.
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Privacy
Privacy explains what you do with the details people send you. The ICO says privacy information must be given at the time you collect personal data, so a contact form needs one, and it should be linked from the form itself.
Reviews, a gallery of your work and frequently asked questions can live on these pages rather than having pages of their own. They get their own page when there is too much to fit, not before.
When does a service deserve its own page?
A four-question rule to run against your own list of services:
- Do people search for it by name? “Boiler repair Wirral” is a search; “general enquiries” is not. If nobody types it, a page will not be found for it.
- Is it a different job, or the same job described differently? Boiler repair and boiler servicing may be one page with two prices. Boiler repair and bathroom fitting are two.
- Do you have something specific to say? A price or what drives it, photos of that work, how long it takes, the three questions customers ask before booking. If the page would be the same paragraph as the next one with the service name changed, it is not ready.
- Is it work you want more of? A page brings enquiries. Do not write one for the job you would rather turn down.
A service that passes all four gets a page. One that passes the first two but not the third goes on the list for later, once you have the photos and the answers to write it properly.
Is a one-page website enough?
For some businesses, yes. A sole trader who does one thing in one area, an electrician who mostly does rewires and fuse boards, say, can put everything on one well-organised page: what, where, prices, proof, contact. Customers get their answer without clicking, and the page has one clear subject to rank for. Brightwell Electrical is a demo we built to show how much one page can hold for an electrician: the services, the prices, the towns it covers, the reviews, and a fuse board before and after.
A one-page site stops being enough when you offer several services that people search for separately, when you want to be found in more than one town, or when the page gets so long that a phone user cannot find the part they came for. At that point a single page is competing with itself.
Do I need a page for every town I cover?
Only for towns where you can say something true and specific. Google’s spam policies name “having multiple domain names or pages targeted at specific regions or cities that funnel users to one page” as doorway abuse, and a set of town pages that differ only in the place name is the classic example.
A real town page has jobs you have done there, with photos, the streets or areas you cover, how quickly you can get there, and anything local that changes the work: older housing stock, a conservation area, hard water. If you cannot write that for a town, list it on the contact page as part of your area instead. Service area pages for trades goes through this in detail.
Three worked examples
None of these needs a blog to start with. A blog earns its place when you have something to say every month or two and the hour to write it; a blog with three posts from 2023 tells visitors the business may have stopped too.
Pages that are not worth having
- A “Services” page that only lists links to the service pages, when the menu already does that.
- A testimonials page nobody visits, when the same reviews would work beside the service they are about.
- “Our mission” or “Our values” pages for a business of one or two people.
- A news page with no news on it.
- Near-identical town pages, for the reason above.
- A gallery of stock photographs, which customers recognise and which says nothing about your work.
Each page you add is a page that has to stay true. Prices change, staff leave, services stop. A ten-page site that is all current beats a twenty-page one where half the pages are out of date, and it costs less to keep that way.
Does the number of pages change the price?
Often, yes, because many builders’ quotes and plans are priced by page count. That is a reason to decide the list before asking for quotes, so you compare the same site. It is also a reason to read “up to five pages” carefully: it may mean five pages including the privacy notice and contact page, which leaves three for your services. How to read a website quote covers that line and the others around it, how much a website costs in the UK puts page count next to the things that move a price more, and our own plans and what each includes are on pricing.
Not sure which of your services deserve their own page? The free review looks at your current site and what you are found for, and says which pages are missing.
For what goes on the pages themselves, see what a tradesperson’s website actually needs, and for whether you need a site at all, do I need a website if I have a Facebook page?
Official sources
The official pages behind the points above:
