Should I build my own website or use a lead site like Checkatrade?

Build your own. A page on Checkatrade belongs to Checkatrade: stop paying and it goes. A page on your own site stays there whether you pay anyone this month or not. That is the whole decision.

Your own site keeps working after you stop. The wider question of what your site should actually contain is covered in Does a plumber need a website, and what should be on it, but this piece is about the choice itself and what you have to do once you have made it.

Why a directory page disappears when you need it most

A lead site profile is a page on someone else's domain, at an address they own. You fill in a form, pay a subscription, and your name appears in their listings. The day you cancel, that page goes. You own nothing: no address, no content, no history. If the lead site changes its pricing, its algorithm, or its terms, your position changes with it.

Your own website is a set of pages at an address you pay for and control, something like yourname.co.uk. The content is yours. The address is yours.

That is not an argument against using a lead site while you are getting started. It is an argument against treating it as your only presence. The trade that has its own site alongside the directory listing has two ways to be found. The one that has only the directory has one, and does not own it. You can assess whether the lead site subscription is covering its cost at Is Checkatrade worth it for a trade? Work it out from your own bill.

How AI assistants decide whose name to give out

When a homeowner asks an AI assistant which plumber to call, the answer does not come from a directory. We asked Perplexity for a plumber in Bristol and it named five firms, with every one of the five footnoted to that firm's own website. When we asked ChatGPT problem-shaped questions about a Norfolk plumber, say about a water leak, its ten answers drew 34 of their 39 sources from businesses' own websites. That is our own research, carried out in August 2026.

An AI assistant reading the web pulls from pages it can quote: pages with a real address, a real job described, a real town named. Your own page, written for one job in one town, does.

This matters now because AI assistant use is growing fastest on exactly the questions a trade gets hired from. "No hot water" is asked of AI assistants around 24,959 times a month in the UK, from our own research in June 2026. The homeowner asking that question is the one who needs a plumber today. If an AI cannot find a page on your site that answers it, it will name someone whose site it can. For more on how that decision is made, Does ChatGPT recommend plumbers, and how does it choose? covers the mechanics.

What a page per job is worth on Google

A dedicated page for each service is the highest-scoring website factor in the Whitespark Local Search Ranking Factors 2026 survey of 47 local search experts across 187 factors: first for ordinary Google results and second for AI visibility. A single page that lists every job you do tells Google nothing specific about any of them.

One page for boiler repair, one for bathroom fitting, one for emergency call-outs. Each one with the job and the town in the heading and in the title that appears in search results. "Boiler repair in Bristol" is a title Google can match to a search. "Services" is not.

The page your Google listing points at is measured separately. Three of the map's top twenty-five factors in the same Whitespark survey are about that one landing page: the words in its title, the words in its headings, and the links pointing at it. A listing that points at a page saying nothing specific about the job wastes all three.

Of 174 plumbers in Bristol we listed from the search results in August 2026, 28 had no website of their own at all. On every surface where the page decides the answer, those 28 cannot be named.

What to put on each page, in the order that matters

Every service page needs these things, in this order:

1. The job and the town in the heading and the page title: "Boiler repair in Bristol", not "Services".
2. A price or a price range. A range such as £80 to £150 is enough.
3. Your phone number at the top, as a link that dials when tapped on a phone.
4. Real photos from your own jobs. Stock images do not tell Google or the homeowner that you did the work.
5. A plain description of what the job involves and what happens after you call.

None of this requires a developer. It requires sitting down and writing one page properly, then repeating it for each job. The temptation to copy a page and swap the town name is real, but Google has named that practice as spam by name. Each page needs its own content.

How often to update your pages and why it matters

Update something meaningful on your main pages about every three months. Add a question you were asked on a job and answer it. Replace a photo. Rewrite a section. Retitling a page is not a meaningful update.

A page that has not changed in two years is telling Google there is nothing new to look at. A page that answers a question someone asked last month is a page worth showing.

The same rule applies to starting out. One page per job, in your main town, written for the person who typed a problem. Get that right before you expand.

Point your Google listing at the right page

The website field in your Google Business Profile should point directly at the page that matches what your listing says you do. Never at a page that redirects to another address. A listing website field that redirects is the highest entry in both columns of the Whitespark negative factors table: ranked as the most harmful to rankings and the highest risk for suspension among the things listed. Getting your trade onto Google's map, and staying there covers the listing setup in full.

If your listing says you do boiler repair, point it at the boiler repair page. Not the home page. Not a page that forwards somewhere else.

Whether CitedBy fits what you are trying to do

CitedBy writes four articles and three service-area pages a month and publishes them to your own site, whether that is WordPress, Wix, Shopify, Webflow, or Squarespace. That is the gap this piece has been describing: pages per job, written for your town, pointing Google and AI assistants at something they can quote. The free check reads 35 signals on a real page and tells you which are missing.

It is the wrong fit if you have no website and no Google Business Profile yet: get the listing and a basic site in place first, then the writing has somewhere to land. It is also wrong if you want someone to ring the customers back: the enquiry is texted to your phone, and the call is yours to make.

The gap between a site you own and one you rent

A paid lead stops the day you stop paying. The work that a service page does carries into ordinary Google results, AI answers and the map.

Twenty-eight plumbers in one city have no website at all. Every time an AI assistant or a search result picks a name for a job those plumbers do, it cannot be theirs. The field is not crowded at the top: the bar is one page per job, written plainly, with a price and a phone number.

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