A shared lead is a place in a race. A homeowner who searched for a fence company, liked your photos and called you is something else, and that second kind is what most people mean when they ask how to get more leads as a contractor.
You can build it without paying per name. It takes a website with a page for each service, a Google Business Profile that’s kept up, some paid search where it makes sense, and someone who answers the phone. None of that is exotic. It’s slower than buying a list, and it stays with your company when you stop paying.
What a shared lead actually buys
Say a fence installer in Skippack gets three names from a lead service in one week. Two never pick up. The third has already talked to other companies by the time he calls back.
That isn’t a scandal. It’s how the product works. The Angi Leads FAQ for professionals (formerly HomeAdvisor Pro) says a Market Match lead goes to up to four pros, and that you’re charged whether or not you open or respond to it. Other platforms and lead types work differently, so read the terms of the one you use.
The fee is the visible cost. The quieter one is whoever on your team makes the calls and writes quotes for people comparing several prices at once. And when you stop paying, the names stop. Nothing you built stays behind.
We don’t think shared leads are useless. A slow February might justify them. But if they’re what keeps the schedule full, that’s the part to change, and we cover how in our piece on how to stop buying leads from Angi and HomeAdvisor.
How to get more leads as a contractor, starting with pages
Decide which jobs you want before you pick any tool. A fence company that wants full installations gains little from calls to fix one broken board forty minutes away. Which jobs do you want more of? Which towns can you serve and still make money? Write both down.
Then give each job its own page. The Whitespark 2026 Local Search Ranking Factors report, published in November 2025, asked 47 local search specialists to score 187 possible factors. For the regular, non-map results, their top factor was a dedicated page for each service. Next came content that’s clearly relevant to the city or neighborhood. That’s the judgment of practitioners, not a statement from Google, but it matches what we see.
Wood fences, vinyl fences and gate repair are three different searches. One page called “Services” answers none of them well.
The same goes for towns. Location pages help when they hold real information about your work in that town, and do very little when only the town name changes. Sorting out which searches matter, which pages answer them and what’s in the way is the core of our local SEO work.
Your Google Business Profile gets seen first
Search for a contractor nearby and Google usually shows a map with a few businesses beside it. Those listings come from Google Business Profile, where your reviews, photos, services, hours and phone number appear. Many homeowners see it before your website, at any hour.
In the same Whitespark survey, the profile’s primary category ranked first for map results, and the searcher’s distance from your address ranked second. You can’t move your shop. You can choose the right category.
Picture a homeowner in Lansdale comparing two fence companies on the map. One has recent photos of finished fences, a list of services and reviews with replies. The other has a logo, one old photo and the category “contractor”. Both may build good fences. Only one has given the homeowner something to judge.
Keeping a profile current is steady, unglamorous work. Accurate categories, clear service descriptions, new photos, and a habit of asking happy customers for reviews. We’ve written separately about what a Google Business Profile management company does.
Ads are faster, but only if someone answers
PPC means pay-per-click, which for most contractors means Google Ads. Once the campaign and its page are ready, ads can put you in front of people searching for a service sooner than SEO usually can. Keep them narrow: a few services, the towns you want, one page per service, and tracking that shows which ads led to calls.
Send a click meant for a fence quote to a home page that also covers decks, sheds and driveways, and many people won’t hunt for what they clicked on.
Then check the phone. Invoca’s Home Services Lead Conversion Benchmarks Report, published in July 2026, found that 52% of calls to home services businesses are answered by a person, and that 38% of the answered calls are leads. Those are averages across Invoca’s own customers, so they won’t describe every contractor.
Still, an ad can make the phone ring. It can’t pick it up. Who answers during the workday? How quickly does a web form get a reply?
Referrals still count, and so does patience
Not everything happens online. Real estate agents, property managers, insurance agents, builders and other trades send work to contractors they know, and a local chamber of commerce can do the same. Someone who hears your name from a property manager will usually look you up before calling. What they find should back up the recommendation. A referral who finds an empty profile and a website that never mentions their town may quietly call someone else.
Referrals also tell you something. If property managers keep sending you one kind of job, that’s a hint about which page to build next.
Here is what we can’t control. We can’t promise a position on Google or a number of calls by a date. Results depend on where you’re starting, how crowded your area is, and how much the website and profile need. If shared leads are filling the calendar today, keep them while the other sources develop.
Here is what we’d need from you: photos of finished jobs, the services and towns you want to focus on, and your word on which inquiries became good projects. You know which calls were worth taking, and that tells us more than a traffic report.
Start with where your work comes from
This week, go through your last batch of jobs and write down where each one came from: a shared lead, a referral, a search, a repeat customer. It takes about twenty minutes and costs nothing. It shows how much of your work you already own and how much you rent.
Send us that list along with the jobs you’d like more of and what you pay for leads now. We’ll look at what’s in place and tell you what we’d build first and why. Your first consultation is free. You can send us a message or call (215) 368-8900.