Page count is the wrong place to start, but it’s the question everyone asks because quotes are often priced by it. The practical answer: a small business site needs one page for each distinct question a customer asks before buying, and no pages for questions nobody asks.
For most local service businesses that lands somewhere between 5 and 15 pages. The method below works out where you sit.
When one page is enough
A one-page site works when you do one main thing, in one area, and customers don’t need much convincing. A new tradie with a single trade and a single region. A mobile coffee van. A market stall. A sole trader who mostly gets work by word of mouth and just needs somewhere to send people.
It stops working when you offer several services that people search for separately, or when you want Google to send you work for specific jobs. One page can only really be about one thing in Google’s eyes.
If you’re weighing this up as a tradie, we’ve covered it in more depth in is a one-page website enough for a tradie? and we build one-pagers through tradie.agency for exactly this case.
The core pages almost everyone needs
Home. Says who you help, where, and what to do next. Points people to the right service.
One page per main service. More on this below, because it’s where most sites fall short.
About. Who’s behind the business, with real photos. In a regional town people want to know who’s turning up.
Contact. Phone, email, a short form, hours, service area or address. Our guide to contact forms people actually finish covers what to put on it.
Privacy policy. Good practice whenever you collect personal details through forms, analytics or bookings, and a legal requirement for many businesses, including health service providers of any size. The OAIC explains who the Privacy Act covers.
That’s four, plus one per main service.
Why each service deserves its own page
A plumber who lists “blocked drains, hot water, gas fitting, bathroom renovations, leak detection” on one Services page has a page about five things. Someone searching “hot water repairs Ballina” lands on it and has to hunt.
Give hot water its own page, and you can answer what that customer wants to know: which systems you work on, whether you do same-day replacements, rough costs, which brands you stock, and what happens when they call. That page can rank for hot water searches, which is the starting point of most local business SEO, and the visitor knows straight away they’re in the right place.
As a rule of thumb, a service deserves its own page if:
- People search for it by name.
- It has its own set of questions (price, timing, process).
- It brings in meaningful revenue, or you want it to.
Small add-ons can share a page. “Tap repairs and leaking toilets” doesn’t need two pages. We explain the search side of this in why one page per service beats one big list.
When location pages help (and when they’re spam)
If you’re based in Lismore but do a lot of work in Byron Bay, Ballina and Casino, location pages can help you show up for searches in those towns.
They only help if each one is useful to someone in that town. That means real local content: jobs you’ve done there, travel times, local conditions (coastal corrosion, flood-prone streets, heritage overlays), testimonials from local customers. Google’s guidance on helpful, people-first content is a good test.
Twenty near-identical pages where only the suburb name changes are the classic mistake. They tend not to rank, and they make the site look low effort. If you can’t write something different and true about a town, don’t make a page for it. Our article on location pages that aren’t spam goes through how to do them properly.
Pages that earn their place for some businesses
- Projects or gallery. Essential for builders, landscapers, designers and anyone whose work is visual.
- Pricing. Even a “typical costs” page cuts down on time-wasting enquiries.
- FAQ. Only if the questions are real ones you’re asked often and they don’t fit on service pages.
- Team. Useful for practices where people choose a specific practitioner.
- Menu, bookings, events. For hospitality, these are often the most visited pages on the site.
The pages nobody reads
In our experience these get almost no traffic on small business sites:
- Mission, vision and values pages. Fold anything meaningful into About.
- Testimonials pages. Reviews work far better on the service pages where people are deciding.
- A blog with four posts from 2021. It signals neglect. Either commit to writing regularly or remove it.
- Separate “Why choose us” pages. Put the reasons on the homepage and service pages.
Working out your number
Take a sheet of paper and write: Home, About, Contact, Privacy. Add one line per service that passes the rule of thumb above. Add a projects page if your work is visual, and location pages only for towns where you have something real to say.
Count the lines. That’s your site. Bring the list with you if you talk to a designer: turning it into a site plan and a quote is the first step of any web design project we take on.