Home Services and Trades Directories for Contractors

Sort this table in your head into three groups before you start.

The lead marketplaces, HomeAdvisor, Thumbtack and Bark Pro, are all nofollow, which means the link passes no ranking credit. Their value is jobs. The profile is listed as free, and the leads are what they sell.

The trade bodies and programme lists, ACCA Find a Contractor, PHCC Directory, NECA Connection, ENERGY STAR Partner Locator and EPA WaterSense Directory, are the five rows marked Free tier. All five are dofollow and rated High. The catch is that each one lists members or partners, so what it costs you depends on that body's own rules.

The rest are general contractor directories. The ten our partner rates Skip are all small, dofollow and quick, so they are fine to leave until last or ignore.

Set up free profiles on the lead marketplaces and the big review sites, and hold off on paying for anything.

Thumbtack, HomeAdvisor and Bark Pro are rated High and listed as free. Fill each profile in properly, with real job photos and a clear list of the work you take on, then watch what comes in for a while before you spend money on leads. Add the Better Business Bureau (BBB) and Houzz Pro, which are also rated High and carry large traffic figures.

All of these are nofollow, so they are about jobs rather than rankings. That is usually the right priority for a small trade business.

Check your trade association listing before anything else on the page.

ACCA Find a Contractor, PHCC Directory and NECA Connection are dofollow, rated High and listed as a free tier, which here means they come with membership. If you are already a member, you may have a listing you have never looked at. Make sure the business name, address, phone number and website match your own site exactly.

If you also install efficient equipment, the ENERGY STAR Partner Locator and EPA WaterSense Directory work the same way through partnership. They are rated Hard with approval in weeks, so start them early.

Mix the high traffic nofollow sites with the dofollow contractor directories.

BuildZoom is dofollow, Easy and rated High, and it is the first to do. The Blue Book is dofollow and rated High but aimed at commercial work. Networx and Contractors.com are dofollow and rated Medium. GuildQuality and Porch are rated Medium and nofollow.

For the homeowner side, Houzz Pro has one of the largest audiences in the set and rewards good project photos. Put your best finished work on it, with a line on what the job involved.

Expect sales calls. Signing up to a lead marketplace often leads to a conversation about paid leads, and that is part of how these sites work. The free profile does not depend on it.

Expect to be asked for proof. Licence numbers, insurance certificates and sometimes identity checks are common in this trade, so have them in one place before you start.

Expect the trade body and programme listings to take the longest. ENERGY STAR and EPA WaterSense are rated Hard with approval in weeks, and the three trade associations are Moderate with approval in days.

Expect the ten small directories rated Skip to be quick and to make little difference. They are fine to do once the rest is finished.

Expect the table to change. None of these entries has been checked yet, so some details will be corrected once they are.

Skip this set if you work outside the US and Canada. Almost every entry is listed for the US only. Bark Pro and Houzz Pro are the exceptions worth trying, and a local citation page for your own country will do more for you than the rest of this list.

Skip it if you sell home products online rather than doing the work. Every entry here asks for a business address and is built around a contractor coming to the house, so an online shop gets more from the ecommerce page.

Skip the trade body directories if you are not a member and have no other reason to join. Membership has its own costs and benefits, and a directory link alone is a weak reason to sign up.

And skip paid leads until your free profiles have been live long enough to show you what they bring in. Without that, you have nothing to compare the price against.