The next $12,000 stamped patio goes to the concrete company on page one.
My first client, 23 years ago, was a concrete contractor. He is still a client, and his site is still where his work comes from. I am now taking on a small number of concrete companies, and only one per market.
With my first client, a concrete contractor, still month to month
200+
Business websites hosted on my own server
10 to 20
Years my clients typically stay. No contract has ever held them
1
Concrete company per market. Your competitors get told no.
Where your work comes from
How is your phone ringing right now?
I do not know, and I am not going to pretend I do. Every concrete company is different. But it is usually some mix of these four, and each one behaves differently.
Paid leads
Shared
Angi, HomeAdvisor, Thumbtack, Networx, Porch. The same homeowner gets sold to you and three other concrete companies, and the one who calls back fastest usually wins. You pay for the tire kickers, the wrong numbers and the people who never pick up, same as the real ones. Rates go up, you dispute the junk, and the day you stop paying the phone goes quiet.
Pay per click
Rented
Google Ads, Local Services Ads, Facebook. Better than a shared lead, because the click is yours alone. But you are bidding against every concrete company in the county, and a stamped concrete click in a good suburb is not cheap. It works for exactly as long as the card keeps getting charged. Shut it off in January to save money and February starts at zero.
Referrals and word of mouth
Earned
Nothing on earth converts like a neighbor pointing at a driveway you poured. No argument from me. But referrals come from jobs you already did, so last year's job count quietly sets this year's ceiling.
Your own website
Exclusive
A homeowner in your town searches for what you pour, finds you, and calls. That call is yours alone. No split, no bidding against three other guys, no monthly fee keeping it alive.
And it compounds. More calls means more jobs. More jobs means more driveways in more neighborhoods and more people telling somebody who poured theirs. Those calls cost you nothing at all.
Plus the rest of it: Yelp ads, Nextdoor, Facebook groups, the truck and the yard sign. Some of that is genuinely good. But everything you rent works the same way. It produces calls for exactly as long as you keep paying, and it stops the month you do not.
These are not separate buckets. That is the part most people miss.
Referrals are downstream of jobs. Every job the website brings in is another driveway in another neighborhood, another homeowner who tells a friend at a cookout, another set of photos for the site. The website does not compete with your word of mouth. It feeds it.
And if you are already running ads, you have made my argument for me. You are paying every single month to sit at the top of a search results page, because you already know that is where the work is. The only thing left to decide is whether you rent that spot forever or own a piece of it.
You do not have to choose today either. If you are running ads I can take them over, and I usually get more out of the same budget than a generalist does, because I know what a concrete job is actually worth. But here is what tends to happen. Once the rankings come in, most of my clients dial the ads back, and some shut them off completely. That is the point. You should end up spending less for the same phone calls, not more.
If referrals alone are keeping you as busy as you want to be, that is a healthy business and you do not need me. The question is only whether you want next year to be bigger than last year, because word of mouth on its own can hold you steady but it cannot grow you much faster than it already is.
One more thing, and I mean it. If any of these are working for you right now, keep using them until they stop. I am not here to talk you out of anything that is putting jobs on your calendar. I am handing you one more tool for the box.
It is a long term play. It will not do much for you next Tuesday, and I am not going to pretend it will. But it is the only tool on that list you actually own, which makes it the one you control, and it is the one still working five years from now.
Rented or owned
The one thing ads do better, and the one thing they can never do.
Ads produce the day you switch them on. Nothing I do is that fast and I am not going to tell you otherwise. That is a real advantage and it is the only one.
Name a $200 a month ad campaign that was not a win for Google.
Now name one that was a win for the contractor.
Ten years ago $200 a month in Google Ads got a contractor calls worth having. That is over. Google sets the prices, runs the auction and collects the money, and the price has moved in one direction for twenty years.
Here is what that budget actually buys you now. At what a stamped concrete click costs in a decent suburb, $200 is about sixteen clicks a month. Sixteen. If one in twenty of those turns into a phone call, you did not even get one lead. You cannot tell a good search term from a bad one on numbers that small. You cannot cut what is wasting your money, because you cannot see it. You cannot even tell a bad month from bad luck. That is not a campaign, it is a lottery ticket, and the $200 is gone either way.
The people still making ads pay at that level are specialists who have done nothing else for years and know exactly what to avoid. If that is not you, you are mostly paying for the education.
Ads
Month 3Calls coming in. Card charged every month.
Month 12Calls coming in. Card charged every month.
You stopBack to zero. Nothing to show for any of it.
Your own site
Month 3Quiet. But the pages are indexed and starting to climb.
Month 12Real work coming in. The foundation is built.
Year 2You start the year holding everything year one built.
That is the part that actually matters, and it has nothing to do with cost per click. When the ad money is gone it is gone. You have the jobs you closed and nothing else. Shut the ads off in January and February starts at zero, in the exact spot you started the first time.
Your own site does the opposite. Month three might be quiet. But every one of those pages is still sitting there in month four, and month twelve, ranking a little higher than it did. Year one might bring you good work without changing your life. Then you walk into year two holding all of it and build on top. That is a snowball. Ads are a faucet.
Most contractors have a website because somebody told them they needed one. An online brochure nobody ever sees. The entire job is turning that into the thing that brings the work in.
Why concrete wins on Google
Homeowners search for exactly what you pour.
Concrete is one of the best trades on the internet, because people do not just search "contractor." They search the actual project, in your actual town, while planning a five-figure purchase. Your site gets a page for every one of these, in every city you serve.
Everything, handled. You pour concrete, I handle the internet.
Custom website
Built for concrete work and your town. Photos of your actual pours, a page for every service (stamped, driveways, patios, flatwork, foundations) and every city you cover. Live in 2 to 3 weeks.
Hosting and upkeep
On my own server that I have run for two decades. Something breaks, you call me, not a ticket queue.
Local SEO, done monthly
The work that moves you up: content, Google Business Profile, reviews strategy, technical fixes. Every month, without you asking.
A report you can verify
Every month you see exactly where you rank for searches like "stamped concrete [your city]." Google it yourself and check me. That is the deal.
All of it: $250 a month Month to month. Cancel anytime.
Straight talk
You have been burned by an SEO call before. Here is why this is different.
Every concrete guy I talk to has tried SEO and gotten nothing but excuses. I built this offer specifically so you never have to trust me on faith.
No contract. Month to month. If I stop earning it, fire me. The scammers need a 12 month contract because they know you would quit by month 3.
Verifiable results. Rankings are public. Every report I send, you can check yourself in 10 seconds on Google.
A 23 year track record. My very first client was a concrete contractor. He has paid me month to month for 23 years, never under a contract. Nobody keeps a client that long by scamming him.
You talk to the owner. Family business, 24 years. No account managers, no offshore call center, no ticket numbers.
One concrete company per market. When you are my client, I turn your competitors away. I cannot rank two concrete companies in the same town and look either of them in the eye.
The client this is built on
Taber Builders. Batavia, Illinois. My first client, and still a client.
Taber Builders has poured concrete in the western Chicago suburbs since 1985: stamped patios, driveways, pool decks, foundations, commercial flatwork. In 2003 they became the first client I ever had. I built their website and I have hosted and looked after it ever since.
That site and the referrals it earns are where the work comes from. Twenty-three years, month to month, never once under a contract.
Here is what that is actually worth. The site is taberbuilders.com. Go look at it. As of August 2026 it holds 56 first place rankings in Google and 86 in the top three across the 38 towns he serves.
A word about checking that yourself, because I would rather say this than have you wonder. Google shows different results in different towns, on different days, and sometimes it just has a bad hour. Half the top of the page is ads and boxes now, so a listing sitting at number one can be well below where you start scrolling. If you type something in and do not see him, that is normal and it does not mean I am making this up. Get me on the phone and I will pull up the actual tracking while you watch, and you can pick the searches.
Twenty-three years on it is still at the top and still bringing work in. Not a campaign he restarts every spring. An asset that keeps producing. That is the difference between something you own and something you rent.
Your site will not look like that on day one, and I am not going to pretend otherwise. Year one is the heavy part: the build, a page for every service and every town, and the work every month to climb. Year twenty is a client ringing up to say keep doing what you are doing. Getting you from the first one to the second one is the entire job.
Here is how I got him. The day before I called, he had finally had enough of his web designer: slow to answer, weeks to make a change he had already asked for twice. He told the guy to shape up or he would find somebody else. I called the next morning, cold, not knowing any of that.
I have answered the phone ever since. That is the entire trick, and it is why he has never had a reason to make that call about me.
Client since
2003, my first client ever
Trade
Concrete, hardscapes, general contracting
Market
Batavia, Geneva, St. Charles, Naperville, Aurora
In business
Since 1985
Agreement
Month to month, no contract, 23 years running
Lead source
The website and the referrals it earns
Stamped patio and outdoor kitchenStamped entry walkwayStamped drivewayFire pit patio and seat wallPool deckThe crew on a pour
A web page can only show you so much. Let me show you the rest.
Get on the phone with me for twenty minutes and I will screen share the actual rank tracking, month by month, going back years. Not a screenshot I picked out. The dashboard. You can call out a keyword and I will pull it up while you watch.
I will do the same thing with your site before you ever pay me anything, so you can see exactly where you stand.
Real photos off my client's site, not stock. Getting your own pours onto the right pages, captioned and sized properly, is part of what I do for you. It is also one of the things almost every contractor site on page 5 gets wrong.
Fair question
Have I always been the Concrete Website Guy? No.
I built this business on mortgage websites. Two decades in one of the most competitive corners of the internet, where every competitor has real money to spend on outranking you and nobody is asleep. That is where I learned what actually moves a site up and what is just noise.
One of those clients is selectcommercial.com. They hold a top three position nationally for "commercial mortgage rates", against banks and lenders with real budgets, and they have held it for years. That is a harder problem than ranking for stamped concrete in your town by a wide margin, and it is the same skill pointed at a different industry.
So no, I am not a concrete specialist with a hundred concrete clients. I am a search guy with twenty-four years of it, one concrete contractor since 2003, and a decision to open a small number of concrete markets. You would be the second concrete company I have ever taken on. That is not a slogan about exclusivity. It is just the truth, and you can decide for yourself whether it is a problem.
I send you one page: where you actually rank, who is beating you, and the three biggest things holding you back. Keep it even if we never talk again.
Step 2
Build
If you want the problems fixed, I build your site and get the foundation right. Live in 2 to 3 weeks while you keep pouring.
Step 3
Climb and hold
Monthly SEO work moves you up and keeps you there. You watch it happen in the monthly report.
Straight answers
The questions I get asked before anybody signs up.
Season is winding down. Is now a bad time to start?
Now is the best time to start. Start it in the slow months and the site is climbing the whole winter while you are not pouring anyway. By the time the phone should be ringing in the spring, it is already up there working, and you go into your season in high gear instead of starting from a standstill.
The offseason is also the only stretch of the year you actually have time to answer my questions about your own business. In June you are on a pour and I am the last call you want. And $250 a month is set where it is partly because I know what January looks like for a concrete company.
Spring is when you want the phone ringing. Winter is when that gets built.
How much does a website cost for a concrete contractor?
$250 a month, month to month. That covers the site, the hosting, and the work every month to move you up in search. No contract, so if you stop seeing value you stop paying. I would rather price it where you never have to think about it than hit you with one big number up front and hope you stay.
Can I just use AI to build my website?
You can, and it will look fine. AI writes a service page in an afternoon. What it does not do is notice in week three that you slipped from sixth to eleventh, keep your Google Business Profile fed, get last month's pours photographed and onto the right pages, or pick up the phone when your contact form quits in the middle of June. Building the site is the easy part now. Running it for twenty years is the job.
I get all my work from referrals. Do I even need a website?
Maybe not, and I will tell you so if that is the case. But every referral you got came from a job you already did, so last year's job count quietly sets this year's ceiling. Worth knowing too: most people who get referred to you still look you up before they call. What they find is either reassuring or it is not.
How long before I show up on Google?
That depends on your town and who you are up against, and anybody who gives you a date is guessing. Here is what I can tell you. The site is live in 2 to 3 weeks. Every month you get a report showing exactly where you rank for the searches that matter, and you can verify it yourself on Google in ten seconds. You will see movement well before you see the top of page one. If you are not seeing movement, fire me that month. That is what month to month is for.
Who owns the website if I leave?
You do. The content, the photos, the domain, all of it. If you decide to go somewhere else I hand it over and help the next person get set up. Any company that holds your website hostage is telling you they already expect you to want out.
What if I already have a website?
Then we find out whether it is worth keeping. Sometimes it is fine and the only problem is that nobody can find it. Sometimes it was built on something that is quietly working against you. The free review tells you which one you have, and you get that answer whether or not you ever hire me.
Do you work with other concrete companies in my area?
No, and that is the whole point. One concrete company per market. Once you are a client I turn your competitors away and I tell them exactly why. If your market is already taken when you ask, I will tell you that on the first call instead of taking your money anyway.
How is this different from the companies that cold call me?
Structure, not promises. No contract, so I have to earn it again every month. Rankings you can check yourself instead of taking my word for it. You talk to me, not an account manager. And my first client, a concrete contractor, signed on in 2003 and is still here. Nobody fakes twenty-three years.
Is the price going to go up on me?
Not for what you signed up for. I still have clients paying $12.95 a month, because that is what a website and hosting cost when they came aboard twenty years ago and I have never gone back and repriced anybody. New client rates go up as the work gets better. Existing ones stay where they are.
The only time a number has ever changed is when a client asked me to take on something new. Two of them went from a website to a website plus everything I could do about their search rankings. That was their idea, not mine, and we agreed on the number before anything started.
When a company sends me a price increase notice, I do not think about the money. I think I should probably go see what else is out there. I am not going to hand you that thought.
Should I keep running Google Ads if you are doing the website?
Short term, usually yes. Ads work the day you switch them on and rankings take months, so the ads cover the gap while the site climbs. I can run them for you and I will normally get more out of the same budget than a generalist would, because I know what a concrete job is worth and which searches are tire kickers. Longer term, most of my clients dial the ads back once the rankings come in and a few turn them off altogether. That is the goal. If you are still spending the same on ads in year two, I have not done my job.
Free site review
See where you really rank. One page, no strings.
Fill this out and I will personally put together your review: your rankings, your top three competitors, and what to fix first. If your market is already taken, I will tell you that too.
One note on timing. This work takes months to build up, which means the sooner it starts the more of it is done by the time you need it. Get going in the slow months and you walk into your next season already showing up.
