What a landscaping company website needs

A landscaping website needs to show four things: what you do in each season, which towns you cover for which kind of work, how your maintenance plans differ from one-off projects, and photos of yards you actually did. Someone who wants weekly mowing and someone planning a patio are different customers with different questions, so the site should give each of them a clear path.

Services by season

Landscaping changes through the year, and your site should change with it.

Write the year out

Add a short section that lists what you do and when, in plain words:

• Spring: cleanups, mulch, edging, aeration and overseeding, planting
• Summer: mowing, trimming, patios and walls
• Fall: leaf removal, fall cleanups, planting, winter prep
• Winter: snow plowing and salting if you do it, or "closed until spring"

Use your real list. If you don't aerate, leave it off. If you only plow commercial lots, say so.

Keep the top of the page current

A "Book your spring cleanup" banner still up in October tells visitors nobody looks after the site. Keep one line near the top that you can change yourself, and change it with the season: "Booking fall cleanups now," "Snow contracts for this winter are open," "Spring maintenance spots open in March."

Match Google in the off-season

If you close for the winter, Google's guidelines for representing your business say to set your regular hours during the season you're open, mention the seasonal period in your business description, and, if you want, mark the business as temporarily closed in the off-season. When you reopen, you set your regular hours again.

If you switch to snow removal instead, you aren't closed. Update your hours and services on Google and on the site, so a property manager searching in January sees that you're working.

Where you work, by type of job

Most landscapers don't cover the same area for every service. Weekly mowing only works when the stops are close together, while a patio or a retaining wall can be worth a longer drive. Say that on the site:

• Maintenance: the towns or neighborhoods your crews already work in each week
• Projects: the wider area you travel to for installs
• Limits: minimum lot size, residential only, HOA properties on contract only, whatever is true for you

That saves you from pricing weekly mowing for a property far off your routes, and it tells the homeowner on your route that you're already on their street. For how Google treats service areas, read how to show up in "near me" searches.

Maintenance plans and one-off projects

These are two different sales. Give each one its own page.

Maintenance plans

People signing up for weekly service want to know exactly what they're paying for. Write out:

• What each visit includes: mowing, edging, trimming, blowing off walks and drives
• How often: weekly, every other week, or a schedule you set by season
• When the season starts and ends
• What costs extra: leaf removal, fertilizer, weed control, bed care, shrub trimming
• What happens in rain or drought: skipped visits, rescheduling or a lighter schedule
• How billing works: per visit, monthly or a seasonal contract, whichever you use
• How to pause or cancel

If you apply fertilizer or weed control and your state licenses that work, put the license number on that page.

The request form for maintenance can be short: the address, the rough size of the lawn (front, back or both), gates, dogs in the yard, and when they want to start. You can look at the property on a satellite map yourself, so nobody has to measure anything.

One-off projects

Projects are bigger decisions: patios, retaining walls, plantings, sod, drainage, lighting. The request should ask for:

• What they want done, picked from a short list, plus "other"
• A rough size, if they know it
• Photos of the yard as it is now, from a few angles
• Anything that matters on site: slopes, wet spots, a narrow gate, no access for equipment
• When they'd like it finished

If your spring schedule fills up, say when your next openings are. Someone planning a patio for a June graduation party needs to know that in March.

Mention 811 if you dig

The national 811 service says anyone who plans to dig should contact 811 a few business days before starting, including common projects like planting trees and shrubs or installing fences, and the service is free. If you call 811 before your installs, say so on the project page. It's one line, and it tells a homeowner you handle the parts they wouldn't think of.

Photo galleries that sell the work

Landscaping is visual, and the gallery is where people judge you.

Group by type of job

Patios with patios, walls with walls, plantings with plantings, lawns with lawns. Someone planning a paver patio shouldn't scroll past forty mowing photos to find one.

Show time passing

Landscaping keeps changing after you leave. A new planting bed looks thin on the day you finish it. The same bed a year later shows what the customer really got. If you can, go back and take that second photo. For hardscape, before and after from the same spot works best.

Make maintenance visible

Weekly service is hard to photograph, but a few shots show it: a clean edge along a walkway, beds without weeds, a lawn after a fall cleanup. Photos of your crews and trucks on the job help too.

Caption and size them

Write what it is, the materials or plants, and the town. Google's image SEO guidance recommends descriptive alt text, short descriptive file names, and placing images near the text they relate to. It also notes that images are often the largest contributor to page size, so have them sized down for the web. A gallery that loads slowly on mobile data loses the person standing in their own yard, looking at it on a phone.

What to leave off

• Stock photos from another climate. Palm trees and desert gardens on a site for a crew in the Midwest tell people the photos aren't yours.
• Old season banners and last year's promotions.
• A long list of every plant you've ever used. Show the work instead.
• Prices you no longer charge. If you show prices, keep them current, or say that every property gets its own quote.

A quick check

Open your site on your phone. Check that the top of the page matches the current season, that your towns are written out, that the maintenance page lists what each visit includes, and that the gallery opens quickly. Our free website checker runs Google's own mobile speed test on your site. For everything we build for outdoor trades, see websites for contractors.

See your own yards on a real site

We build the first version of your website free, in 2 days, with your services by season, your towns and a gallery of your own work. You click around it, then decide. If it isn't for you, you owe nothing. Get your free preview.