Septic company website essentials: the seven things the site must do, the price question, and a page for every service
What a septic company's website has to do to turn a search into a call, from tap-to-call and the pumping price range to a page for installs that wins the five-figure jobs.
- 1. A phone number you can tap, at the top, on every page
- 2. The pumping price, as a range, above the fold
- 3. A page for every service, not one services page
- 4. The counties and towns, by name
- 5. Reviews on the site, pulled from Google
- 6. Fast, and built for a phone
- 7. A form that goes somewhere, and a text-back
- What to leave off
- Build order and cost
- Frequently asked
32.2% of septic companies have no website. The ones that do have a median of 20 Google reviews; the ones that do not have a median of 5. A website does not cause reviews, but the two travel together, and a company without a site is missing from the comparison every homeowner makes before a drain field decision.
The site does not need to be big. It needs to do seven things, and most septic sites built by a nephew in 2016 do two of them. Here is the list, what each costs, and the order to build it in.
1. A phone number you can tap, at the top, on every page
The first thing on the screen, in the header, as a tap-to-call link. Not in the footer. Not in an image. A homeowner with a backup is on a phone in a hallway and wants to tap once. Put the hours next to it: "7 a.m. to 7 p.m., emergency pumping after hours."
Test it on your own phone. If tapping the number does not open the dialer, that is the first fix.
2. The pumping price, as a range, above the fold
"Septic pumping, $325 to $475 for most 1,000 to 1,500 gallon tanks with the lid exposed. Digging to the lid adds $75 to $150." That sentence does more than the rest of the site combined. It answers the only question the pump-out customer has, it filters out the hagglers, and it is what Google AI quotes when someone asks what pumping costs in your county.
Owners worry that a competitor will undercut the posted range. In practice the companies that hide prices lose the call to the companies that show them. The pricing guide covers how to set the range.
3. A page for every service, not one services page
One page each for:
- Septic tank pumping
- Septic inspection for home sales
- Septic repair (baffles, filters, pumps, distribution boxes)
- Drain field repair and replacement
- New septic system installation
- Risers and lid replacement
- Aerobic system maintenance, where your state requires it
- Grease trap pumping, if you do commercial
Each page gets 300 to 600 words: what the job involves, what it costs as a range, how long it takes, what the homeowner needs to do beforehand, and the counties you serve. A "Services" page with eight bullets ranks for nothing and answers nothing.
The install page is the one that pays. A conventional system runs $8,000 to $20,000 in most areas and a mound or aerobic system can exceed $30,000. The homeowner facing that reads three sites. Yours should walk through soil evaluation, the county permit, design, the install day, and final inspection, with a financing line and a form. That page alone justifies the site.
4. The counties and towns, by name
Google and the AI tools match searches to places by the words on the page. "Serving the tri-county area" matches nothing. "Serving Cumming, Dawsonville, Gainesville and all of Forsyth, Dawson and Hall counties" matches the search a homeowner in Dawsonville types.
Put the list in the footer and on a service area page. If you serve more than 15 towns, give the five biggest their own short page: "Septic pumping in Dawsonville" with the price range, a photo from a job there, and two reviews from that town.
5. Reviews on the site, pulled from Google
Show six to ten real Google reviews on the home page, with the reviewer's first name and town. Link to the full Google listing. A review widget that pulls them automatically costs $5 to $15 a month. Pick reviews that mention a job and a place, because those are the ones that convince.
Across 9,348 companies the median is 13 reviews. If you have 40, say so on the site. "Over 40 five-star Google reviews from [County] homeowners" is a stronger line than any slogan.
6. Fast, and built for a phone
Most septic searches happen on a phone, often on a rural connection. The site should load in under three seconds on a weak signal. That means no video background, compressed photos, and no builder theme that loads 40 scripts. Test it with Google's PageSpeed Insights, which is free, and aim for a mobile score above 80.
A fast site is also a cheap site. A plain, well-built site for a septic company costs $1,500 to $4,000 to build and $20 to $50 a month to host. The $12,000 proposals you get in the mail are for a brand site with video, and you do not need one.
7. A form that goes somewhere, and a text-back
The install and inspection buyers often fill out a form instead of calling. The form asks name, phone, town, what they need and when. It has to send a text to the owner's phone within a minute, and the homeowner should get a text back within five saying someone will call. A form that emails the office inbox and gets read Monday loses the job. The missed calls guide covers the follow-up.
What to leave off
- A blog you will not update. Three posts from 2019 look worse than none.
- Stock photos of a lawn. Use your truck, your crew, your trenches.
- A "request a quote" button as the only action. The pump-out customer wants a price and a phone number, not a quote process.
- Auto-playing anything.
- An "About" page longer than the services pages. Two paragraphs and a crew photo is enough.
Build order and cost
Week one: home page with number, price range, counties and reviews. Week two: pumping, inspection and install pages. Week three: the remaining service pages and the town pages. Week four: form, text-back, speed check. Done yourself on a simple builder it costs the hosting fee and four weekends. Done by someone else it is $1,500 to $4,000 once.
Frequently asked
I get all my work from referrals. Do I need a site? For pumping, maybe not. For installs and inspections, yes, because agents and buyers check. And the referral customer googles you before calling to make sure you still exist.
Should I put a booking calendar on the site? For pumping, yes, if your dispatch can honor it. Online booking for a pump-out converts well. For installs, no; those need a site visit first.
What about a chat widget? Only if someone answers it in minutes. An unanswered chat is worse than none. Missed-call text-back does the same job with less to manage.
A fast, tap-to-call site with a page for every service and your counties is one of the services in the free 14-day trial.
Steven has spent the last several years running growth campaigns for local service businesses, septic companies among them, and builds the benchmark datasets on this site from public Google listings. About the editor