But what do the experts, the people who do PPC marketing every single day… for active investors around the country… do to get the highest ROI out of their campaigns?
What tips and tricks have they learned as they’ve driven hundreds of thousands (or millions) of clicks and hundreds of thousands of leads to squeeze more return on investment out of their PPC?
Well, that’s what our guest today, Dan Barrett, and I chat about.
Not only is Dan a superhero fan, as his office shows, but he’s a huge fan of data (like I am). Data is pretty nerdy, but it’s what pays the bills here at Carrot for our high achieving investor clients because when you have the data you have the advantage over those who don’t.
So enjoy this conversation I have with Dan, CEO of AdwordsNerds, and get a glimpse into his world as an entrepreneur, what he’s passionate about, his story, but also his tips to ramp up the effectiveness of your Google PPC marketing for motivated house sellers.
What he looks for in ROI in his client’s accounts.
Watch the Video Version
Start – 12:22 – Dan and Trevor talk about their work environments and why their offices are set up the way they are
12:25 – What the heck “AdwordsNerds” is.
20:25 – How specializing in a niche real estate PPC marketing creates higher ROI.
26:41-33:00 – Is there a need to create specified landing pages for targeted search terms such as “sell a house in divorce”
34:30-48:55 – Why does AdWords Nerds compile such exhausting levels of date when creating campaigns?
47:00 – Understanding PPC ROI and the difference between targeted campaigns and broad 1000+ keyword campaigns.
“If you’re willing to take a high cost per lead, you can get all the leads in the world as long as you’re willing to pay $10,000 per lead… If you want a lead for 50 cents, I can get that too… For everybody, it’s about finding that right place.”
Have you heard of other real estate investors having amazing success with pay per click advertising?
Of course, you have. Now might be the best time to educate yourself on PPC and find out how it can help your real estate business.
We’ve compiled a list of the top PPC marketing resources we use so that you don’t have to go digging around trying to find where the best information on PPC is.
Pay per click is still a growing advertising platform to using when trying to get more website traffic, get more buyer and seller leads and close deals.
But… PPC advertising for real estate has gotten more complex over the last few year.
When learning about Google Ads, FB, and other pay-per-click services, having an idea of what motivated sellers and buyers are searching for when they are looking to sell their house fast is very important. You need to do some research and educate yourself. Use these resources and tools to become a real estate PPC expert!
So what tools do we use when we’re diving into our PPC marketing or the PPC marketing with our clients to help them crush it.
The Top 10 PPC Marketing Resources And Tools We Use
Google Ads
Google Ads is the reigning champion of PPC. The Google Ads tool and the advertising network are second to none. Whenever we’re launching a PPC marketing campaign, we start with Google Ads, then expand as we see results.
So, there is no better place to start your PPC education than with Google. These resources provided by Google are a mix of beginner and expert tips and tools. Before you begin your own AdWords campaign, start here and get educated.
Resources that Google makes available to learn about PPC:
The number 2 search engine to generate motivated seller leads consistently is Microsoft. Although they’ve made huge competitive strides, it’s nowhere near Google. But, Microsoft is still an important and useful platform for showing real estate ads. It’s demographic tends to be slightly different than that of Google and is a less expensive cost-per-click alternative.
Like Google, Microsoft Advertising offers its library of resources on how to use its PPC tools:
Who’s not looking to cut down their PPC learning time and, in return, reduce your management costs and get better results? Wordstream can be used as that go-to PPC source. As both a PPC tool and consulting agency, Wordstream has grown to become one of the most comprehensive resources for PPC knowledge, offering up full online training (for free) via their PPC University section. Also, check out their Grader tool. Submit your PPC account to see how it ranks and get weekly reports.
We love Wordstream and recommend you check out the following:
Want to see what your biggest competitors are doing with their PPC marketing campaigns in their market?
Well, tools like SEMrush can help you do just that.
SEMrush is a keyword research tool with a database of over 35 million keywords and keyword phrases used to drive website traffic. The data is taken directly from Google’s organic search results as well as Google Ads. It is one of the best keyword research tools available. Best of all, you can use it as a spy tool. It currently offers a free (limited) version and a full, paid, version.
Why we like SEMrush:
See your competitor’s SEO organic and PPC positions
Looking to do your own Facebook advertising and want to do it at a high level?
For us, the go-to source for Facebook advertising is Jon Loomer’s Advanced Facebook Marketing. Jon’s educational content includes free workshops, podcasts, blog posts, and eBooks. All of these content sources cover the Facebook ad optimization and the latest Facebook ad news. Check out his:
One of our Core Values at Carrot is “Constant & Never Ending Incremental Improvement” and PPC Hero is one amazing resource to improve our own PPC marketing game.
PPC Hero is described as ”PPC insights from the experts at Hanapin Marketing”. They provide in-depth how-to’s, case studies, and resource guides. Warning – you can get wrapped up reading all their useful information. Be sure to stay focused or use their search feature and type in the specific information you’re looking for.
Moz has built the reputation of being a go-to place for SEO. But…Moz also has a large portion of insights on PPC and internet marketing. They keep up with industry trends, cutting-edge news, and ideas to change your outlook on your PPC strategy. Read more:
It’s called the “PPC Powertool.” Ads Editor is a free, downloadable Google application for managing large Ads accounts efficiently. Download campaigns, make quick and bulk changes with editing tools, then upload the changes straight to your AdWords account. There are many benefits to Google Ads Editor, but like to use it for the following:
You can remove duplicated keywords if you have extremely large campaigns that you download via a spreadsheet.
Create ad groups fast.
Replace bulk amounts of text.
It doesn’t require an internet connection so you can work offline.
Test bids using the advanced bid changes feature.
Microsoft Advertising Editor
Just like the Google Ads Editor, you can save time by managing your Microsoft Ads campaigns using Microsoft’s desktop application version. Microsoft Ads Editor is very similar to Google Ads Editor, so the learning curve is minimal. You can edit campaigns offline and publish changes when you are back online. You can also use Microsoft Ads Editor to manage your accounts in bulk, from the campaign level to as targeted as the individual ad level.
Search Engine Land
Search Engine Land, like Moz, has traditionally been considered an SEO resource. But they have many useful PPC content and guides to getting smarter at PPC marketing. To get started, check out these sections:
PPC (PayPerClick) marketing is one of the online lead generation strategies we teach our Carrot clients to use to get traffic coming in while you build up your SEO and content marketing.
Why?
Because SEO is a long term game (highly profitable but it takes patience)… while with PPC marketing you can have traffic and leads coming in, in hours or days.
It’s not “one or the other”… it’s a matter of your real estate lead gen goals and which one or ones best fit into your overall time and money budget to reach the prospects that you need to keep growing your business.
Like this chart shows…
PPC Marketing Can Be A Critical Part Of An Overall Lead Generation Effort For Many
With that said, if you know that PPC marketing can be a great tool for you and your real estate investing business, but just don’t have the time to learn it yourself, you need to seriously think about finding an amazing team to do the work for you.
Who specializes in working with real estate investors and all of the intracacies involved.
Who specializes in performance above all else, not just setting up and automating a PPC campaign.
And who delivers amazing customer support that you’re used to as a Carrot client.
So…
We Welcome Our Latest Carrot Certified Partner To Our Community…
We’re excited to announce welcoming in AdwordsNerds to our Carrot Marketplace as our Carrot Certified Partner on the PPC marketing side of things.
So, one of the first things you need to take into consideration before starting out in PPC is to perform a simple review Google search. Start the search by Googling terms such as “AdWords Nerds review” or “reviews of AdWords Nerds”.
It’s important for you to have in mind how different PPC service companies have performed with past clients. Take a look at ratings, management fees, costs per conversions, lead generation, if you will have access to your account.
There are some PPC consultants who might charge $150 to $5000+ per month or charge a flat rate per lead. Adding that optimized real estate PPC specialist is often the more “cost-effective” route than signing with a large agency.
Those investors that try to manage their own AdWords campaigns usually become frustrated at quit. Leaving a bad experience.
The solution: Hire a professional PPC service for real estate investors.
AdWords PPC can be a very complex process. Without the proper guidance and education, one can become confused while wasting a lot of marketing dollars.
With that, Dan at AdWords Nerds stepped up to the plate! AdWords Nerds is a certified InvestorCarrot PPC company and partner. Dan wrote a very detailed PPC guide that explains what things you should know about AdWords before you start advertising and spending money. This guide lays out the things you must know about AdWords before you start using it.
[cta offer=”ppcreport”]
Real estate investors have one of the toughest, weirdest, most complicated AdWords markets in the world.
Dan came into investing after running AdWords campaigns in a dozen different industries. He worked with plumbers and coaches, plastic surgeons and ambulance companies.
Not a single one of them had the sheer level of insanity found when he started digging into the world of online marketing for real estate investors.
Why is that? Well, there’s a few reasons:
High Potential ROI On Real Estate Deals Lends Itself To PPC Marketing
Most businesses are trying to sell moderately-priced products. That places a cap on what can profitably be spent to bring in a new customer. But, real estate investors have more room in their budgets. Net profits can be upwards of $60k in deals. Even novice wholesalers can make over $10k in deals if they’re in a good market.
All that profit means people are willing to spend a lot to get motivated seller leads – and competition can be fierce.
Gathering Good Data On What Actually Works
Over the last year Dan had the opportunity to look at dozens of different Investor AdWords accounts.
He looked at hundreds of thousands of different keywords, ads, and landing pages. He saw bids as high as $150 a click…and as low as ten cents a click.
You know what he found out? There is almost no hard data out there on what actually works. Without good data to fall back on, people share their personal experiences. For example, an investor might share his or her account that’s been really crushing it in their market.
So what happens if you take that account and set it up in your neck of the woods? About 50% of the time, you’ll do great. And the other 50% of the time? Your account turns into a giant, smoking hole in the ground.
That’s because so much of what determines a keyword’s profitability is unique to your market, your business, and your situation.
What CRUSHES it in one market, may absolutely flop in another.
“Picking the right keywords for your real estate AdWords campaigns is what makes the difference between making money and losing money”. Dan Barrett
Know This – PPC Is Not SEO
SEO keywords are pretty well-understood in the real estate investor space – companies like Investor Carrot have put out amazing guides on the topic, and SEO is easier for most investors to understand…after all, we all use Google to search for stuff.
When you move those keywords to Pay Per Click, however, you start to run into problems.
In Pay-Per-Click, we have to worry not just about what keyword we’re using, but how that keyword will be matched up with the search queries we want. And it’s not always obvious.
Introducing! PPC Service For Real Estate Investors.
Fast, Quality Leads Without Lifting a Finger
PPC (PayPerClick) ads are a great way to get traffic to your website right away – without having to wait months for SEO.
For our managed PPC service, you’ll work directly with the only Google Partner Agency that focuses specifically on Real Estate Investors – AdWords Nerds.
Interested in PPC for Real Estate Investors? Find out more about AdWords Nerds and what they have to offer.
One of the coolest parts of our job here at InvestorCarrot is hearing the stories from our members when they implement stuff leveraging our system and get great (life changing) results.
Well, one day we got this email below from one of our investor members, Chris Campbell of Real Property Mavens.
So we hopped on and did a video case study with Chris recently that you can dive into below.
On this Carrot Customer Case Study we dive into…
How he set a goal to do 6 figures his first year wholesaling (and fell just short)
How Chris got started and what spurred him to quit his job
How he found his first mentor (who he ended up closing 10+ deals with him)
What he learned from getting cut out of multiple deals by his mentor
How he lost $25k in profits on 1 deal by going “cheap” on the ______ _____ (find out in the video below)
How he transitioned into a full-time wholesaler and netted almost $75k in 6 months in 2014 w/ online marketing through InvestorCarrot
… and a lot more!
Chris has a great story and he walks through how he started, how he got burnt, how he landed on his feet and went full-time, and what he does to generate his leads and deals right now in 2015 leveraging the web.
Dive Into Chris Campbell’s Story Below!
If you’re looking to ramp up your lead generation and you see the web as a way to get in front of more motivated sellers, cash buyers, rent to own tenants, and more… check out the InvestorCarrot demo and see what Chris and countless other investors are experiencing with InvestorCarrot.
If you are an InvestorCarrot member and you’re interested in ramping up your PPC (payperclick) marketing like Chris did, check out our PPC services in the Carrot Marketplace.
Get found online when and where customers are searching. Turn attention into action.
Generate more leads with a website optimized for AI search.
Top-performing websites & marketing tools local businesses need to get found in modern search. Simple enough for a busy business owner, powerful enough for local marketing agencies.
Your marketing has leaky buckets. Carrot fixes them.
There are “Phantom Expenses” in every business. Even yours. Money that should be in your bank account, but went to your competitors instead. Dozens of “under-optimizations” across your marketing & CRM quietly leaking out leads, deals, and profits.
Business owners switch to CarrotWeb every day from AI site builders, custom WordPress sites, ‘free’ sites included in the ‘all-in-one’ tool, and the cheap site builders… and get an instant boost in performance (and profits).
Local marketing agencies switch to CarrotAgency so they can stop spending weeks custom-coding client sites that turn into bottomless pits of security patches and plugin updates … but produce a tiny handful of leads and never dominate local search results.
People are switching to CarrotCRM from the cluttered, bulky ‘all-in-ones’ that are really ‘mediocre-at-all’, unnecessarily difficult & a spendy trap of build-outs… and improving their lead-to-closed deal rate without adding extra headcount.
Hundreds of customer testimonialsshow how things perform better (with less hassle) on Carrot. That’s money in your bank and time back on your calendar.
Carrot has been around since 2013. We’ve pioneered high-performance, best-in-class websites, serving tens of thousands of real estate and home services pros (and the agencies that help them).
And with our InvestorFuse acquisition, we have the best-in-class CRM for serious inbound real estate marketers, too. It’s now called CarrotCRM. Every CarrotWeb plan includes the free version of CarrotCRM so you can grow with confidence.
In 2026, we launched the NEW era of Carrot. Amazing website design flexibility, AI tools, and data-driven performance recommendations to help you optimize and stand out everyone leads are searching.
Tried us in the past and thought “all Carrot sites look alike?” Those days are over. Dive into this site, book a demo, and try Carrot risk-free. We’d be pumped and honored to serve you.
Trevor Mauch, Co-Founder & CEO
Built for Local Search Marketers who care about Performance, Security, Speed, and Confidence.
If you’re tired of that all-in-one that was attractive when you started, but is now costing you leads and deals from under-performing “ok” features… Carrot is for you. If you want to have ownership of the things that matter in your website, but don’t want the hassle (and expense) of everything else… Carrot is for you. If you want to own your brand online, stand out, and build trust online. Carrot is for you.
Use just CarrotWeb to get more leads. Use just CarrotCRM to close more leads to deals. Use them both together for the magic.
An action-based CRM that helps inbound closers work more leads and focus where it matters most. Get more done, no matter your team size.
Carrot sites convert 7x higher than other lead sources & bring in 2.5x more profit per deal.
See what makes Carrot special.
See Carrot in action with this quick demo!
AI-powered inbound marketing and sales tools that keep humans dialed-in
✍️ AI Content Writer
Generate custom website copy in one click. Matches your voice, your market, your brand. What used to take hours now takes minutes, and it’s built on 10+ years of conversion data.
✅ AI Page Optimizations
If your site ever encourters an SEO issue or warning, you’ll know about it. Quickly discover and correct issues before they hurt your lead gen.
💬 AI Autonomous Lead Manager
Launch custom, trained AI lead follow-up agents who can text and email leads to qualify them and gather key information.
📞 AI Call Analysis
Every call is transcribed and scored for lead motivation. Know which conversations are worth reviewing, and which reps need coaching.
🧠 AI Lead Scoring
Every lead gets scored automatically based on motivation signals. Your team knows who’s hot before they pick up the phone.
📋 AI Opportunity Summaries
Get caught up on any lead in 30 seconds. Property details, seller intent, conversation history — all summarized so you’re ready for every callback.
… and more AI tools coming!
Thousands of top real estate investors, home service providers, and local marketing agencies use Carrot to grow with less hassle.
“Carrot sites are great because you can literally have a full-fledged website up and running within 10 minutes. Like no joke… The best thing about Carrot websites is they take the headache out of the equation. You don’t have to figure out web hosting, installing WordPress, building forms, picking a theme, writing initial content, initial designs, and so much more. It just works.”
Jason Moss
Digital Marketing Agency for Real Estate Investors
Products: CarrotWeb
“We had our biggest month ever, Google PPC to a Carrot site. We did $140k in assignment fees at a 5:1 ROI. I have the control I need with my website, without the issues I had with my old custom site. For the first time in a long time, business, family, and faith feel all aligned.”
“We received the most leads in a month ever this month. We also had our biggest month of sales this month. As you can see, most come from my Carrot website/SEO. My old site never produced like this. What I have found is consistent blogging has helped my rankings. I do 8 a month, mainly because I have 3 topics I hit every month (kitchens, bathrooms, roofs).”
Built for real estate investors and local service pros to reach motivated leads where they’re searching.
Generate more motivated leads. Build trust. Increase marketing ROI. Lose the tech hassle. When you need to get in front of motivated property owners, we’ve got you covered.
Carrot is built for yourlocal service business model.
The right pages, copy that makes sense for your business, CTAs that drive action. Carrot sites are built to make sense for your business speciality.
Wholesaling & Flipping
Attract and convert motivated house sellers and cash buyers.
Land Flippers & Investors
Get in front of the best motivated land sellers (and buyers).
Note Buyers & Sellers
Capture motivated note sellers who are looking to sell online.
Mobile Home Investing
Mobile home leads are hot. Get sellers + buyers faster.
HVAC
Whether you’re a residential or commercial HVAC pro, get found online by your ideal customers.
Roofers
Show off your experience and roofing specialty with a site that builds trust and drives business.
Plumbers
For emergencies, renovations, and new installs, make sure you show up when locals are searching.
General Contractors
Showcase your work, happy customers, and exactly what you do with a high-converting GC website.
Thousands of local businesses have poorly performing websites, don’t rank well in search results, and aren’t ready for AI search. There is an amazing opportunity to help them, and CarrotAgency makes it easy.
Marketing Agencies
Want an easier, faster way to launch, manage, and improve client sites? CarrotAgency gives you powerful tools to easily manage recurring tasks, generate new business for your clients, and grow your client list.
Network Builders
Have a network of local businesses and service providers you already know? Turn those connections into recurring revenue by easily launching a high-performing site that beats their current marketing. No experience required.
Coaching Programs, Franchises
Add value to your coaching program or franchise by providing your members with a fast, SEO-optimized site that matches your approved format and works for your program and members.
Our Strategy: Carrot is your high-performing hub of trust
Your website is the heart(or “hub”) of your marketing.
Marketing channels come and go. Algorithms shift. But one thing stays constant: your website is where potential customers decide to call you… or your competitor.
Direct mail, PPC, TV, radio… all offline marketing drives online demand. Before they pick up the phone, they Google (or ChatGPT) you. And what they find either builds trust or kills the deal.
Our websites are built specifically for real estate investors and local service businesses that serve property owners. That’s our only focus. Every page, every element, one goal: convert motivated sellers, buyers, and homeowners into leads.
“Especially in the age of AI SEO,your website is your hub of trust.“
“Direct mail is our core strategy; Carrot is our conversion mechanism. People find us online, and convert into leads at a really high rate with Carrot. Also, our SEO rankings have dramatically increased since we moved to Carrot. Carrot is beating our expensive custom site.”
Ryan Dossey, CEO / SoldFast(National Brand)
Path to Carrot: Custom WordPress to All-in-one “free” site to Carrot
“I’ve already seen the lead flow increase noticeably since launching on Carrot, this is a great sign!”
Jason Pritchard, CEO Pinnacle Home Buyers / Fresno, CA
Path to Carrot: Low-performing custom WordPress site to a blazing fast Carrot site Products: CarrotWeb, CarrotPro (Concierge Setup Service)
Launch, Customize, Convert: More than just a “pretty” site
Make every visit count
Your brand, your way. Carrot sites are built to match your business. Fresh designs, drag-and-drop editing, and AI content that sounds like you. Stand out in your market and make leads feel like they found the right business to work with: You.
Speed and trust that converts. Every second your site takes to load costs you leads. Carrot sites score 60% faster than custom WordPress… so visitors stay, trust builds, and more of them pick up the phone or fil out your form.
Know what’s working. Built-in lead source tracking shows you exactly which pages and campaigns drive your best deals. Integrate with your CRM or use ours. Either way, you’ll know where your money’s going… and where it’s coming from.
We handle the tech. No plugin updates. No security patches. No (expensive) developer on speed dial. We keep your site fast, secure, and optimized… so you can focus on closing deals, not fixing code, fiddling with your site, or chasing developers.
I have 3 Carrot sites that have [each] generated over $1M in assignment fees, and one of those over $2M. I do TV advertising and SEO and my Carrot site is the center of it that makes it all work. I’d considered a custom WordPress website, but the performance, ease, and ROI from Carrot can’t be matched even on a custom build. Why would I hassle with going custom?”
Jeremy Resmer
CEO, Value Land Buyers & Middle Tennessee Home Buyers
Nashville, TN Products: CarrotWeb
Get Noticed: Ranking in local SEO and AI Search
Dominate local search. Stay visible as AI search evolves.
Here’s what our data actually shows: organic traffic to Carrot sites hasn’t dropped since AI search came on the scene. Google searches have increased since AI Overviews launched. And local service businesses… like real estate investors, agents, contractors, and home services show more stable click-through rates than most other industries.
We’re not ignoring the shift. We’re building for it.
“I’ve been a loyal Carrot customer for almost 10 years now! One of my sites that performs well used to average 5-10 leads weekly at best. Which is good. But I’ve noticed leads slowly increasing the last 30 days. The past 7 days I’ve had 45 leads. Of those, 26 were from ChatGPT… Highly recommend Carrot sites and their AI SEO training!”
Jeff Filali, CEO of Oklahoma Cash Home Buyer, LLC Products: CarrotWeb, AI SEO Challenge
A suite of local SEO tools to help you get better results…
🔍 Local Search Dominance
30%+ of the top Google rankings for motivated sellers are Carrot sites. Schema markup, site speed, content structure, location pages, all optimized before you hit publish.
🤖 AI Search Optimization
We’re dialing in schema, FAQ structure, guiding you on how to improve EEAT signals, and hyperlocal authority… the factors that get you mentioned in ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and whatever comes next.
AI Overviews · ChatGPT · Gemini
📍 Multi-Market Reach
Scale into new cities without starting from scratch. Our SEO architecture is built for investors and businesses who want to dominate more than one market. Published highly localized location pages or launch multiple Carrot sites if you want!
Once your under-performing website problem is fixed, it’s about tracking and lead management
Every part of your local search marketing machine should work together to increase your return on investment as much as possible. From tracking, analytics, follow-up, and lead management… Carrot has the tools and support to help you close the gaps.
Track Your Marketing: Know what’s working (and what’s not)
Clearer decisions with simple data and tracking.
Website stats. Use built-in website stats for important site visitor, lead, and conversion rate info, or easily plug in your Google Analytics code to go deep.
Lead source tracking. Never wonder where your leads are coming from. Every lead has a “lead source” attached to it, telling you exactly where each lead came from.
Google Search Console integration. In a few clicks, we’ll pull in your Google Search Console data to show you what keywords bring people to your site and more.
Campaign tracking links. Doing paid ads or social media? Use our Campaign Links for your social profile CTAs, ad tests, and social posts to know which ones turn into clicks and leads.
Phone call tracking (AI-powered). Every Carrot account gets a free local phone tracking phone to use, and you can add as many as you’d like for just $3/mo. Track calls, texts, and try our AI-powered call analyzer to quickly know how every call went.
“I’ve already seen the lead flow increase noticeably since launching on Carrot, this is a great sign!”
Jason Pritchard, CEO Pinnacle Home Buyers / Fresno, CA
Path to Carrot: Low-performing custom WordPress site to a blazing fast Carrot site
CRM + Lead Management: For inbound marketers
Turn Leads into Closed Deals, Without the Chaos
Your leads deserve better than a spreadsheet and sticky notes. And you deserve better than babysitting a bloated CRM filled with cold leads.
CarrotCRM is built for inbound leads — the motivated leads who found you online (or called you on the phone). AI tells you who’s hot. Automated follow-up keeps them warm. Your team knows exactly what to do next
“… we switched to CarrotCRM (formerly InvestorFuse 3.0) and haven’t looked back. We were on Podio and were thinking about a custom build on GHL or Salesforce, but CarrotCRM does everything we need for our high-volume wholesaling team and Carrot is more like a partner than a software. It’s the core of our business and they scale with us.”
Nick Perry, CEO, Want To Sell Now (national wholesaler)
Always know the exact next action to take with every lead, whether you’re an expert or newbie. See all of your daily actions due today and process leads 50% faster than “database” based CRMs where you spend hours searching and filtering.
See every deal from first click to closed contract. Know which marketing channels and team members are producing… and which are burning money.
🤖 AI Powered to Save You Time
AI has revolutionized how fast you can work, and we’ve built key AI features into CarrotCRM to put speed, power, and insights at your fingertips.
Find out which leads are hottest, get caught up on details in seconds instead of 10+ minutes, and let AI agents have real conversations with leads to warm them up.
“CarrotCRM is simple, intuitive and built specifically for how real investor businesses actually operate.”
— Alexander Cruz
“I had no world tech experience, and I just didn’t have an online presence. I didn’t want to have to build a website. So Carrot made that really easy for me.“
— Beau Hollis
“As an acquisitions manager, staying on top of all of your leads and making sure you’re giving the right attention to the right leads is crucial. Don’t waste your time going through a basic CRM and treating every lead the same.“
Kyler Peters
“… our agency has tried all of the website systems. Carrot flat our converts better and makes our clients more money. We won’t use anything else anymore.”
PPC Agency
How many leads and deals are you losing? Here’s how we helped these top local marketersstop the leak.
Don’t settle for ok features that solve problems just… “ok”. That gets expensive fast. Pair Carrot with other top tools for what they’re best at, and let Carrot help you do what we’re best at.
Integrations = freedom to scale the way you want. Don’t get trapped in an “all-in-one.”
Customer Support: We’ve got you covered.
Real humans. Real help. Who really care.
We were the first in real estate investing to offer live chat support. Not because it was trendy — because we knew you needed answers now, not in 48 hours.
Whether you have a quick question, need help dialing in your SEO, or want strategy advice on your next market — we’re here. No outsourced teams who’ve never seen a Carrot site. Just real people who genuinely care about your success.
Carrot is a website building platform that helps real estate investors, home service providers, and marketing agencies quickly and easily launch high-quality, top-performing websites. Carrot websites are designed out of the box for fast page speed, security, SEO ranking, and AI search visibility. All Carrot sites are built on a proven website design framework created with over a decade of research and testing. Carrot sites don’t just look good, they’re intentionally designed to perform well, attract traffic, and convert leads.
Carrot also offers CarrotCRM, an easy-to-use, action-based CRM for local businesses to manage inbound leads. CarrotCRM is equipped with AI features that help you focus on the best leads, save time, accomplish more, and communicate with leads automatically.
Carrot has an AI website building tool that builds a beautiful website tailored to your business. Just answer a few questions about your company, what type of customers you want, and what makes you different, and the Carrot AI website builder does the rest for you. You can keep editing and customizing your site with our drag-and-drop web editor.
Yes! Carrot websites are designed with SEO best practices, and the CarrotWeb platform includes tools to help you target the best keywords and monitor your keyword rankings.
A CarrotWeb Individual subscription (which includes a high-converting website, the AI website builder, built-in SEO tools, and the free version of CarrotCRM) is best for businesses who want to create their own site and costs $119/month. You can save 15% by signing up for an annual subscription.
Marketing agencies who want to use Carrot to host top-performing local search websites for their clients can sign up for CarrotAgency for $299/month. CarrotAgency users can sell websites directly to their clients for $29/month, or have clients sign up for an Individual plan and give the agency access to their site.
Anyone can add additional AI tools to their subscription for $99/month. The AI Suite Add-On includes the AI Page Insights, Full Site Audits, AI Call Tracking Insights, and several CarrotCRM AI features (Autonomous Lead Manager, AI Lead Scoring, and AI Summaries).
Custom websites are very expensive, often costing several thousand dollars (plus ongoing maintenance and update costs). And their SEO and conversion optimization depend entirely on your developer’s skill and knowledge. Meaning you can pay a lot for a website that doesn’t work as well. (Just like George Anderson did.)
The No. 1 priority of all Carrot sites is top performance for SEO, speed, security, and conversion. No back-and-forth with a designer and developer. No expensive updates and fixes down the road. No need to hire an SEO agency on top of your website developer. You get a site that looks good and is built to rank in search and convert leads right out of the box … for less than $1,200 a year. It’s a cheaper, more successful option than a custom website.
Launch your site with our Beta AIonboarder (or have us do it for you)
Try Carrot and see how quick and easy it is to setup and customize a site with our new AI onboarder. Or chat with our team about having us set everything up for you and you can see the results for yourself.
Explore the Platform That Turns Local Business Searches Into Customers
Carrot websites show up more often in SEO and AI search and convert leads 7x higher than other lead sources. Built on best-in-class speed and performance, it’s purpose-built for local search.
See exactly how Carrot works to generate a consistent pipeline of motivated local leads.
Choose your demo to see:
CarrotAgency for local marketing agencies
Carrot websites for local business owners & real estate investors
CarrotCRM for lead management
30% – 50% of top Google rankings
for top local keywords.
7x higher conversion
data from thousands of Carrot websites.
98+ desktop, 90+ mobile speeds
60% faster than custom WordPress.
Most Websites Look Fine. But Fine Doesn’t Generate Business.
Here’s the problem most local business owners never notice: their website gets them online, but it doesn’t get them found. And if it does get found, it doesn’t convert. How are you going to generate business if the people searching for you can’t find you online?
It’s not a traffic problem. It’s a platform problem.
Carrot was built from the ground up for one thing: motivated lead generation. Every design decision, every SEO structure, every conversion element is engineered around what actually turns a motivated online searcher into an inbound lead ready to talk.
That’s why 30–50% of top Google rankings for top local keywords are Carrot sites. Not because we got lucky. Because we’ve spent 10+ years obsessing over the one metric that actually matters: deals closed from your website.
Most platforms build websites. Carrot builds deal machines.
Start with a strong marketing strategy, without being a marketing expert
Your website should be more than just “an online business card.” Good websites attract traffic, generate leads, and help you close deals. That takes more than just random words and a phone number.
Carrot’s new AI website builder doesn’t just generate a website; it gives you a full marketing strategy that guides your SEO, content, and the best way to target specific locations. These strategies are crafted based on your business, target markets, and goals. Even better … we don’t just recommend strategies, we implement them directly into your site for you.
When you search for a service provider online, do you search for someone in the nearest big city? Or do you enter your search term followed by your town name? Targeting people with their specific location name is critical to high-quality lead generation.
You could manually build a page for every city, town, and neighborhood you do business in. Or you could let Carrot’s Auto Location Pages handle it for you. These take all the details about your business and services and SEO optimize it for a specific location.
SEO isn’t static. You need to pay attention to trends and search algorithm changes, then adjust accordingly. There are plenty of tools that help you do this … and we’ve built a few of them into your Carrot website dashboard.
You should, or you’re wasting money. Paying for any marketing without knowing exactly how well it works is like throwing money into a black hole. Carrot’s campaign tracking helps you measure exactly where your best online and phone leads found you.
Here’s what real estate pros, local businesses, and marketing agencies are doing with Carrot.
“Carrot sites are great because you can literally have a full-fledged website up and running within 10 minutes. Like no joke… The best thing about Carrot websites is they take the headache out of the equation. You don’t have to figure out web hosting, installing WordPress, building forms, picking a theme, writing initial content, initial designs, and so much more. It just works.”
Jason Moss
Digital Marketing Agency for Real Estate Investors
Products: CarrotWeb
“We had our biggest month ever, Google PPC to a Carrot site. We did $140k in assignment fees at a 5:1 ROI. I have the control I need with my website, without the issues I had with my old custom site. For the first time in a long time, business, family, and faith feel all aligned.”
“We received the most leads in a month ever this month. We also had our biggest month of sales this month. As you can see, most come from my Carrot website/SEO. My old site never produced like this. What I have found is consistent blogging has helped my rankings. I do 8 a month, mainly because I have 3 topics I hit every month (kitchens, bathrooms, roofs).”
Don’t take our word for it… Here’s what Carrot has done for small business owners across the country.
From $0 to $100K/mo in 12 Months
I never got anything from my old custom websites… You go where people are getting results. I saw people in competitive markets using Carrot, so I knew it was the platform I needed.
Carrot has been a game-changer for our business. Within the first three months, we saw a 200% increase in leads and a significant improvement in our search engine rankings. The platform is incredibly easy to use, and the support team is always there to help. We’ve been able to focus more on closing deals rather than worrying about our online presence. Carrot truly understands the needs of real estate investors.
I was already running a WordPress site for my real estate business, but it wasn’t designed for investors. When I found Carrot, I knew it was built specifically for what I needed.
For the past 13 years, Carrot has helped local real estate investors and agents dominate search results and generate highly motivated leads with websites built on SEO best practices, industry-leading performance, and visitor-to-lead conversion elements driven by science and testing, not guesswork or trends.
That’s why websites on the Carrot platform dominate 30-50% of the top search results for impactful real estate keywords across major markets. And why members who try something else come back time and time again.
“Was promised the moon … wasted $9k, didn’t get what was supposed to be delivered, they stopped responding to my emails and texts, and lost all the [SEO] progress I had with my Carrot site. Expensive learning lesson.” — Gagan S.
“I had a PPC vendor who built a super techy site that they swore would out convert my Carrot site — it didn’t. I paid $5,000 to have a custom site designed that was really pretty, but I got less leads. My expensive, pretty site was converting at 1-2% on SEO when my Carrot site was converting at like 8.5% on SEO.” — Ryan Dossey
When you build a product that performs well, people want to use it. And we noticed local marketing agencies using Carrot to get real-world results for their clients. The platform worked for them and delivered those client results, but it wasn’t easy for agencies to use. So we fixed it.
CarrotAgency empowers local marketing agencies to launch high-performing, SEO-optimized websites in minutes based on their own custom template and built on Carrot’s industry-leading lead generation website platform. Managing clients is simple with a clean, streamlined dashboard that eliminates complicated account switching. Effortlessly keep all your client sites optimized with AI-powered recommendations and auto-fixes. CarrotAgency allows solo-operators and small local marketing agencies to grow their client base and deliver high-quality results while controlling costs.
Key Takeaways
SEO specialists, PPC providers, and content marketers can now offer website services to clients without being a web dev expert. Carrot’s easy-to-use platform makes launching and maintaining a top performing website simple. It’s an ideal way for local marketing agencies to add a new revenue stream and meet important client needs.
CarrotAgency makes it simple for small agencies to launch and manage client websites without expensive tools, large teams, and lots of overhead costs. It’s an ideal, affordable solution for small marketing agencies working with local service providers like real estate investors, HVAC, roofers, plumbers, and general contractors.
CarrotAgency incorporates AI tools that make it faster and easier to launch and maintain a website designed to generate local search results.
CarrotAgency offers all the website, marketing, and SEO tools members love from Carrot, but adds features designed to help agencies work faster, smarter, and with less effort. It’s built for small, local marketing agencies that want to help local business owners — particularly those who provide services to property owners. The built-in AI and SEO tools and easy-to-use website platform allow small agencies to take on more clients without adding expensive software or running into time and execution constraints.
Here are some of the CarrotAgency features that early adopters find most exciting.
AI Website Builder
Carrot’s AI website builder allows members to quickly and easily create a website personalized to their business simply by answering a few questions (or inputting an existing URL for the AI builder to pull information from). Every site launched is built on Carrot’s proven, conversion-optimized framework and includes key site elements like contact forms in the ideal spots, top page load speeds, and mobile optimization.
But the AI website builder takes things a step further, creating SEO, location, and content strategies customized to each business. These strategies are automatically implemented, targeting the best keywords, creating personalized web copy, and adding location pages that target each market. Upload a logo and select the color palette during the AI experience, and you’re ready to launch with a personalized website in just minutes with a fraction of the work.
Agencies use this tool to quickly launch client websites or create example sites to pitch new clients. Seeing a site that already matches their brand, has their logo and colors, and features pages for each of their markets makes the experience come to life and makes clients excited to work with you.
Custom Template
Many agencies have specific elements they like all their client sites to have. Maybe it’s particular page sections, certain navigation items, or a specific homepage design. While Carrot websites offer a highly optimized framework, we want to make sure agencies can further customize their client sites with the elements that work well for them. But adding those elements individually to every new site takes time … and CarrotAgency is all about saving agencies time and making their work easier.
So every CarrotAgency account includes a custom template for your agency. Work with our team to design your ideal template while preserving good site performance, then use that as your base to launch new client sites even faster with less work. Customize the corner radius on boxes, add the perfect drop shadow, introduce shaped divider lines to make a page more dynamic … the Carrot website editor lets you make sites look unique and stand out with just a little tweaking (no coding required).
Agency Management Dashboards
One of the biggest challenges for agencies using Carrot before this release was accessing different client websites and switching between client accounts. Not impossible, but a pain. That was the first thing we set out to fix when building CarrotAgency.
The new management dashboard lets you quickly and easily navigate to any client or website. This feature alone saves hours each week.
Task Management
How do you manage your tasks? Do you have an elaborate to-do list or expensive project management software like Asana? What if you have multiple team members or work with subcontractors? Keeping up with tasks, managing deadlines, and ensuring everything gets done is a job itself. Missing a task could mean a client’s site isn’t fully optimized, doesn’t get launched, their SEO takes a hit, they don’t show up in AI search results, or they’re wasting PPC spend. Task management is critical to your business, but it shouldn’t take as much of your brainpower as it probably does.
CarrotAgency includes a simple but powerful built-in task management tool. It comes pre-loaded with the website launch tasks that are part of every Carrot website so you (or your team members) can easily work through the checklist. You can also create your own task templates. These are great for one-time tasks that need to happen for every new client and recurring weekly or monthly tasks that need to stay on your radar.
You can assign tasks to any team member and keep track of which are complete, which are due soon, and which were missed so nothing slips through the cracks. It’s part of CarrotAgency, no expensive project management software or upgrade required.
AI Site Improvements
One of the biggest challenges to expanding your client list is the sheer amount of time working on each client takes. Beyond adding fresh site content, launching new PPC campaigns, and keeping up with SEO and AI search updates, you barely have time to go back and check for issues or other optimization opportunities. This either means your clients’ sites aren’t performing as well as they could be, or you have to limit your number of clients to ensure they each get top-notch service. That inherently stifles your business’s growth potential.
CarrotAgency removes a major hurdle with built-in AI Site Improvements. Similar to SEMrush, Ahrefs, or Google Search Console, this feature highlights issues and areas for improvement across your client sites. Better than SEMrush, Ahrefs, or Google Search Console, Carrot’s AI Site Improvements will soon make these improvements for you via auto-implemented optimizations. It’s like having a specialist on hand at all times without having to hire one.
Built-In Site Maintenance
Maintaining site security, struggling with plugin updates, and worrying about site speed optimizations take away from your more important work — doing marketing for your clients. But with WordPress sites, custom builds, and AI generated sites that need to hosted somewhere, those important but tedious maintenance tasks take a lot of time. Carrot takes care of foundational site functionality for you. We do the security patches. We optimize site elements to keep pages speedy. We release improvements across our entire ecosystem to maintain top performance. You only have to worry about optimizing sites for your clients, not the underpinning functionality.
Bulk Redirect
When taking over a client’s website, there’s a good chance there’s a decent amount of cleanup and site hygiene you want to do. If that includes implementing a lot of redirects (which it often does), it can be an incredibly tedious and time consuming process. If you’re doing it yourself, that’s a lot of time away from more important client work. If you’re paying someone to do it, that’s a lot of money spent on busy work.
The bulk redirect feature lets you upload a CSV of desired redirects that are then auto implemented for you. The system warns you of collisions, malformed paths, or paths that don’t exist on the site to prevent issues.
(We want to make sure CarrotAgency works for agencies, and this is a direct result of asking what’s needed and responding. Bulk redirects was a member requested feature. This one’s for you Bryan! If there’s something you’d love to see added to CarrotAgency, let me know)
Your Choice of Business Model & Client Billing
Each agency has a preferred model. Some agencies launch a site and bill the client; others manage a site the client already has. CarrotAgency supports both.
With the Agency-Owned model, you create the site for your client and work the cost of the website into your client billing. Each client site on Carrot is $29/month. You have direct access to the site and can add your client if they want the ability to login. With this model, the client pays you, not Carrot, for the website. The client does not need a paid Carrot subscription. If your client engagement ends, the client can sign up for their own paid Carrot subscription and you can transfer site ownership to them.
With the Client-Owned model, the client signs up for an individual paid Carrot subscription and gives your agency access to the site. (Their site still shows up in your client management dashboard, just like normal.) They pay Carrot directly and you don’t incur any additional monthly costs above your base CarrotAgency subscription. If your client engagement ends, they simply remove your access to their site.
You can have both types of account in your agency membership, allowing you to choose whichever option is best suited to each client.
Lead Management CRM
Every Carrot website subscription comes with the free version of CarrotCRM, and agency-managed sites are no different. CarrotCRM is a best-in-class lead management software that makes it easy for businesses to respond to new leads quickly, track lead progress and follow-up tasks, and keep leads engaged via drip campaigns and automated messaging. Originally designed for real estate investing (with built-in property data and nearby comp insights), CarrotCRM will soon expand to other industries.
This is an amazing feature to offer your clients. Spreadsheets are unreliable and most CRMs are prohibitively expensive for small businesses. CarrotCRM gives your clients access to a professional-grade CRM at no additional cost.
“I’ve used a bunch of CRMs, I’ve used Salesforce, I’ve used HighLevel, and they can get complex. I like the simplicity of CarrotCRM. A lead comes in, you see it, it’s at the top, you see the status, you can tag it, you can do whatever you want. The simplicity of the system actually helps us a lot and enables us to just do what we need to do with a lead. That’s the best part. What I love about CarrotCRM is it’s simplicity when compared to other CRMs.” — Kevin Riggi
User Management
And, of course, CarrotAgency features robust user management. Limit what team members can do within the agency account, restrict team members’ or contractors’ access to specific client sites, and invite your clients to access their own sites and reporting dashboards without seeing everyone else’s information. This permission management lets you grow in a way that makes sense to you, whether that’s adding full-time team members, working with a VA, or using subcontractors.
Sites Built for Modern Online Search
The way people find local businesses online has changed dramatically in the past couple of years. People have long turned to search engines to find local businesses and service providers, but over the past two years, the use of AI for local recommendations has sky rocketed. Use of AI tools for local recommendations grew from 6% in 2025 to 45% in 2026, according to BrightLocal’s Local Consumer Review Survey 2026. That is a major behavior switch! Local search marketers can’t ignore AI search optimization if they want to keep their clients competitive.
This is changing how local search agencies need to position their clients. Good SEO alone is no longer enough. While following SEO best practices helps businesses show up in AI search, it expands beyond that into holistic entity building.
Carrot not only understands how AI impacts local business visibility, we’re leading the way in helping businesses adapt and stay ahead. This means our sites are designed with AI search in mind, including LLMs.txt files and AI-friendly page elements like clear site structure, FAQ sections, and features that keep business information cohesive across the entire site.
AI today doesn’t just mean AI that can build a website. It means creating a site that’s prepared for how AI impacts search and local business discovery. Carrot has both fronts covered.
Who is CarrotAgency a Good Fit For?
CarrotAgency is built for anyone who wants to help local businesses get found online. Whether you have a marketing agency right now or have been thinking about helping others improve their marketing, CarrotAgency is an excellent place to start.
Because it’s designed for ease of use and fast results without major effort, it’s ideal for solo marketers and small teams that want to build their client base without adding expensive tools or more headcount. It’s particularly good for SEO agencies, PPC providers, and content marketers who want to expand their services to include websites. Before CarrotAgency, you needed the confidence, knowledge, skills, and time to design, develop, and maintain websites if you wanted to offer this service. With CarrotAgency, you can add this highly valuable solution to your service offerings without being a website expert. Carrot handles most of the heavy lifting, and our drag-and-drop features and visual editor make tweaking and updating sites simple. (Trust me, I built a lot of the pages on this site, and I am by no means a web dev. If I can figure it out, so can you!)
Carrot sites are optimized for real estate and home service providers like HVAC, roofers, plumbers, and general contractors. Local search has been our specialty since 2013, and we’ve tested thousands of website elements and iterations to figure out what works for these types of businesses to show up in search and convince visitors to turn into leads and clients.
Want to work with a different type of business? We’ve had members launch sites for pool cleaning, dumpster rentals, any number of property-based services. With your agency-custom template, you can create the framework of a high-performing site for just about any local business. Own your niche and grow your business. Carrot makes it easy.
How much does CarrotAgency cost?
A CarrotAgency subscription is $299/month.
Each site you add for a client (the Agency-Owned model) is $29/month.
You can add client-owned websites to your agency dashboard for no additional charge.
There is no limit on how many clients or websites you can add to your agency account.
Stop struggling
CarrotAgency is all about eliminating the little paper cuts that slow down your business and make it harder to get work done. It’s not a huge agency-level software with an enterprise-level price tag. It’s built for small marketing agencies that want to help local businesses attract local customers.
No more pain from building (and maintaining, and updating) dozens of custom WordPress sites. No more wasting time with vibe coded AI sites that have nightmare backends with zero conversion optimizations, meaning you just have to do it all again down the road … if your client even still trusts you. CarrotAgency is a simple, clean experience that takes the headache out of the hard stuff and lets you focus on what you do best.
And this is only just the beginning. CarrotAgency just launched and we’re already making improvements. An AI suite add-on is coming soon that will make your work even quicker. A white-labeled version is on the roadmap. And we’re always soliciting feedback from real users so we can make your life easier and your business more successful.
Stop struggling with expensive, overly complex solutions. Stop wasting time on tasks that should be automated. And stop limiting your agency’s growth because “you don’t have time.” Demo CarrotAgency.
Deliver better online results in less time with CarrotAgency
Launch high-performing, SEO-optimized websites in minutes based on your custom template. Manage everything from a single, streamlined dashboard. And effortlessly keep all your client sites optimized with AI-powered recommendations and auto-fixes.
Scale your business without scaling your overhead. See the difference CarrotAgency can make for your business.
Grow your agency with tools you’ll actually use.
Client Management Dashboard
Save time and work faster with the clean, streamlined management dashboard. Find the exact client or site you’re looking for and switch between accounts in seconds.
Easy Site Creation & Editing
Launch client sites in minutes! Answer a few questions about your client and our AI website builder produces an SEO-optimized site for you. Use the drag-and-drop patterns & design tools for more customization.
Custom Site Template
Want certain elements on all of your client sites? Skip the manual adjustments every time you spin up a new client site. Carrot Agency includes a site template customized to your specs for easier site launches.
Built-In Marketing Tools
Paying for separate marketing tools impacts your income-to-expense ratio. Plus, hoping between software wastes time you should be working on client accounts. Remove the pain and improve your bottom line with built-in marketing tools.
Team Management
Add team members to your agency account or specific clients and restrict what they can see and do. Get the help you need without losing control.
Task Management
Make sure you, your employees, and your clients know exactly what to do and when with built-in checklists, deadlines, and task management features.
AI Tools
Work faster and with less effort using a suite of AI tools that help with content updates, SEO optimizations, and more. Plus, give your clients access to their own useful AI tools.
PPC Landing Page Templates
When your clients are ready for PPC, use the built-in PPC landing page templates to quickly launch pages with key conversion elements.
Start with a high-performing website built for local SEO
Every Carrot website is built with performance and conversion in mind. They’re designed for lightning-fast speed, top security, and local SEO and AI search. Plus, with CarrotAgency, you get your own custom site template, so you can include the specifics you like all of your client sites to have without manually editing every site every time.
Carrot’s AI website builder lets you spin up client sites in minutes or even create an example site to land that new contract.
Manage more clients in less time
Moving between client accounts takes more time than you realize. Time you could be using to land new contracts and increase your revenue.
With CarrotAgency’s centralized management dashboards for clients, websites, and tasks, you can quickly move between to-dos without the headache of constantly logging in and out.
Backed by a team dedicated to your success
One of Carrot’s guiding principles is “Add Humanity.” Whether you have a tech question, a feature idea, or need some strategy help, we have your back. From our robust help center to our live support team, we’ll get you the information you need.
We use our own products all day, every day, so we’re not just looking up vague answers. We’re troubleshooting right beside you to find fast, effective solutions.
Optimized for mobile
59% of Carrot member leads come from mobile devices. Carrot sites are optimized to provide the best mobile experience for visitors and to convert mobile traffic into leads — a must for any home service business!
It’s no secret that owning a small business is getting more difficult. With more competition, higher expenses, and clients tightening their spending, winning business is challenging.
One of the most effective ways to generate new business is with a great website. Traditional marketing methods like offline advertising, mailers, bandit signs, and even cold calling can still work. And modern approaches like being social-only have their place for some companies. But when it comes to local businesses and services, the majority of today’s consumers search online and use a business’s website to judge its credibility.
Let’s explore four data-backed reasons your local business needs a website.
Key Takeaways
People not only search online for local businesses, they use business websites to decide who to trust. Even if you’re advertising elsewhere or are social-first, having a modern website can determine if a customer works with you.
A website with easy contact options — like a clickable phone number and a short, easy-to-find form — lets you generate customers outside normal business hours.
A good website is a foundational part of appearing in AI search results.
Your website is the ideal place to showcase your work and customer reviews. Over 90% of consumers rely on reviews before making a purchase or working with a business.
I work for a company that helps local service providers launch a website, so I admittedly have a vested interest in you having a site. But statistics are also on my side. The fact of the matter is, people go online to search for local businesses. Not some people. A lot of people. Approximately 99% of consumers go online to discover local businesses. Yet 27% of small businesses think a website is irrelevant to their industry.
Those holdouts relying on recommendations, old school marketing methods, or social media platforms majorly miss out. Not only on search traffic, but on consumer trust. Having a professional-looking website lends your business credibility.
69% of consumers said a website is essential for a local business to be credible.
Businesses with websites are perceived as 41% more trustworthy than those without.
45% of consumers say businesses without websites feel less “real.”
39% report they have declined to do business with a company specifically because it lacked a website. That figure jumps to 45% among consumers ages 18-44.
If you’re a home services provider, having a website is even more important. DreamHost found that 66% of consumers said they’re more likely to hire a contractor or home service provider with a website.
Even with people continuing to ask friends for recommendations and increasingly turning to social media or AI for searches, a website remains a foundational piece of business credibility. Here’s more from DreamHost:
58% of people check a business website to confirm info they see on social or Google.
Only 35% of consumers consider working with a company recommended by AI that doesn’t have a website.
Having a good website is the second most important trust factor when judging a local business (only online reviews are more important). Social media came in third. Personal recommendations ranked fourth.
The first website was created in 1991. Google Search has been around since 1995. Automatic delivery of the Yellow Pages began phasing out in 2011. Websites aren’t a fad. They’re how people find businesses — and decide which ones to trust — as we move further into the 21st century.
2. Show Up in Local Search (SEO) & AI Search
So people are searching online. How do you make sure you show up in those searches? One of the answers is having an SEO-optimized website.
72% of small to medium-sized businesses say SEO has a medium-high impact on their business, yet only 40% said they have a dedicated website. — Bright Local
Good SEO lets you target potential customers when they’re looking for a specific solution. Here are a few tips for good SEO that will help you rank in local searches:
Be hyper local — When people conduct a local search, they don’t want a business the town over. They want a business in their town. Make sure you target these searchers by clearly including your service areas on your website. Even better, have a dedicated page for each market you serve.
Think (and speak) like a consumer — There may be a lot of technical terms in your industry, but your customers might not know them. When writing website copy, use the terms your customers are most likely to use. Essentially, speak like a human or imagine you’re describing what you do to your grandma.
Instead of talking exclusively about “buying homes in probate,” create web content explaining how you help people “sell an inherited house.”
If you’re an HVAC company, your customers might not know what a condenser is. They’re more likely to search for more generic, simple terms like “AC isn’t working” or “AC repair.”
Answer their questions upfront — When someone is looking to sell their house fast, for cash, or is looking for a home service provider, they have a lot of questions. Answer their most common questions with FAQ sections on your webpages.
Think about the questions your current customers ask you most often, these make great FAQs!
Google’s auto-suggest feature is another great place to learn what people commonly search for and the phrases they use.
These SEO best practices also help with AI search optimization.
McKinsey & Company found that 50% of consumers use AI-powered search. BrightLocal’s Local Consumer Review Survey 2026 found that use of AI tools for local recommendations grew from 6% in 2025 to 45% this year (yes, you read that right, that’s a 650% increase!). AI engines are now the third most popular source of business recommendations, with 40% of consumers trusting AI to provide business recommendations.
To be found by modern consumers, you need to be online. And the best way to control your online presence is with your own SEO and AI-optimized website.
Want help optimizing your website for local AI search? Check out Carrot’s AI Visibility Challenge, built specifically for local services businesses and real estate professionals!
3. Generate Leads & Get Customers — Even after hours
This one should seem pretty straightforward. People are looking online for a local business. Being online gives you a better chance of being found when (and where) they’re looking — especially if your site is SEO optimized.
But it’s more nuanced than that. Your business (likely) isn’t open 24/7, but that doesn’t mean people only look for service providers during normal business hours. In an emergency repair situation, someone searching for a local service provider needs to get in touch with you quickly — no matter what time of day it is. In this case, research indicates they’ll look at your star rating, read some reviews, then go to your website to verify you can solve their problem and ultimately contact you.
Or maybe someone is contemplating a kitchen remodel or a roof replacement and only has time to sit down and do research in the evenings. These people are more likely to look closely at your website and do deep research before reaching out. They may not even want to talk to someone right away and be more interested in filling out a form for a quote instead.
This is a similar situation for real estate investors wanting to attract motivated sellers. The seller may be dealing with a stressful situation and hesitant to reach out directly. Or they may have limited time to dedicate to selling a property and need to fit it in when they can … even if you’re not immediately available. Offering them a free, fast cash offer via a website form can seem like a lower-pressure option for these visitors. (And using CarrotCRM’s autoresponder feature means you can respond to them immediately, even when you’re offline.)
Without a website, you limit potential customers to only the people who know about you without an online search and those who can get ahold of you when you happen to be available.
Here are easy contact methods you should include on your website:
A clickable phone number for people on mobile devices
This is particularly important if you’re a service provider who offers 24/7 emergency services!
A contact form in the hero (top) section of your website
Our testing shows that more than 3 fields dramatically reduces the form completion rate, so keep your initial contact forms to only the information you absolutely need.
4. Build Trust
I already mentioned that people consider businesses with a modern website more trustworthy. But having a website also lets you showcase your business and really build that trust.
When a potential client comes to your site, they want to make sure you can solve their problem and that you’re legitimate. The best way to put their mind at ease is to show them who you are, the work you’ve done, your credentials, and highlight happy past customers. Your website is the perfect place to:
Show before and after photos of projects
Talk about your company’s history and ties to the local area
Show real photos of your team
Walk customers through your process
Publish licensing information
Highlight ratings from Google, BBB, and other review sites
Post local media mentions (like local news appearances or sponsorships)
Most importantly, highlight real customer reviews on your website. SQ Magazine found that 93% of consumers read online reviews before making a purchase decision, with 88% trusting online reviews as much as personal recommendations. More importantly, 58% of consumers say they are willing to pay more for businesses with strong reviews!
BrightLocal puts the number of people who read online reviews for local businesses even higher — at 97%. They also found that the percentage of consumers who “always” read reviews jumped from 29% last year to 41% in 2026.
When you finish working with a client, ask for a photo with them and a testimonial. Better yet, see if they’ll talk about your company in a short video. Putting a face to the review lets people know you didn’t make it up. If you want to use Google reviews on your website, take a screenshot of the review and put it on your site as an image for the same level of legitimacy. (Pro Tip: If you’re using images of reviews, type the content of the review into the image’s alt text so it can be crawled for SEO and AI search.)
Websites are a must for today’s local businesses
There’s no escaping the internet, and companies that try to ignore the need for a business website are only hurting themselves. No matter how small your business, who you target, or what you offer, people want to check you out online before they commit. If you’re a real estate investor or a local services provider (like HVAC, contractor, electrician, plumbing, roofing, etc), having a website with good local SEO is non-negotiable.
Zippia found that 81% of consumers conduct online research about a business prior to making a purchase, with 47% seeking information specifically from the business’s website.
People want information before working with a business, and they turn to the internet to find that information. If you’re not online, your business is effectively silent.
Launching an SEO-optimized website for your local business doesn’t have to cost thousands or require technical know-how. Carrot’s AI website builder walks you through the process in minutes for less than $150/mo.
