Built for businesses that have outgrown DIY
Real customers, real operations, and bigger ambitions than a template website. Foundwork is run by someone who owns and operates six businesses — so the sites, the content and the pricing logic all come from inside a working business, not a agency deck. Here’s who we build for.
Who we help
Home & field services. Contractors, trades, cleaning, landscaping, property maintenance — businesses where customers search locally and the phone has to ring. This is where we have the deepest data, and there are dedicated pages below.
Professional services. Accountants, law firms, consultants, agencies — where credibility and being findable for the right specialism matters more than volume.
Clinics, studios & wellness. Practices and studios that need people to find them, trust them, and book without a phone call.
Venues & shared spaces. Community halls, event venues, coworking and studios paying subscription pricing built for facilities fifteen times their size. We run two of these ourselves.
Retail, hospitality & specialty. Businesses selling alongside their service work, or running multiple locations that each need their own local presence.
Probably not a fit: brand-new businesses with no budget, anyone wanting a $500 brochure site, or projects where the cheapest quote is the deciding factor. That work exists and other people do it well — it just isn’t what this is built for.
Most web shops treat “contractor websites” as a niche they discovered in a marketing course. Foundwork comes at it from the other side: the founder runs a design-build contracting company, and everything here — the architecture, the cost-guide strategy, the seasonal timing, the honest-numbers standard — was worked out on a real trades business first, with real Search Console receipts.
Your trade, specifically
Every trade’s search behaviour is different — the roofer’s storm surge, the plumber’s 3am panic, the landscaper’s January planner. We’ve written up how the playbook applies to each:
General contractors & design-build · Roofers · Electricians · Plumbers · HVAC · Landscapers · Painters
Adjacent trade? Flooring, concrete, windows, fencing, excavation — the same architecture applies; the trade pages above show you the pattern, and the audit will show you your specifics.
The proof, not the pitch
The flagship build is a design-build contracting firm: 71 pages, per-service and per-city architecture, honest cost guides. Search Console, sixteen months: average position 19.5 → 11.4, with 303,000 search appearances and 1,570 clicks in the last six months alone — and no ad spend behind any of it. The full breakdown is on the work page, and the numbers come from exports, not adjectives.
We also found the same firm had a Google Ads campaign running unnoticed since 2017 — half the traffic, zero leads. The autopsy is published, because that’s the standard here: real numbers, including the embarrassing ones.
The library
Eight guides written for the trades, in trade language: why you don’t rank in the towns you drive to, the ROI math at your ticket size, fixing lead quality, the full 2026 playbook, why worse outfits outrank you, the Google Ads autopsy, seasonal timing, and how homeowners actually choose.
Not in the trades?
The same architecture wins for any local business that lives on being found — clinics, firms, studios, home services. Start at the build page and everything applies; the trades focus is where we go deepest, not a locked door.
Common questions
Do you only work with contractors and trades?
Trades are the specialty — it's the industry the founder operates in, and where the playbook has the deepest receipts. But the architecture works for any local service business, and we take those builds too. Specialist focus, not a locked door.
My trade isn't listed. Does the playbook still apply?
Yes. The per-service, per-town architecture, the honest cost content, the seasonal timing — the pattern holds across the trades; only the specifics change. The trade pages show the pattern applied; the audit shows it applied to you.
Get the trade-specific audit
Tell us your trade and your towns. We’ll show you exactly who’s winning your searches right now — and what it would take to make it you.
Start your project →Already have a site? Ask for the free plain-English audit — or just email jamie@foundwork.ca.