Separate them wherever the buyer, the questions, and the terms differ. Give residential and commercial work their own entry pages and service pages, each answering its own buyer's questions, and keep facts that apply to both, such as insurance and company history, on shared pages that both sections link to. Avoid duplicating every service page with the word "commercial" swapped in.
Plenty of trade companies do both: a plumbing company that handles homes and restaurants, an electrical contractor that wires additions and tenant fit-outs, an HVAC company with maintenance agreements on office buildings. Their websites often blend the two. A facility manager lands on a page promising to "treat your home like our own," and a homeowner reads about service level agreements and wonders whether the company takes small jobs.
This is a content-planning question for owners and marketing leads. It is not legal or licensing advice. Contract terms and consumer protection rules can differ between commercial and residential work, so bring that wording to counsel, and confirm with whoever keeps your licensing records how your licenses apply to each kind of work. The residential side is covered in depth across our home services and trades overview.
Different buyers ask different questions
A homeowner and a property manager may need the same repair and still decide very differently. The homeowner is usually deciding once, for one house, with their own money. A large house is not a commercial account. A commercial buyer often answers to someone else, works from an approved vendor list, and needs paperwork before a technician can set foot on site.
| Topic | A homeowner asks | A facility or property manager asks |
|---|---|---|
| Access | Do I need to be home? | Can you work after hours, and will your technicians follow our site rules? |
| Paperwork | Will I get a written estimate? | Can you send a certificate of insurance and get set up as a vendor? |
| Pricing | What does the visit cost? | Do you offer service agreements, and how is invoicing handled? |
| Response | Can someone come today? | What response time does an agreement include? |
| Proof | Do you have reviews from homeowners nearby? | Have you worked in buildings like ours? |
Each column is a set of pages. Mixing them on one page answers neither buyer well, and the commercial reader in particular may leave before finding the one sentence written for them.
Some rules follow the type of customer
Consumer protection rules are often written around who the customer is. The FTC's Cooling-Off Rule, for example, is built around sales of "consumer goods or services," which it defines as goods or services "purchased, leased, or rented primarily for personal, family, or household purposes." A sales process described on a residential page may carry obligations that the same company's commercial contracts do not, and commercial agreements bring terms of their own.
That is a reason to keep each side's terms on its own pages, written from the contract that actually governs that work. Which rules apply to which customers, and how your licenses cover each kind of job, are questions for counsel and for whoever keeps your licensing records. The page's job is to describe the terms the company actually uses, in the right place, for the right reader.
Structure the site so each buyer lands in the right place
Google's SEO Starter Guide says "using directories (or folders) to group similar topics can help Google learn how often" the URLs in each section change, and it suggests including "words in the URL that may be useful for users." It also notes that "some websites show the same content under different URLs," which it describes as a matter of user experience and wasted crawling rather than a spam violation. For a company doing both kinds of work, that points toward a residential section and a commercial section with plain names, and away from near-copies of every page.
Shared facts belong on shared pages. Insurance, the company's history, and its people do not change by customer type, so one page for each, linked from both sections, keeps them consistent. A licenses page can be shared too, as long as it says which license covers which kind of work. Then test the routes. Ask whoever answers commercial inquiries: "When a property manager found us online last month, which page did they land on, and what did they still have to call and ask?" The gaps in that answer are your commercial content plan.
Cross-links matter as much as separation. A homeowner who owns a small rental building, or a restaurant owner who also needs work at home, should be able to move between sections from any service page with one clear link, labeled in plain words such as "Service for businesses" or "Service for your home."
One Business Profile, two kinds of customers
Google's guidelines for representing a business say "there should only be one profile per business." They also make room for "publicly-facing departments that operate as distinct entities" to have their own page, with a name that differs from the main business. Whether a commercial division qualifies is a question to settle with whoever manages your profile, against the current guidelines, before anyone creates a second listing. If it does not qualify, the profile describes the whole company, and the website does the separating. The rest of the profile is covered in our Business Profile guidance for home services companies.
A fictional site map for a company that does both
The structure below belongs to a fictional HVAC and plumbing contractor in Ohio that serves homeowners and light commercial buildings. It is hypothetical, not any real company's site.
- Residential section: an entry page for homeowners, service pages for heating, cooling, water heaters, and drains, a maintenance plan page, and a financing page.
- Commercial section: an entry page for property and facility managers, service pages for rooftop units and commercial water heating, a service agreement page, and a vendor setup page listing the documents the company provides.
- Shared pages: licenses and insurance, company history, team, and service areas.
The commercial pages are not rewritten residential pages. A writer should not have to imagine what your service agreements include or which kinds of buildings your crews have worked in; those facts come from the commercial manager's contracts and job list, approved for publication by the owner. If the company has little to say about commercial work yet, one honest page describing what it handles beats ten thin ones.
Proof follows the same split. Homeowner reviews and kitchen photos do little for a facility manager, and a list of the kinds of commercial buildings served, shared with each customer's permission, does little for a homeowner. Put each kind of proof in the section where its reader is deciding.
In Hudson South's four steps, the Authority Asset gathers approved facts for both halves of the business. Hudson Twenty-One notes how the company communicates across 21 dimensions, which often shifts in register between a homeowner and a facility manager while staying recognizably the same company. Market Intelligence studies the questions homeowners and facility managers in your market bring, separately. AEO Creation writes the answer-first pages for each section.
See how competitors serve both audiences
On a free 30-minute call, Hudson South walks through how your residential and commercial pages compare with competitors' on the questions each buyer asks.
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- 16 CFR Part 429, Rule Concerning Cooling-Off Period for Sales Made at Homes or at Certain Other Locations. Electronic Code of Federal Regulations. Read 2026-10-16.
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Starter Guide. Google Search Central. Read 2026-10-16.
- Guidelines for representing your business on Google. Google Business Profile Help. Read 2026-10-16.