We built a tool to grade pest control websites. Then we ran seven real sites through it and found out it was wrong about the two most important ones.

Chad Treadway has audited over 200 pest control sites. In this episode, he walks through what happened when we put seven of them through the Cube Score, our proprietary grading tool that measures Identity, Authority, Proof, Transparency, Structure, and Visibility on a 0-to-600 scale.

The headline finding: a five-location Southeast operation with over 1,500 reviews across their markets scored 136. A small Midwest company with 58 reviews, whose site was built by an AI website builder, scored 414. After manual verification, both sites are worth about 430. The 278-point gap was entirely about which site let the crawler in the door.

The Southeast company's web host was serving a captcha challenge to every crawler that asked, including the AI ones, while their robots.txt file said "come on in." The AI-built site scored high because it produces perfect machine-readable structure on demand: clean schema markup, heading hierarchy, geo pages, a pricing page, semantic HTML.

Along the way, Chad pulls real findings from the other five sites in the sample:

1. A site that ranks #1 organically but carries two different phone numbers and two different business names (a copy-paste from another web build, not an ownership change)
2. A company with the best About page in the set, owner photos, team bios, founding story, but zero pricing anywhere on the site
3. A site with 563 Google reviews, perfect AI search citations, and 20 mentions with top-3 placement, that still loses the conversion because thirteen staff members have photos and no written bios

The episode's core argument: a score measures what a machine can read, not what a business is worth. Before you act on any website score, ask what the crawler actually retrieved. And go check whether your own host is blocking the crawlers you want to reach you.

Three key takeaways:

1. A website score measures what a machine can read, not what your business is worth.
2. An AI-built site can outscore a 25-year operation because it produces perfect machine-readable scaffolding. Form is not the same as substance.
3. Before you act on any website score, ask what the crawler actually retrieved. Then check whether your own hosting is quietly blocking the crawlers you want.

Download the Cube Score Self-Audit Worksheet to grade your own site across all six sides.

\Free pest control marketing audit: marketingthatactuallyworks.ai
Get your Cube Score: thecubescore.com

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Most pest control companies want commercial accounts but have websites built entirely for homeowners. In this episode, Adam Bennett, Elisabeth Pallante, and Hannah Kilpatrick unpack why that gap exists and how to close it.

The team shares Cube Score data from a dozen pest control sites pursuing commercial work. The finding: commercial-facing pages averaged 185 out of 600 on the Cube Score while the same companies' residential pages averaged 380. The biggest gaps showed up in Authority and Transparency, the two dimensions commercial buyers weight most.

The episode walks through five content layers a property manager needs to see before they request a proposal: a dedicated commercial services page, case studies with measurable outcomes, a clear proposal process, pricing transparency, and a separate commercial contact path. Most pest control sites have zero of these five.

Hannah covers the three channels where commercial buyers actually find providers. LinkedIn posts with specific commercial outcomes (complaint reduction, inspection pass rates) get 4x to 6x more engagement from property management professionals than general pest content. Commercial Google searches use completely different keywords than residential. And local business association directories convert better than most companies expect.

The hosts also debate whether commercial pricing belongs on the website and discuss when a company should chase commercial work versus shoring up residential first.

This week's quick fix: Write a 200-word paragraph describing your commercial services, property types, and proposal process. Publish it as its own page. Then post the same summary on LinkedIn with a photo of your truck at a commercial property. Two touchpoints, 15 minutes.

Three Key Takeaways:

1. The content that wins homeowners actually pushes commercial buyers away. Property managers need different proof, different language, and a different path to contact you.
2. A commercial-ready website needs five layers: a dedicated page, case studies, a clear proposal process, pricing transparency, and a separate contact path.
3. Commercial buyers find you on LinkedIn, through commercial-specific Google searches, and in local business directories, not the same channels that bring residential leads.

Download the free Commercial Account Readiness Worksheet at marketingthatactuallyworks.ai

Get your Cube Score at thecubescore.com

Hosts: Adam Bennett (CEO), Elisabeth Pallante (Content Operations Manager), Hannah Kilpatrick (Social Media Manager) | Cube Creative Design

A pest control company came to us after another agency redesigned their website. Beautiful site. Conversions dropped 40%. Same traffic, fewer calls. That is the most expensive website mistake in pest control.

In this episode, Adam Bennett and Elisabeth Pallante break down the Conversion Stack, the five layers between a visitor landing on your site and that visitor picking up the phone. Most owners skip straight to changing button colors. This episode shows you why that is the wrong starting point.

Three key takeaways:

1. Your conversion rate matters more than your traffic. A one-point improvement on a page you own pays you back every month without another dollar spent.
2. Work the Conversion Stack from the bottom up: speed, clarity, trust, friction, then the ask. Most owners skip to the ask and wonder why nothing changes.
3. Your highest-traffic page and your highest-converting page are probably not the same. Find the gap. Send your money where the conversions are.

We walk through real client data: a seven-field form cut to three that lifted submissions 40% in the first month. A client spending $2,000 a month on Google Ads sending everything to their homepage while their termite page converted at three times the rate. A company that went from 3% to 7.5% form conversion just by adding starting prices.

We also get into the fix-vs-rebuild question, and we don't agree.

Elisabeth says fix first because motion beats perfection. Adam says sometimes motion on a broken foundation is just expensive motion. The Cube Score's Structure side might be the tiebreaker: below 40, rebuild. Between 40 and 60, fix first. Above 60, you're tuning.

The math: 1,000 visitors at 2.5% conversion is 25 leads. Move it one point to 3.5% and that is 35 leads. At $300 per job and a 50% close rate, that one-point improvement is worth $1,500 a month, $18,000 a year, from a page you already own. And unlike an ad, the fix stays fixed.

This week's fix: Pull up your website on your phone. Open your highest-traffic service page. Try to call your own company in under two taps. If you can't, that is the fix. Fifteen minutes in any CMS.

Resources mentioned:

• Free pest control marketing audit: marketingthatactuallyworks.ai
• Check your Cube Score: thecubescore.com
• Episode 26: The Transparency Problem (pricing deep dive)

Hosts: Adam Bennett (CEO), Elisabeth Pallante (Content Operations Manager)
Produced by Cube Creative Design

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