The 20-Minute Google Business Profile Checklist for Contractors

Type your trade and your town into Google. Above the regular results you'll see a map with three businesses. That box, the map pack, produces more phone calls than the organic results below it for most home-service companies. The profile that feeds it is free. Here's how to make yours work, in about twenty minutes.

Fix the basics (5 minutes)

Name. Your legal business name, exactly as it appears on your license. Not "Joe's Plumbing - Best Plumber in Boise." Keyword stuffing the name violates the rules and gets profiles suspended.

Primary category. Pick the single most specific one that matches what you want more of. "Plumber," not "Contractor." You can add secondary categories after.

Phone and website. Your main line, and your website's home page. If your site has a city page for this location, link that instead.

Hours. Real hours, including whether you answer the phone after hours. "Open 24 hours" when voicemail picks up at 6pm generates one-star reviews.

Add what most competitors skip (10 minutes)

Services. Under each category, Google lets you list services with descriptions. Fill in all of them. This is where "tankless water heater installation" gets matched to the search that includes those words.

Service area. List the towns you actually drive to. Not the whole state.

Photos. Ten to start: trucks, crew, the shop, before-and-after work. Profiles with photos get more calls, and Google quietly rewards fresh uploads, so add a couple every month.

Description. 750 characters about who you are, what you do, where, and since when. Write it like you'd say it on the phone.

Keep it alive (5 minutes a week)

Posts. A short update once a week: a job you finished, a seasonal reminder, a promotion. Posts expire after a week, so consistency matters more than brilliance.

Reviews. Ask for one after every job, with a direct link. Respond to every review you get, especially the bad ones, briefly and professionally. Review count, recency and your response rate all feed the ranking.

Q&A. Seed it with the five questions you get on the phone most, and answer them yourself.

When you'd rather not

Google Business management is included in the Natural Media Growth and Works plans: setup, weekly posts, photo uploads, review responses and a review-request system that texts the customer when you mark a job done. But the checklist above is the same thing we do, and there's nothing stopping you from doing it this afternoon.