Your Google Business Profile is free, it is the first thing a homeowner sees when they search for your service, and most contractors have set it up wrong. The three businesses in the local map pack — the ones that get 70% of all clicks on a local service search — are not necessarily the best contractors in the area. They are the ones with the best-optimized profiles. This is a complete walkthrough of every setting that matters, in the order it matters.
Claim and Verify Before You Do Anything Else
If you have not claimed your profile, go to business.google.com and search for your business name. Google may have already created a profile for you from public records or Maps data. Claim it rather than creating a duplicate. Duplicate listings split your review count and confuse the algorithm.
Verification is required before your profile appears in search. Google offers verification by postcard, phone, video, or in some cases instant verification if your account is already established. Video verification is now the most common method — you record a short clip showing your business location, signage, and equipment. It can take a few days to process. Do not skip this step or your profile will not show in local results regardless of how well you optimize everything else.
Primary Category: The Most Consequential Setting on the Entire Profile
Your primary category tells Google what searches to show you for. It is the single highest-impact field in the profile and the one most contractors get wrong by being too generic.
Do not select "Contractor" or "General Contractor" as your primary category unless that is genuinely the broadest description of your business. A plumber should select "Plumber." An HVAC company should select "HVAC Contractor." A roofer should select "Roofing Contractor." An electrician should select "Electrician." Being specific puts you in front of the right searches.
Secondary categories let you cover additional services. An HVAC company that also handles air quality testing can add "Air Quality Testing Service." A plumber who does water heater installation can add "Water Heater Installation Service." Add every secondary category that genuinely applies — they expand the searches you appear for without diluting your primary ranking.
Fill Out Every Field — Most Profiles Are Half Empty
Google surfaces more complete profiles over less complete ones. Open your profile and work through every section: business name exactly as it appears on your website and other directories, address or service area, phone number, website URL, hours including holiday hours, business description, opening date, and attributes.
The business description gets 750 characters. Use them. Write a description that mentions your primary service, your service area (city and surrounding areas), and one or two differentiators — licensed and insured, family-owned, 24-hour emergency service, whatever is genuinely true about your business. Include your primary service keyword naturally. Do not stuff it.
Attributes are the checkboxes further down the profile — things like "women-led," "veteran-owned," "on-site services," "appointment required." Tick every one that applies. Attributes appear in your profile card and can influence which searches you show up for.
Services: Build Out Every Job You Do
The Services section is where you list every individual service your business offers. Most contractors add their main trade and stop. Go further. A plumber should list drain cleaning, water heater repair, water heater installation, pipe repair, leak detection, bathroom remodeling, sump pump installation — every distinct job type that a homeowner might search for separately.
Each service can have a name, description, and price or price range. The description field is indexable — Google reads it. Write two to three sentences for each service that describe what it is, when someone needs it, and what your approach is. This content contributes to which searches trigger your profile.
Photos: Real Work, Real People, Real Trucks
Profiles with photos receive 42% more requests for directions and 35% more website clicks than profiles without them, according to Google's own data. The photos that matter most are not stock images — they are photos of your actual work, your actual team, and your branded vehicles.
Upload at minimum: five before-and-after job photos, two to three photos of your team on a job site, one photo of your branded truck or van, and your logo. Cover photos and logo images appear in the most prominent positions in your profile card. Use high-resolution versions of both.
Add new photos regularly. Profile activity signals to Google that the business is active. A profile with 40 photos uploaded over two years ranks better than a profile with 40 photos uploaded on day one and nothing since.
Google Posts: The Feature Almost No Contractor Uses
Google Posts let you publish updates directly to your Business Profile — they appear in your profile card in search results and on Maps. Most contractors have never used them. That is an advantage you can take immediately.
Post at minimum once per week. Good post topics: a completed job photo with a one-sentence description, a seasonal service reminder ("HVAC tune-up season starts now — book before the rush"), a limited-time offer, a recent five-star review with a thank-you note, or a short tip relevant to your trade.
Posts expire after seven days unless you set them as "offers" with a date range. The cadence matters more than the content quality. A contractor posting every week for six months will see measurably better local ranking than a contractor who posted twelve times in one month and then went quiet.
The Q&A Section Most Contractors Do Not Know Exists
Your Google Business Profile has a public Q&A section where anyone — including you — can post questions and answers. Most contractors do not know it is there. Some have unanswered questions sitting on their profile for months, visible to every potential customer.
Go to your profile and check the Q&A section now. If there are unanswered questions, answer them. Then seed the section yourself by asking and answering the questions your customers ask most often: "Do you offer emergency service?" "Are you licensed and insured?" "What areas do you serve?" "Do you offer free estimates?" Answering these proactively reduces friction for homeowners and adds keyword-relevant content to your profile.
Reviews Feed Everything — Including Your GBP Ranking
Every optimization in this guide matters. Reviews matter more than all of them combined. A profile with fifty reviews at 4.8 stars and incomplete services will outrank a perfectly optimized profile with eight reviews. Review volume and recency are the dominant local ranking signals.
If you have not already set up an automated review request system, that is the highest-return action available to you right now. The work you do on your profile today creates the foundation. Reviews are what activate it in rankings.
Track Performance With GBP Insights
Google provides free performance data inside your Business Profile dashboard under "Performance." Check it monthly. The metrics that matter: how many searches triggered your profile (search impressions), how many people clicked to call or visit your website (actions), and whether you are appearing more in direct searches (people searching your business name) versus discovery searches (people searching your service category).
Discovery search impressions are the number that reflects your local SEO health. If that number is growing month over month, your optimizations are working. If it is flat or declining, something has changed — a new competitor, a category issue, or a drop in review activity.
FIVE PROFILE MOVES THAT MOVE RANKINGS
- Choose the most specific primary category available — "Plumber" not "Contractor"
- Fill every field: services with descriptions, attributes, business description with keywords
- Upload real job photos regularly — 40+ photos, added over time, not all at once
- Post to Google Posts weekly — it signals activity and expands keyword coverage
- Seed your Q&A section with the questions customers ask before hiring you
A fully optimized Google Business Profile takes about half a day to set up correctly and an hour a month to maintain. The contractors who dominate the local map pack in their market are not spending more money than you — they have done this work and they keep doing it. At Before Agency, GBP setup and ongoing management is part of every engagement we run. If you would rather hand it off than build it yourself, that is exactly what we are here for.