For "near me" searches in the trades, the three businesses in the map box take the overwhelming majority of the calls. Your Google Business Profile decides whether you're one of them — and it's free, which makes it the highest-return hour you will spend on marketing this month.
Categories carry more weight than anything else
Your primary category is the single strongest ranking signal on the profile. "Roofing Contractor" and "Roofing Supply Store" are not interchangeable, and picking the wrong one quietly caps everything else you do. Set the primary to the service you most want to be called for, then add secondary categories for the rest.
Fill in the service area properly
List every town you'll drive to, up to Google's limit of twenty. If you don't serve customers at your address — and most contractors don't — hide the address entirely and run as a service-area business. A hidden address does not hurt your ranking, and a wrong one does.
Photos, on a schedule
- Post job photos weekly, not in one batch and then never again.
- Shoot at the job site so the location data is real.
- Include before-and-after pairs — they get the most engagement by a wide margin.
- Add your truck, your crew and your equipment. Profiles with people in the photos convert better.
Reviews: velocity beats total
Forty reviews spread evenly across two years outrank ninety reviews that all arrived in one week eighteen months ago. Build the request into your closeout process so it happens on every job without anyone remembering to do it. Then respond to all of them — including the bad ones, especially the bad ones, because the response is written for the next person reading it, not for the reviewer.
Keep it active
Google Posts expire after seven days. Publish something weekly — a finished job, a seasonal reminder, a promotion. Seed the Q&A section with the questions you get on every estimate call and answer them yourself. An active profile beats a dormant one when everything else is equal, and everything else is usually equal.