A Google Business Profile is the listing that shows up when someone searches your trade and your city. It is not a website, and it is not a lead marketplace. It is your name, your category, the hours you answer, and the reviews people leave after a real job. Contractors lose work here in ordinary ways: a listing they do not control, hours they do not keep, and a service area the size of the state.
This is a practical guide, not a promise of rankings. Google changes the product. The official place to start is the Google Business Profile site. Claim the listing yourself. Do not pay a stranger who says they will "optimize" it before you have logged in and seen what is already there.
Claim the listing that is already yours
Search your business name and your city. If a listing exists, it may have been created from a public record, an old ad, or a customer. Claim it. If two listings exist, do not make a third. Duplicates split your reviews and confuse the person who is trying to call. Use the name that matches the invoice, the license, and the truck. A DBA that appears nowhere else looks like a different company.
The category should be the work you want, not a generic "contractor" if a tighter category exists and it is true. A plumber who also unclogs a drain now and then should not list five trades they do not run trucks for. Extra categories are how you attract calls you will decline. One primary category, honest secondary categories, and a website that says the same thing.
If you are still choosing the company name, do that before you claim the profile. The start guides cover the filing office and the license check. The profile should not go live under a name the state will reject.
Hours you answer, not hours you wish you answered
Set the hours to the hours a person can reach you. If you answer until 6 and the listing says 8, the 7:30 caller thinks you ignored them. If you do not work Sundays, say so. Special hours for a holiday are worth setting, because a closed listing that looks open creates a one-star review you earned.
Emergency trades sometimes answer at night. If that is true, the listing and the voicemail should agree. If it is not true, do not toggle "open 24 hours" because a template suggested it. The missed-call calculator is what those after-hours rings are worth when you miss them. A form on your site is the backup. The profile is not a dispatch service.
Service area is a list of towns, not a radius brag
Google will let you draw a wide area. Your crew will not drive it. List the cities and neighborhoods you already serve. Leave off the far suburb that makes you late. A roofer in Dallas–Fort Worth who only works one side of the metro should say so. A pool route in Phoenix that never crosses the stack should not claim the whole valley.
If you work at the customer's location and you do not want people showing up at your house, use a service-area business and follow Google's current rules for the address. Do not invent a virtual office you do not occupy. The careful customer, and the platform, both notice. Your website can repeat the same towns. When the profile and the page disagree, people believe neither.
Photos from your jobs
Stock photos of a van in another state are obvious. Take photos of work you finished: a panel you opened, a roof in the local material, a clean kitchen, a gutter you actually cleared. Faces of customers only with permission. License plates and house numbers are a privacy choice. You do not need a shoot. You need ten true pictures that match the climate. Tile in Las Vegas. Brick and a basement entry in Cleveland. If the photo could be anywhere, it will not help the person who lives somewhere specific.
Add photos after jobs, not in a single frantic afternoon of the same driveway from six angles. The listing should look like a company that is still working.
Reviews that name the neighborhood and the task
Ask after a job that went well. Ask them to mention the neighborhood and what you did. "Water heater in Sugar House" is useful. "A+ would recommend" is not. Send the link that Google gives you. Do not write the review for them, do not offer a discount for a star rating, and do not buy reviews. Those shortcuts are how a listing gets distrusted, and they are a bad trade for a company that is trying to look local.
Reply to reviews in a normal voice. Thank a specific one without pasting the customer's diagnosis in public. If a review describes a job you did not do, or a city you do not serve, say so calmly and move the conversation offline. Do not argue about money on the listing.
You need the work before you need the reviews. The first ten customers are the source. A brand-new listing with twenty reviews posted on the same day looks purchased. A listing that gains a review when a job finishes looks like a company. The ask itself, including what not to offer in exchange for stars, is how to get more Google reviews. Plumbers and HVAC shops have a shorter list of category and hours mistakes in the plumbing and HVAC profile tips.
The website and the profile should match
The profile has a website field. Use a page you control. A social profile is a weak substitute, because the visitor cannot see the services, the refusals, and a form in one place. A free ServiceBase site is built for that: the trade, the city, the phone, and a quote request that stays on your list. Create it and put that URL on the profile. The note on free contractor websites explains what that page is for and what it will not do.
The description on the profile should repeat the real offer. Services, cities, and the license number if your state expects customers to check it. Do not stuff the description with every town in the state. Do not paste a paragraph about passion. A person with water on the floor is scanning for a phone number and a sign you work in their neighborhood.
Posts on the profile are optional. A post that says you are booking gutter cleanouts before the next storm is useful. A post that says "happy Monday" is not. If you will not keep a weekly habit, skip the posts and keep the hours and the photos current. Stale holiday hours do more harm than a quiet listing.
What to check once a month
Open the listing on a phone, the way a customer will. Confirm the name, the phone, the hours, and the website. Click the website and confirm it loads and shows the same phone. Look at the photos and remove anything that is not your work. Read new reviews and reply. If Google asks you to re-verify, do it. An unclaimed or suspended listing does not get fixed by posting more often.
If you add a service, add it on the website the same day you add it on the profile. If you drop a city, drop it in both places. The job pricing calculator belongs in your pricing habit, not on the listing as a fake "starting at" number. Publish a price on the profile only if you will honor it.
What the profile will not do
It will not file your LLC, get your license, or buy insurance. It will not answer the phone. It will not outrun a company that has more reviews if your work and your pages are thin. It will put a true local listing in front of the person who already searched. That is enough of a job for one free tool. Pair it with a page you own and a callback you actually make. The city guides under websites are the longer version of what that page should say once the listing is sending people to it.