Seven checks. Fifteen minutes. No agency, no tool, no signup. Just you and your profile, running through a stripped-down version of the audit I'd do for a contractor client. Grab your phone, pull up your listing, and go.
For a lot of contractors, your Google Business Profile is one of the biggest drivers of calls. For many, it quietly does more work than the website.
When somebody Googles "paver patio contractor near me," the first thing they see is the map pack. Three listings. Most people pick from those three. If you're not in the top three, you're harder to find and easier to skip.
That said, your profile isn't the whole story. Distance, competition, and review strength all matter too. This audit is about catching obvious leaks, not gaming an algorithm.
What gets you in the top three has a lot to do with the profile itself. Most of the contractors I meet have a profile that was set up once in 2019 and never touched again. Missing categories. Stale photos. No posts. Reviews from three years ago.
Think of it like base prep before you lay pavers. Get the foundation right and everything else works better. This is the 15-minute version. Start a timer if you want. Work through each step in order.
Before you start, pull up your profile. Search your business name in Google. Click the three-dot menu on the map result and tap "Edit profile" or "Edit business information." If you're logged in as an owner, you'll see the full dashboard.
Sounds obvious. A surprising number of contractors don't control the profile that shows up for their business. Somebody else set it up, claimed it, and nobody followed up.
If you can edit the profile without Google asking you to request ownership, you're good. If it says "Own this business?" on the listing, you don't own it and that's the first thing to fix. Request ownership and follow the verification flow.
You're logged in, you can edit every field, and the listing shows a "Verified" badge. No suggested edits waiting from random strangers.
Your business name on your profile should match your website, your Facebook page, your Yelp, the BBB, and every directory you've ever been listed on. Same for phone number and address.
If one says "ABC Landscaping LLC" and another says "ABC Landscape & Design," Google isn't sure those are the same business. That inconsistency can work against you.
The one trap to avoid here is keyword stuffing your business name. "ABC Landscaping Paver Patio Contractor Outdoor Living" might feel clever. It's against Google's terms. Competitors report it, Google clips the extra words, and you lose trust.
Business name matches your public branding and signage across the places you're listed. Phone is a real local number that matches your website. Address matches, with any suite number in the same format every place it appears.
Your primary category is one of the most important choices on the profile. Pick the most specific one that actually describes your main service.
If you do paver patios, "Paver Contractor" is more specific than "Contractor." If you're a hardscape company that also does landscape maintenance, pick hardscape as primary because that's the work you want calls for.
Then add three to five secondary categories covering the other services you sell. The right secondaries can help you show up for searches you'd otherwise miss.
One clear primary that matches your money service. Three to five secondaries that map to real services you do. No categories you don't actually offer.
Most profiles have the services section half-filled or empty. Most owners leave this section alone. This section helps explain what you actually do and gives Google more to work with.
Add every service you actually offer. For each one, write two or three sentences describing the work. What materials, what process, what kind of property. Plain English, not marketing speak.
This section is also where attributes live. Things like "Woman-owned," "Veteran-led," "Licensed and insured." Fill in the ones that apply. Some of these show up publicly as small badges and help round out the profile.
At least eight to fifteen services listed. Each with a real two-to-three-sentence description. All relevant attributes checked.
Open the photos tab. Look at the count and the most recent upload date.
If you barely have any photos, that's a weakness. Strong profiles usually look active, current, and well-documented.
If the most recent photo is more than a month old, your profile is going cold. Fresh photos help show the business is active. No new photos for six months reads the way an abandoned storefront reads to a customer walking by.
Good contractor profiles have a mix of completed project photos, in-progress shots, crew photos, equipment, and the occasional shot from inside the shop or truck. Homeowners want to see real work, not stock images.
A healthy mix of real photos of your work. New photos uploaded in the last 30 days. Completed projects, process shots, and people.
Google Posts are the short updates that show up on your profile. Think social media posts for Google. Most contractors never use them.
Posts do three things. They keep the profile looking active. They push seasonal offers and new services into your profile. They give a searcher a recent touchpoint that says "this business is running right now."
If you want a simple cadence, aim for a couple posts a month. One a week is better if you can swing it. Each post should be short, have a photo, and either describe recent work or offer something seasonal. "Retaining wall build we just wrapped in [city]" with a photo is a fine post. You don't need to be clever.
At least two posts in the last 30 days. Each with a photo. Mix of project updates, seasonal offers, and team content.
Three numbers matter. Total count. Time since last review. Response rate.
For total count, pull up the top three contractors in your map pack for your main service. If the top one has 200 reviews and you have 20, you're fighting uphill. Volume is a filter before people even read the content.
For recency, check the date on your most recent review. Inside 30 days is ideal. If your last review is old, your review ask process probably needs work.
For response rate, open every review and confirm you replied. Replying is worth doing. It shows the profile is managed and tells the next reader you care. Replies can be short, a sentence or two. The point is that every review got acknowledged.
Review count within striking distance of your top competitor. Most recent review in the last 30 days. Owner response on every review, including the bad ones.
A stale profile bleeds calls every single week and most owners never connect the dots.Rule of the 15-minute audit
You'll probably spot three or four issues in your own audit. Most contractors do. Trying to fix all of them at once is how nothing gets done.
Here's the priority order from most damaging to least.
Work from the top. Every item compounds on the ones above it, so fixing an item when the ones above it are still broken is effort you don't get full credit for.
Enter your business name and city. I'll score your live profile on nine dimensions and benchmark your review count against the top contractors in your area. Report loads in under a minute.
Run my GBP audit →If your profile looks decent and leads still feel soft, the problem is probably in bucket three. Post two covers the owner-side habits no agency can touch. Post one lays out how to run all three checks in order.