A Google Business Profile Checklist for a Central Texas Contractor

A contractor in Waco, Temple, or Killeen can have a finished website and a Google listing that describes a different company. The listing says "ABC Roofing LLC". The site says "ABC Roofing". The truck door has a third phone number, left over from a call-tracking experiment in 2024. Google is not being difficult when it treats those as three businesses. They are three businesses, as far as the text goes.

The checks, in the order they fail

Open the listing and the website side by side. Read them out loud. If you would not say the two versions are the same company, neither will a search engine.

• Name. Use the name on the truck and on the contract. Do not stuff a city or a service into the business name. "Lopez Roofing" is a name. "Lopez Roofing Waco Best Roofer" is a keyword field wearing a name tag.
• Address. If customers come to the shop, the street address on the listing and the site should match, including St versus Street. If you work from the truck and hide the address, the service area on the listing should be the towns you actually drive to, not every city in Texas.
• Phone. One number. Put that number on the listing, in the website header, and on the quote form. A second number that exists only on the listing splits the record.
• Category. The primary category is the trade: roofer, plumber, electrician, tree service. "Marketing agency" on a roofing listing is the wrong door. Secondary categories are other services you really perform, not a wish list.
• Hours. Publish the hours someone will answer. A listing that says open until 8 and a phone that goes to voicemail at 5 trains customers to leave.
• Photos. The truck, the crew, and a finished job. A stock skyline of the Suspension Bridge does not show that you do the work. Name the file something plain and write a caption a customer would understand.
• Services. The services on the listing should be the same services that have a page, or at least a section, on the site. A service that exists only inside the listing has nowhere to send the person who taps it.
• Reviews. Ask after a finished job, and ask the customer to write it. Do not write it for them, do not buy a bundle of reviews, and do not offer a discount in exchange for stars. Reply to the ones you get, including the unhappy ones, in the voice of the person who did the work.
• The website link. The listing should point at the page a customer needs, usually the home page or the contact page, and that page should show the same name, address, and phone. A listing that points at a dead page is a door onto a 404.

What this checklist does not do

A complete listing is the entry ticket for the map. It is not a place in the map pack, and there is no timeline on which the pack is owed to you. Contractors who already have reviews, a matching website, and years of the same phone number are ahead of a listing that was opened last Tuesday. That is the field. Pretending a checklist erases it is how agencies sell a month of "optimization" that changes a description and leaves the phone number wrong.

If you want a second pair of eyes, the useful thing to send is a screenshot of the listing and the address of the website. The first pass is the name, the phone, and the photos. Ongoing SEO, if you want it, is a quoted job or one of the monthly website plans. It is not a promise of a pin in the three-pack.

What should a contractor check on a Google Business Profile?

The name, the street address, and the phone must match the website. The category should be the trade. The photos should be the real work. The reviews should come from customers. Start there.

Does a finished profile guarantee the map pack?

No. It makes the listing eligible to be understood. It does not buy a position, and there is no promised timeline.

Should the website and the listing use the same phone number?

Yes. One number, in the listing, the header, and the quote form. A tracking number that lives in only one place splits the business into two records.