From Google profile to expert text: what a roofer's listings cannot hold

The pages about you that you do not control

List the pages that describe your company and are not your website; the table below is a starting list for a roofer. Each is a brand mention worded by someone else, holds a handful of fields, and can be read by anyone, including an assistant with web search on. The work on each is the same: make it agree with your site, and know what it has no room for.

The last column is the reason for this page. Every row can carry your name, your number and a line about what you do. None can carry the text a homeowner reads before choosing a material or signing for a replacement, and that text sits on your site or nowhere.

The Business Profile: the rules a roofer runs into

The name, address and category rules every business follows are in optimizing your Google Business Profile. This list keeps to the parts of Google's guidelines that a roofing company runs into beyond the general case, stated as the guidelines state them.

• A company with an office or yard that is staffed and receives customers, and that also works at customers' homes, is a hybrid: it can show that address and a service area together. A roofer with no such place hides its address and sets a service area only.
• The service area should not extend farther than about 2 hours of driving from where the business is based, though the guidelines allow that larger areas may suit some businesses.
• The business description may not focus on prices, promotions or sales, and may not contain links, so prices, warranty terms and materials belong on your site, behind the profile's website link.
• Google can detect category information from your website and from mentions of your business around the web, not only from the category you pick.

The last of those is this page's subject in one line: by Google's own account, what your site and other pages say about you can inform the profile's category. Keep the name, the number and the hours identical everywhere, and change them on the same day.

A manufacturer's contractor listing, in the manufacturer's words

If you hold a certification from a shingle or membrane manufacturer, the manufacturer's list of certified contractors is a page about you that you did not write, and the manufacturer decides its wording. Use that wording on your site: the program's name and your level as the manufacturer writes them, the year you were certified or last renewed, and a link to your entry on the manufacturer's list so a homeowner can check it.

State it as a fact, never as a ranking. "Certified under [program name] by [manufacturer] since [year]" says what the manufacturer says. "The top-rated [manufacturer] roofer in [town]" says something the manufacturer does not, and gives an answer a claim to repeat as if someone had checked it. Name no manufacturer as better than another: the page is about what you are certified for, not whose product wins.

When a certification lapses, take it off the site that week and check that the manufacturer's list has dropped you too. If you mark it up, schema.org gives RoofingContractor a hasCertification property whose value is a Certification, with issuedBy for the manufacturer and properties for the identifier, the status and the dates. Mark up only a certification the page states in text, which is the rule in Google's introduction to structured data for any structured data.

Press and permit records: pages you correct at the source

A local news story about your company, or a quote from you after a storm, is a page you cannot edit. If it gets a fact wrong (your name, your town, what you do), ask the publication to correct it through its own process, and leave your site's version of the fact as it is. On your own site, list the coverage with the publication's name and the date, and link it; mentions and digital PR covers how a small business earns more of it.

Permit records are the same kind of page, where a building department publishes them. A record names the contractor as the department has it on file, which may be your legal name rather than the name on your trucks. If the two differ, say so on your about page in one sentence, "[Trading name] is the trading name of [legal name]", so a reader who meets either name can join them to one entity. In the markup, schema.org's legalName property holds the registered name beside the name you trade under.

When a wrong fact comes from a page you cannot edit and keeps turning up in answers, when AI gets facts about your business wrong covers what can be done about it.

One page for each material you install

Write a page for each material you install and want to be called for, such as [asphalt shingles], [metal], [slate], [tile] and [low-slope membranes, named the way you name them]. Each page states in text what no listing has a field for:

• The product lines you install within the material, named the way their manufacturers name them.
• Where you use it: steep or low-slope roofs, houses or commercial buildings, new roofs or repairs.
• What you do not do in that material, in one plain sentence.
• The manufacturer's warranty term, quoted from its document and linked, with your workmanship term beside it.
• Your price range for a typical job in that material, [your figures], and what moves a job within it.
• Photos of your own jobs, each captioned with the town, the year and the work done, as documenting reference projects describes.

Leave out comparisons you cannot source. "Metal lasts longer than shingles" is a claim about every roof; the warranty term a manufacturer states for the product you install is a fact about one, and a homeowner can compare those facts across your pages without being told what to think.

What your inspection report contains

An inspection is the step a homeowner cannot judge in advance, so describe the report they will receive: who inspects, with [the training or certification they hold, as issued]; what the inspection covers, [the parts of the roof your inspectors look at, in your words]; the photos included; how findings are sorted, [in your own categories, for example repair now, repair soon and watch]; whether an estimate comes with it; and how many days after the visit it arrives.

Say what the report is not. It is your company's written finding on the day of the visit, not an insurance determination and not a statement about what any policy covers. Then publish a sample, with the owner's name, the address and anything else that identifies them removed, so the page doubles as an answer page for the question a homeowner has before booking: what do I get?

Two warranties, told apart

A new roof can carry two warranties from two issuers: the manufacturer's, on the product, and yours, on the work. Put them side by side on one page, each quoted from its own document. When solar panels go on the roof, a third warranty joins them, which the solar roof page covers.

Link each document, and put its main terms on the page as text too. In our audit of 9,483 small business websites (40 trades, 90 metros, late August to early September 2026), 2.1% kept their real content, such as a price list or a service menu, in a PDF; the figure covers every trade, with no roofing cut. A warranty that exists only as a download is the same pattern on a roofer's site. The overview for roofing contractors covers the rest of what the site states.