Clients judge your work before they read a word about you, and the first work plenty of them see is the photo grid on your Google Business Profile. This free audit scores that profile out of 100 and returns a fix list ordered by what is costing you most. It runs right here, no email.
Run the free tool ↓Answer the twelve questions about the listing as it stands today, not the version you keep meaning to update between shoots. The score, the grade band, and the ranked fix list appear when the last answer is in, no signup.
Prefer a full page? Open the Google Business Profile Audit tool here.
The audit puts twelve questions to you, the same twelve it puts to a plumber. Four of them land differently on a photographer.
Out comes a score, a grade band, and a fix list with the costliest gap first. It is self-reported: it never touches your Google account, never reads the live listing, and cannot see competitors, rankings, or your review text. The generic audit page shows how the score is built.
A strong result is rarely a perfect one: verified, a specific primary category, a photo set you still add to, reviews that keep arriving, and services a stranger could compare against another studio. Top band, short fix list. A weak one is rarely neglect. It is usually a profile built the month you went full time, while the work moved on without it.
Two answers deserve a flag. Review recency has a seasonal shape in this trade, because the shoot, the delivery, and the ask sit weeks apart, so a quiet stretch on the calendar becomes an old newest review. And messaging switched on but unmonitored is worse than off, since date questions go stale in a day. Neither predicts where you rank. The number is a punch list, not a forecast.
Say a two-person wedding studio runs the audit. Verified. Primary category left on the broad photographer entry, because they shoot corporate headshots midweek and did not want to close that door. Sixty-odd photos, all from the launch push. Good review count, newest from last season. No posts, no services, nothing seeded, messaging off. Middle band, and the fix list leads with the empty posts feed, then the generic category and the missing services menu.
None of that costs money. Posts are one shoot a week with a sentence of context, and unlike most trades you finish every job with more frames than the client will ever use. Moving the primary to the wedding entry and pushing headshots into the secondary categories is a two minute edit. The services list is the package sheet they already wrote, retyped. The photo habit is ten frames a month from galleries already delivered.
Now imagine the same middle band on a solo newborn photographer in a home studio: posting most weeks, reviews fresh because sessions deliver fast, a reply under every one, and the points lost instead to gaps in the hours and description, no secondary categories, and an unseeded Q and A. Same band, a fix list that starts somewhere else entirely.
A couple with a date and a venue does not work through a list. They search, tap the map pack, and compare three profiles on a phone before anyone has a shortlist. A grid of images, a star count, a category, and whatever you wrote settle that comparison, with or without a good site behind it.
So the profile and the site should tell one story. If the primary says wedding photographer, the site it points at should go deep on weddings instead of giving eight specialties equal billing. The website report card for photographers grades that site, the AI visibility checker covers whether the assistants name you, and the review response writer handles replies.
Wedding directories sell the same inquiry to several photographers and go quiet the day you stop paying, while a profile you keep current and a site you own carry on working. That ongoing work is on our photography page. Kelly WM is Orlando-based, working with local service businesses nationwide since 2008.
Everything on the list is owner labor. Categories, photos, posts, services, and seeded Q and A carry no price, only the hour between an edit session and dinner. If the list is short, do it yourself and re-run the audit next month.
Handed off, that work sits inside Google Business Profile management and ongoing local SEO, which runs $1,500 to $3,500/month for most businesses and $3,500 to $7,500/month in competitive metros or multi-location operations. A custom site behind it runs $3,500 to $12,000+ one time. The ongoing side is month to month, with the site and accounts yours. Read what SEO costs, or run what should you pay for photographers against a quote you have. More than 50 free tools sit at kellywm.com/tools, no email wall.
No. The audit never asks about your address. It asks about verification, categories, the completeness of hours, phone, website, and description, photos, reviews, replies, posts, services, Q and A, and messaging. A hidden address with a service area set is a normal home studio setup, and it does not show up in the score.
Both. The grid is often the first work a stranger sees, and it sits beside two competitors on a phone screen. Know the limit: the audit asks how many photos you have and how often you add them, not whether they are any good. You can answer perfectly and still have a grid that does not sell the work.
It costs you on one question, not two. The audit asks how many reviews you have and, separately, how recent the newest one is, so a quiet stretch shows up in recency while the count holds. The lag is real here: the shoot, the gallery, and the ask sit weeks apart. Asking at delivery pulls that date forward.
No, and it does not pretend to. The tool never touches Google. It grades the answers you give about your own listing, so it cannot see rankings, competitors, review text, or how far your studio sits from whoever is searching. Treat it as a list of the things that are inside your control.
Referrals still check you. A planner passes your name along, the couple types it into Google, and the profile loads first: photos, stars, category, hours. A stale or half-empty listing makes that warm referral do more work than it should have to. The fix list comes out the same either way.
Google Business Profile Audit: full tool page and methodology · Marketing for photographers · AI Visibility Checker for Photographers · Website Report Card for Photographers · What Should You Pay? for Photographers · Review Response Writer for Photographers · All free tools
Run the audit, do the free fixes, and check again in a month. If the list is longer than a weekend, take the free mockup and audit and we will go through the profile and the photography site behind it, or call or text (407) 694-2055.
Book a free consultation → Or call/text directly: (407) 694-2055Tell us a little about the business and we will come back with an honest read: what we would fix first, what it costs, and whether you need us at all. Prefer to see work before you talk numbers? Get a free homepage mockup, built for your business, yours to keep either way.
Brandon reads every one of these himself. You will hear back shortly with an honest read on what we would do first, what it costs, and whether it is worth it for you.