For Builders — How to be discoverable on TinyHomeList and across search

TinyHomeList sends real search traffic to builder pages. The pages that convert are the ones that read like a real business — with certifications, a founding year, a price range, named projects, and a working Google Business Profile. This page is for builders who want their TinyHomeList profile and broader online presence to work.

Most of this is non-promotional. Featured placement on TinyHomeList is based on editorial judgment of completed work and verifiable customer outcomes — not paid placement. The single biggest thing you can do is fill in the trust signals that already exist on your profile.

1. Make your TinyHomeList profile complete

Every builder profile is a markdown file in our content collection. The fields below are already in the schema; many builders have a few blank. Each blank is a missed signal — both to readers and to the Article / LocalBusiness JSON-LD we emit on your page.

• Certifications — RVIA, NOAH, ANSI, IBC, IRC, L&I (Washington), HCD (California), Florida Building Code, etc. We render these as visible badges and emit `hasCredential` schema for Google.
• Year founded — renders as a "Founded YYYY" line and emits `foundingDate` schema.
• Price range — your lowest published model price to your highest. We emit this as an `AggregateOffer` schema and render the range visibly. If pricing varies wildly by line, send us your most-common starter price and we'll annotate.
• Specialties — `THOW`, `ADU`, `Prefab / modular`, `Foundation builds`, `Park models`. Use these exact strings — they map directly to the filters on our builder directory. Generic values like "Custom", "Modular", or "Park Model" don't reliably match a filter and your profile may not appear. (Note: `Custom builds` is an internal taxonomy value reserved for THOW builders — please pick from the canonical list above rather than that one.)
• Service areas — every state you actually serve, in proper case ("Tennessee", not "tennessee").
• One first-hand detail in your description — a named founder, a specific named project with city and year, a notable build feature, an attributable customer story. Generic "high-quality custom tiny home builder" copy doesn't read as different from any other builder and won't compete for traffic.

2. Claim and optimize your Google Business Profile

Per Google's own generative-AI search guide, local business details flow through Google Business Profile — not through on-site markup tricks. Builders without a GBP miss a meaningful amount of search visibility, particularly in AI Overviews and local-pack results.

Your GBP also feeds your TinyHomeList profile directly: we periodically pull each matched builder's public business details — address, phone, hours, rating, and a Google Maps link — from the Places API and display them on your profile page while that data stays fresh. A complete, accurate GBP means buyers see a complete, accurate profile here too.

1. Go to business.google.com and either claim your existing profile or create a new one. If you don't know whether you have one, search your business name + city in Google Maps and check whether a profile already exists.
2. Verify the listing. Google will mail a postcard, call, or accept video verification. Don't skip this — unverified profiles don't rank.
3. Fill the high-leverage fields: business name, exact address (or service area for mobile builders), phone, primary category ("General Contractor" or "Home Builder" depending on your work), website, hours, and a 750-character description that mentions your specialty (THOW, ADU, etc.) explicitly.
4. Add real photos. 5–10 photos of finished builds with descriptive captions. Avoid stock photography — Google's image-recognition signals can detect it and discounts the profile accordingly.
5. Wire your services. Each product line you offer should be a separate "Service" entry with a one-line description and a price or price range. Google uses these in local pack results.
6. Collect reviews and respond. Aim for at least 10 reviews to clear Google's quality threshold. Respond to every review — including the negative ones — in a professional tone.

3. Make sure your own site is crawlable

A surprising number of builder websites are heavy single-page apps where the actual product content lives behind JavaScript that Google can render but doesn't always index well. Quick checks:

• Open your site with JavaScript disabled. Do your model names, prices, and contact info appear? If not, your site is invisible to a meaningful slice of crawlers.
• Submit a sitemap to Google Search Console. If you don't have GSC set up, do that first.
• Make sure your `robots.txt` doesn't accidentally block legitimate crawlers (we've seen this several times — usually a leftover from a developer's preview environment).

4. What we will and won't do

We will:

• Render your profile fields visibly and emit them as schema.org `LocalBusiness` with `hasCredential`, `makesOffer`, `foundingDate`, and `areaServed`.
• Link to your website on every state/city page where your service area applies.
• Update your profile when you send us verified changes (new certifications, price changes, new model lines, new service areas).
• Annotate any field we can't verify — clearly marked as "Per public reporting, last confirmed [date]" rather than presented as fact.

We won't:

• Accept payment for placement, ranking, or "favorable" coverage.
• Publish unsourced claims about builder quality, certifications, or pricing.
• Add a "featured" tag to a builder without independent editorial reasons.

How to send us an update

Email hello@tinyhomelist.com with:

• Your builder name + the URL of your current TinyHomeList profile (if one exists).
• The fields you want updated, with sources we can verify (your website's about page, a certifying body's directory, a named project we can confirm).
• Permission to use any new photos you send, with credit details.
• Optional: a link to your GBP listing so we can cross-reference business hours and contact info.

For the full editorial process — how we source, verify, and review — see Editorial Process.