How to check a portfolio properly.
Seven steps that separate real roofing work from a grid of screenshots, plus how to spot fabricated reviews.
The seven steps
Do these in order. Most vendors fail at step two.
A screenshot proves a design was made, not that a site shipped or still exists.
Look for the vendor credit in the footer, then check whether the client has since rebuilt elsewhere. High turnover in a portfolio is the single most useful signal available.
Open the sitemap. A roofing site with three pages and a blog was never built to compete for local replacement work.
If the only difference is the suburb name, you are looking at thin duplicates, which hurt rather than help.
View source and search for real headings, a JSON-LD block, and whether content exists before any script runs. Deeply nested containers with no schema tell you what you are buying.
Not on your office wifi. Time how long until you can read the headline and tap the phone number.
Ask what did not go well, what took longer than promised, and who owns their domain now.
What a strong portfolio looks like
Fewer clients, longer relationships, and depth on each one. Six roofing companies over five years with forty-page sites is a stronger signal than sixty logos across a dozen trades. Ask how long each client has been with them. The answer is harder to dress up than the work itself.
Reading reviews without being fooled
Five markers of a fabricated or purchased review set.
Fifteen five-star reviews inside two weeks, then nothing for eight months.
Great communication and highly recommend, with no mention of what was built.
Real roofing clients name the season, the job, and usually one thing that went wrong.
Reviewer accounts with one review and no photo, repeated across the set.
Every real vendor has at least one unhappy client and answers them.
Cross-check on a second platform
Compare Google reviews against Clutch, the Better Business Bureau, or trade forums. Purchased reviews rarely get bought twice on different platforms, so a strong profile in one place and silence everywhere else is worth a question. The same logic applies to case studies: ask whether the client approved the figures in writing, which is the standard the case studies on this site are published under.
The reference call script
Four questions that produce useful answers.
Check the work is still live
Portfolios go stale quietly. Take three URLs and check whether those clients are still on that site or have rebuilt elsewhere, whether the vendor credit is still in the footer, and whether the site has been updated in the last year. High turnover inside a portfolio is the single most useful piece of information available, and the one no vendor volunteers.
Reading a case study properly
Five questions to put to any published result.
What a portfolio cannot tell you
Whether deadlines held, whether the engagement was pleasant, and whether the vendor is still the same team that built the work. Agencies change staff, and the person who built the site you admired may have left two years ago. Ask who specifically would work on your account and what else they have shipped.
Related guides.
Eighteen vetting questions in the order that disqualifies fastest, and how to read the answers.
Long lock-ins, borrowed proof, vague reporting, and the ownership clause that keeps your own site hostage.
How to vet a roofing marketing agency, the contract terms to refuse, and why generalists keep failing this trade.
Vet us the same way.
Ask us all eighteen. The audit is $2,500 and answers most of them.