Setting up your Google Business Profile properly
It is free, it takes an afternoon, and for most local businesses it brings in more enquiries than the website does.
The short version
Fill in every field, pick the most specific primary category you can, add real photographs, and answer the questions section yourself. Those four things put you ahead of most of your competitors.
When somebody near you searches for what you do, the first thing they see is not a website. It is a map with three businesses on it, their ratings, and their opening hours.
That listing is free, and it is the closest thing to a free lunch a local business gets. It is also, in most towns, half-finished at almost every business on it - which is the opportunity.
Your listing and your website do different jobs and you want both. The listing is how people find you and check you are open. The website is what they read before deciding, and it is the one you control. This is about the first one.
Categories decide what you show up for
This is the highest-leverage field on the whole listing and the one most often set carelessly.
Your primary category is the single biggest factor in which searches you appear for. Pick the most specific one that genuinely describes you. “Coffee shop” rather than “Restaurant”. “Emergency plumber” rather than “Contractor”, if that is what you actually are.
Then add secondary categories for the other things you genuinely do, and stop. Adding categories you do not really serve dilutes the primary one and brings you enquiries you have to turn down.
Try this now
Search for your main service in your own town in a private browser window. Look at the three businesses in the map results and check what categories they appear to be using. If they are all one thing and you are another, that is worth knowing.
The fields nobody fills in
A complete listing outranks an incomplete one, and completeness is almost entirely within your control.
- Services or products. Each one is a separate entry with its own description. Most listings have none. This is free space to say exactly what you do in the words customers use.
- Opening hours, including the odd ones. Set special hours for bank holidays before they arrive - a listing that says Open when you are shut produces a review you do not want.
- The description. Write it for a person, not for a search engine, and say where you work and what you do in the first line.
- Attributes. Step-free access, parking, card payments, whether you are open to a particular group. People filter on these.
- Your service area, if you go to customers rather than the other way round.
- The booking or quote link. Point it at the page where somebody can actually do something, not just your homepage.
Photographs, and which ones
Photographs are the difference between a listing that reads as a real business and one that reads as a database entry. They do not need to be professional - they need to be real and recent.
- The outside, from the street, showing your sign. This is the one that helps people actually find the door.
- The inside, lit, with the place looking how it looks on a normal day.
- The work - the food, the finished bathroom, the cut, the garden.
- You and your staff. A face does more for trust than any amount of copy.
Add a few every month rather than thirty once. A listing with a photograph from last week reads as a business that is still trading, which matters more than it should.
Reviews and the questions section
Reviews are the other half of the listing, and they are their own subject - how to ask for them without it being awkward covers the timing, the words and the mistakes.
The part almost nobody uses is questions and answers. Anyone can post a question on your listing, and anyone can answer it - including someone who has your business confused with a different one.
You are allowed to ask and answer questions yourself. Take the five things customers ring up to ask - parking, whether you take card, whether you do that particular job, how far you travel, whether you need an appointment - and put them up as questions with your own answers. It takes twenty minutes and it fills a space that would otherwise be filled by guesswork.
Keeping it
0 of 8 checked
One warning: listings get edited by other people. Google accepts suggestions from the public, and competitors and well-meaning strangers both make them. Check yours every month or so, particularly the hours and the phone number.
A few common questions.
Is a Google Business Profile free?
Yes, entirely. Anyone charging you a monthly fee simply to maintain a listing is charging for work you can do in an afternoon. Paid help is worth it for the photography, the writing and the ongoing review habit - not for access, because access is free.
I have a Google listing. Do I still need a website?
They do different jobs and you want both. The listing is how people find you: hours, phone, map. The website is what they check before they decide - your full prices, your photographs, your services, and the answers to whatever made them hesitate. The difference is control: Google decides what your listing shows and can change it. Your website is yours.
What if I work from home?
Set yourself up as a service-area business and hide the address. You get to name the areas you cover without publishing where you live, which is the right answer for most trades.
Someone changed my listing. Can I undo it?
Yes - you can review and revert suggested edits from the dashboard. It is worth checking monthly, because the fields most often changed are the hours and the phone number, and both cost you real calls when they are wrong.
How long until it makes a difference?
Category and field changes often show within days; reviews and photographs build more slowly. Give it a month before judging, and change one thing at a time so you can tell what did it.
