Google Business Profile: the free listing most local businesses underuse

Search for almost any local service and you’ll see a map with a few businesses listed under it. Those listings come from Google Business Profile, and for many searches they show up before any website does. Plenty of people call straight from the listing without ever opening your website.

It’s free, and most local businesses either never claimed theirs or set it up once and forgot about it. That’s an opportunity.

Google adjusts the features on these profiles fairly often, but the basics below have stayed important for years.

Get the basics exactly right

Your business name, address and phone number should match your website exactly. Small differences, like “Street” on one and “St.” on the other, are less important than a different phone number or an old address, but consistency helps.

Choose your primary category carefully. It’s one of the strongest signals for which searches you appear in. Pick the one that best describes your main service, then add secondary categories for the rest.

If you travel to customers instead of having them come to you, set your service area and hide your street address if it’s a home office.

Keep your hours current

Wrong hours are one of the fastest ways to lose a customer’s trust. Update holiday hours ahead of time, and set special hours whenever you’ll be closed.

Add real photos

Photos of your actual work, your team, your vehicles and your location do more than stock images. Add new ones regularly. Profiles with recent photos look active, and people like seeing what they’ll actually get.

Ask for reviews, and reply to them

Reviews influence both your ranking in the map results and whether people choose you once they see you. The simplest approach is to ask every happy customer, and to make it easy by sending a direct link to your review page.

Reply to reviews, including the bad ones. A calm, specific response to a complaint often reassures future customers more than a dozen five-star reviews.

Post updates now and then

You can publish short updates, offers and events to your profile. They won’t transform your rankings, but they show the business is active and give people another reason to call.

Connect it to your website

Link your profile to the most relevant page on your site, and make sure your site lists the same name, address and phone number. If you serve several towns, your website should have pages that talk about the areas you cover.

If you haven’t looked at your profile in a while, search for your business name now and see what customers see. If you’d like help cleaning it up as part of a local SEO plan, get in touch.