Here’s something a bit awkward for someone who builds websites for a living: if you’re a local trade, shop or clinic, your Google Business Profile probably brings in more enquiries than your website does.
It’s the panel that appears on the right when someone searches your business name, and it’s what feeds the little map of three businesses at the top of results for “plumber near me”. It’s free. Most local businesses have never touched theirs.
Do this before you spend a dollar on a website.
Claim it, even if you didn’t create it
Google generates listings automatically from public data, so one probably already exists for your business whether you made it or not. Search your business name. If you see a listing with “Own this business?” underneath, that’s yours to claim.
Verification is usually a postcard to your business address, or a video call. It takes a week or two. Start it today and do the rest while you wait.
The five fields that actually move the needle
Most of the profile doesn’t matter much. These five do:
Categories. Your primary category is the single biggest factor in whether you show up. Be specific: “Emergency plumber” beats “Plumber”, which beats “Contractor”. Add every secondary category that genuinely applies, and none that don’t.
Service area. If you go to customers rather than the other way round, set your service area properly — Sunbury, Diggers Rest, Bulla, Gisborne, whatever you actually cover. Don’t list all of Melbourne hoping for more reach. It dilutes you in the suburbs you actually work in, and Google is wise to it.
Hours, including public holidays. Wrong hours are worse than no hours. Someone driving to your shop on a Sunday that you’re closed leaves a one-star review, and that review outlives the mistake by years.
Photos. Add a new photo every week or two — real ones, from your phone, of actual jobs. Profiles with recent photos get materially more clicks than ones with a logo and nothing else. This is the highest-return ten minutes in local marketing and almost nobody does it.
Products and services. List each service with a short description and a price or price range. This is also where you catch searches your website never will.
Reviews: ask, and always reply
Two rules, and they’re the whole game.
Ask every happy customer, at the moment they’re happy. Not a week later. The day you finish the job, while they’re standing there telling you it looks great. Have a short link ready on your phone.
Reply to every review, including the bad ones. A calm, specific reply to a one-star review does more for you than the review costs. Future customers are not reading the complaint — they’re reading how you handled it.
Never buy reviews. Google catches it, and the penalty lands on the profile you’ve spent years building.
Where the website comes back in
The profile gets you found. The website is what people check before they ring you — to see if you look like a real business, whether you do the specific thing they need, and roughly what it costs.
The two also feed each other. Your profile links to your site; your site confirms the name, address and phone number on your profile; posting on your site’s news section gives you something to share to your profile every month.
So: fix the profile first, this week, for free. Then talk to someone about the website. If it helps, I’ll set your profile up properly as part of any site I build — but you genuinely don’t need me to do it.