It is free, it takes an afternoon, and for a local trade it produces more enquiries per hour invested than anything else available. It is also the thing most tradespeople either skip or set up badly and never revisit. Here is how to do it properly, including the bit everyone worries about.
The bit everyone worries about: your address
You do not have to publish your home address. When you set the profile up, choose the option that says you deliver goods and services to customers at their location. Google then hides the address entirely and asks you instead for a service area — the towns you cover.
You still have to give Google your address during verification, but it is not shown publicly. This single setting is the reason a lot of sole traders never finish the process, and it has a clean answer.
Setting it up
- Business name. Exactly as it appears on your van and your website. Not "Dave’s Plumbing — Emergency Plumber Reading". Keyword-stuffed names breach the guidelines and get profiles suspended.
- Primary category. The most specific one that fits. "Plumber" rather than "Contractor"; "Electrician" rather than "Home improvement". This single field does more for which searches you appear in than anything else on the profile. Add secondary categories for genuine additional services.
- Service area. The towns you genuinely work in — typically a handful. Listing forty places dilutes your relevance for the ones you actually cover, which is the precise opposite of the intended effect.
- Hours. Honest ones. If you do not answer at 2am, do not say 24 hours: a missed emergency call is a one-star review waiting to happen. Set special hours for Christmas and bank holidays.
- Phone number. The one you actually answer. Add your website address too.
- Services. List them individually — boiler repair, boiler installation, bathroom fitting, emergency call-out — rather than as one lump. Each is a search someone makes.
- Photographs. At least ten of your own work, plus your van and yourself. Not stock. Profiles with real photographs get materially more clicks, and it is the fastest way to look like an active business.
Verification
Google will verify you by postcard, phone, email or video, depending on the trade and the account. Video is now common for service-area businesses: a short recording of your van, your tools and your paperwork. Do it when asked. An unverified profile does not appear.
The four mistakes that hold profiles back
- A category that is too general. The most expensive single mistake on the list.
- A home address left public when the service-area option was right all along.
- Hours that overpromise, which converts into bad reviews rather than more work.
- No photographs, which reads as a business that may have stopped trading.
Keeping it alive
Add a few photographs of recent jobs every couple of weeks. That is genuinely all the maintenance required, and it is worth more than text posts. Reply to every review, good and bad — a calm, specific reply to an unfair review persuades more readers than the review discourages. And answer the questions people post, before someone else does.
The profile gets you found. What a customer reads next decides whether they ring — so if your website is not yet worth clicking through to, we’ll rebuild your homepage free in 48 hours. And if the profile is your only presence so far, the full order of operations sets out what to do next.