Why this matters more than a website does

When somebody searches for a local trade on a phone, the top of the screen is not a list of websites. It is a map with three businesses on it, and then a panel with hours, reviews, a phone button and directions. That map and that panel come from Google Business Profile, which is free.

A business with a complete profile and no website will usually beat a business with a good website and no profile, for the searches that matter most. If you have limited time and no money, this is where both should go.

Claim it

1. Search your own business name on Google. If a panel appears on the right with your name in it, the listing already exists, created automatically or by a previous owner. Look for a small "Own this business?" or "Claim this business" link.
2. If nothing exists, start one at business.google.com. Use a Google account you will still have in five years, not one an employee set up.
3. Choose a primary category carefully. This is the single most important field and most people rush it. It should be what you are, not what you also do. A plumber who fits boilers picks Plumber, then adds boiler work as a secondary category. The category is a large part of what decides which searches you appear in.
4. Decide whether you have a storefront. If customers come to you, give the address. If you go to them, set it up as a service area business: you name the towns you cover and your home address stays private. Most trades want this.
5. Verify. Google will ask for proof, usually a short video showing your premises, signage, equipment and you, or sometimes a postcard. Read exactly what they ask for, because a rejected video means waiting and doing it again. Verification is where most people stall, and an unverified profile does almost nothing.

Fill it in properly, because half-finished is most of the loss

• Hours, including holidays. Wrong hours are worse than no hours, because somebody drives over and finds you shut.
• Photographs, ten or more. Outside so people recognise the building, inside, your work, and you. Profiles with photographs get meaningfully more clicks and it costs you a phone and twenty minutes.
• Services, each with a sentence. This is free text that Google reads. Write what a customer would call it, not the trade term.
• A description, about 750 characters. Plain sentences about what you do and where. No keyword stuffing, it does not help and it reads badly.
• Attributes. Wheelchair accessible, free parking, women owned, veteran owned, whichever are true. Some of these are searchable filters.
• Your website field. If you have a site, put it here. If you do not, leave it empty rather than pointing it at a Facebook page, which reads oddly, and do everything else on this list instead.

Reviews, done without breaking the rules

Reviews are a ranking factor and they are the first thing a customer reads. Two rules, and the second one gets businesses penalised every day:

• Ask everyone, not just the happy ones. Asking only customers you expect to be positive is review gating and it is against Google's policy.
• Never pay for a review, never offer a discount for one, and never let a marketing company post them for you. Fake reviews get the whole listing suspended, and suspended profiles are hard to recover.
• Reply to all of them, including the bad ones, briefly and without arguing. Future customers are reading how you handle a complaint far more closely than they are reading the complaint.

Then keep it alive, about ten minutes a month

• Post an update occasionally. A photograph of finished work with one sentence is plenty.
• Answer the questions people leave, and seed the obvious ones yourself. "Do you do emergency callouts?" is a fair question to ask and answer.
• Update hours before every holiday.
• Check the profile has not been edited. Anyone can suggest a change to your hours or address, and Google sometimes accepts it. Look every couple of months.

The other free listings, while you are at it

Same information, same effort, and each one is another place a customer can find you:

• Bing Places. Smaller, but it feeds Microsoft's answers and some AI assistants, and it can import your Google profile wholesale.
• Apple Business Connect. Free, and it is what every iPhone shows in Maps. A lot of local businesses have never heard of it.
• Your local chamber directory. Valparaiso, Duneland, Portage, Crown Point, Michigan City and LaPorte all run one.
• Nextdoor. Free business page, and around here the neighbourhood recommendation threads are real traffic.

Use identical details everywhere. Same business name, same phone number, same address, character for character. Inconsistent listings are one of the reliable ways to hold your own local ranking down.