For a trade that covers several towns, a Google Business Profile comes down to six jobs: use your real business name, choose the right categories, list the towns you serve instead of a shop address, add real photos, collect reviews and reply to them, and give each service one good page on your own website. Most of it is done once, and the rest is a ten minute check each month.
What Google looks at
Google says local results are ranked on relevance, distance and prominence. Relevance is how well your profile matches the search, and Google says complete and accurate information helps. Distance is how far you are from the person searching, and you cannot change that. Prominence draws on things like how many websites link to you and how many reviews you have.
Google also says there is no way to request or pay for a better local ranking. So there is no shortcut to buy, and the sections below are the work.
Use the name on your van
Your profile name should be your real-world name: the one on your van, your invoices and your website. Google’s guidelines say that including unnecessary information in your business name is not permitted. Their examples include marketing taglines, service descriptions and location details. Names in all capitals are not acceptable either.
Take a made-up firm called Example Electrical. If that is what is painted on the van, that is the name. “Example Electrical | Emergency Electrician Bedford” is not, however tempting it looks. The words “emergency electrician” belong in your categories and on your website. The town belongs in your service area. None of them belongs in the name field.
Pick one primary category, then a few more
Categories come from a list Google provides, and you cannot create your own. For the primary category, Google’s guidance is to be specific: its example is choosing “Nail salon” rather than “Salon”. The guidelines say to use as few categories as possible to describe your core business, and to choose ones that complete “This business IS a”, not “This business HAS a”.
In practice:
- Primary: the category that describes most of your income. If most of what you do is plumbing, that is the primary.
- Secondary: a few, for work you genuinely do as a separate line, such as bathroom fitting if you fit bathrooms.
- Not a category: every job you have ever done, your brands, or your town. Google says not to use categories as keywords.
Type your trade into the category box and read what Google offers. Pick the closest match to what you do rather than the one that sounds biggest.
Service area: list the towns, hide the home address
If you work at customers’ premises, Google’s guidelines say to hide your business address from customers. Their example is a plumber working from a home address, who should clear the address from the profile. Google’s help page on service areas and hiding your address then says you can add up to 20 service areas, based on the cities, postcodes or other areas you serve.
Three things matter for a firm that covers a group of towns.
- One profile for your base, not one per town. A service-area business should have one profile for its central office or location, with a designated service area. Google’s help page warns that your account may be suspended if it finds multiple profiles for the same business in the same metropolitan area. Do not create profiles for towns where you have no premises.
- No virtual offices or P.O. boxes. Per the guidelines, a P.O. box or remote mailbox is not acceptable as an address, and a service-area business cannot list a virtual office unless it is staffed during opening hours.
- Show the address only if customers come to you. If you have a yard, showroom or counter where customers turn up, you are a hybrid. Google says hybrid businesses can show their address and set a service area as well.
Google recommends keeping the overall area within about 2 hours’ driving time of your base, although it says a larger area can be appropriate for some businesses. List the towns where you want work, not every name within reach. Distance is one of the three ranking factors, so it is reasonable to expect your profile to appear most readily nearest your base. That is our reading of Google’s factors, not a promise Google makes.
Photos: real jobs, taken as you finish them
Photos are the part of the profile that most obviously shows what you do. Add a logo and a cover photo, then pictures of your van, your premises if customers visit, and finished jobs. Sharp and well lit beats clever. Do not lean on filters or stock images: a customer comparing three firms will notice that yours look like your work.
The easiest routine is to take one photo at the end of each job as part of the sign-off, and add them in a batch once a month. Ask the customer before you photograph their home, and keep house numbers and faces out of shot.
Reviews: ask the same way every time, and reply
Google says more reviews and positive ratings can help your local ranking, and that reviews can help your business stand out. Google’s review policy allows you to ask: you can ask customers to visit a Google link or scan a QR code. Customers need to be signed in to a Google account to leave a review.
A routine that fits a working week:
- Ask when the job is signed off. Send the review link by text or email that day, while the customer still remembers the job. Put the QR code on invoices and in the van.
- Ask everyone. Asking only the customers you expect to be happy skews your rating, and it is easy to drift into. A fixed step in your job process avoids it.
- Never reward a review. Google says offering incentives such as free or discounted goods or services in exchange for reviews is strictly prohibited. That includes offering something to change or remove a negative review.
- Reply to every review within a couple of days. Google’s help says not to send the same thank-you to everyone. We would still reply to all of them, because the next customer reads the replies as well as the stars.
Keep replies short, specific and calm. Mention the job (a boiler service, a rewire) rather than pasting the same line each time, and never share the reviewer’s private details. Do not offer deals in a reply. For a negative review, Google says a reply and follow-up may encourage the customer to update their review, so say you will phone them, then phone.
Keep the details current
Google says businesses with complete and accurate information are more likely to show up in local search, and that if your information is not accurate your profile might not show up for relevant searches in your area. For a trade, the details that go stale are hours (bank holidays, Christmas), phone numbers, the website link and the list of towns.
Give the hours when someone can reach you. Google’s guidelines say some businesses, such as appointment-only ones, should not list hours at all, so read that part of the guidelines before you set yours. Whatever the hours, make sure someone replies to the calls and forms that arrive, and our guide to answering every enquiry the same day shows how.
A monthly check takes ten minutes:
- Hours and holiday hours are right.
- Phone number and website link work.
- Service area lists the towns you actually cover now.
- New photos added.
- Every review has a reply.
This guide leaves out Posts, Q&A, messaging and booking buttons on purpose. Google has been changing what profiles offer, so look at what your own dashboard still shows before you build a routine around any of them. The basics above are where the effort pays.
Your website: one good page per service, not one per town
The profile gets you onto the map. Your website is what a customer reads next, and it is where trades tend to make a mistake: a separate page for every town, each a copy of the last with the place name swapped.
Google’s spam policies define doorway abuse as sites or pages created to rank for specific, similar search queries. Their examples include pages targeted at specific regions or cities that funnel users to one page, and substantially similar pages that are closer to search results than to a clearly defined, browseable hierarchy. In our reading, a set of “Roofer in Town A”, “Roofer in Town B” pages with the same text fits that description.
What to do instead:
- One page per service. A roofer might have flat roofing, chimney repairs and roof inspections. Each page says what the work involves, what customers ask, and shows photos of real jobs.
- A short list of the towns you cover on each page, or on one coverage page. Our own page for local firms near Woburn is a single page that lists the towns we cover, not a page per town.
- A town page only when it has something of its own to say, such as a job you did there that you can show.
If your site is built around a page per town today, merging them into service pages is a normal part of a website rebuild, and it should come with redirects from the old addresses. Our guide to rebuilding a website without losing rankings covers how. Some customers also ask AI assistants who to call now, which is a separate piece of work that we cover under GEO, and in how a local business gets recommended by ChatGPT. To see how your site looks to Google and to AI assistants, you can run our free website scan.
If you would like a second pair of eyes on your profile and your site, you can book a 30 minute call. Firms near Woburn also get 20% off the first piece of work, which you can read about on our local page.