Create a free profile at business.google.com, set it up as a service-area business with the towns you really cover, choose the most specific category for your trade, verify it, and fill in every field. Then keep it alive with real photos and a steady flow of reviews. It’s the single most useful free thing a local trade can do online.
Setting it up, step by step
- 01
Claim or create the profile
Go to business.google.com and search for your business name. If a profile already exists (Google sometimes makes one from public information), claim it rather than starting another. Duplicates split your reviews and can get both taken down.
- 02
Set yourself up as a service-area business
If you work at customers’ homes rather than having a shop they visit, choose to hide your address and list the towns and areas you cover instead. Only list places you genuinely work. Your profile tends to show best near where you’re based either way.
- 03
Pick the most specific primary category
“Roofing contractor” beats “Contractor”; “Electrician” beats “Home services”. The primary category is one of the strongest signals Google uses to decide which searches you appear for. Add a few genuinely relevant extra categories, not every one that sounds close.
- 04
Verify it
Google chooses the method, and it’s often a short video showing your van, tools, signage or proof of the business. Until you’re verified, your changes may not show. Have the evidence ready before you start the recording.
- 05
Fill in everything
Phone number, opening hours, your website, a list of your services and a plain description of what you do and where. A complete profile gives Google more to match against, and gives customers fewer reasons to ring someone else.
- 06
Add real photos, and keep adding them
Finished jobs, work in progress, your van, you and your team. Photos taken on your phone of real work do better with customers than stock images, which they can spot a mile off.
What gets profiles suspended
Google suspends profiles it thinks break its guidelines, often without much explanation, and getting one back can take weeks. Avoid:
- Extra keywords or town names added to your business name.
- A virtual office or a mail-forwarding address shown as your location.
- More than one profile for the same business.
- Reviews you’ve written yourself, paid for, or swapped with other firms.
- Changing lots of key details (name, category, address) at once, which can trigger a re-check.
Keeping it working for you
- Ask every customer for a review. Reviews feed prominence, and they’re what people read before they ring. How to get more of them, within the rules.
- Reply to every review, good and bad, briefly and politely. Future customers read the replies as much as the reviews.
- Answer the phone number on it. A profile that sends calls to voicemail is sending work to whoever picks up next.
- Link it to a website that loads fast on a phone. Most people who tap through are on mobile data, often standing in the room that needs the work.
Where Scalar Digital fits
Your profile gets you found; your website wins the call. The full build wires your Google profile and reviews into the site, and the dashboard behind it can ask each finished customer for a Google review automatically, so it happens every time and not just when you remember.