Google Business Profile: the free listing that outworks your website

Here’s an uncomfortable truth for a site that just helped you build a website: for a local business, your Google Business Profile — the panel with the map, hours, photos, and reviews — often brings in more customers than the website does. It’s free, most owners half-fill it, and a complete one is the cheapest marketing that exists.

Claim it (or wrestle it back)

1. Go to google.com/business and sign in with a Google account you own — the same never-let-others-own-your-stuff rule as domains.
2. Search for your business. It may already exist (Google auto-creates listings). Claim it.
3. Verification is usually a postcard to your address, a phone call, or video — follow the prompts. Service businesses without a shopfront: choose “service area business” and your address stays hidden.

If an old employee or web company owns your listing: there’s a “request ownership” flow — Google contacts the current owner, and unanswered requests transfer after a few days. Worth every minute of the hassle.

Fill it like you mean it

Google ranks complete profiles above sparse ones, and customers trust them more:

• Category: the single biggest ranking lever. Pick the most specific primary category (e.g. “Emergency plumber,” not “Contractor”), add secondaries.
• Hours: exact, including holidays. Nothing burns trust like “Open” on Google and a locked door.
• Photos: 10+ real ones — your work, your storefront, your van, your face. Phone photos beat stock photos; Google’s own data says profiles with photos get more requests.
• Services with prices (even “from $X”) — you’ll pre-answer the phone calls you don’t want.
• The description: what you do, where, since when, and what you’re known for. Plain words your customer would type.
• Website + booking links: point at the site you now own outright.

Reviews: the flywheel

Reviews are the ranking factor and the conversion factor. The system that works:

1. In your profile dashboard, grab your review link (short URL that opens the 5-star box).
2. Ask at the moment of delight — job done, customer happy: “It’d genuinely help my small business if you left a quick review — here’s the direct link.” Text it to them on the spot.
3. Reply to every review, good and bad, briefly and like a human. Prospects read the replies as much as the reviews.
4. Never buy or fake reviews — Google’s detection is good and delistings are brutal.

Keep it alive (15 minutes a month)

Google notices activity: post the occasional photo of recent work, update seasonal hours before the season, answer the Q&A section (you can ask and answer your own common questions — “Do you offer emergency service?” — legitimately and usefully).

Canadians: the local angle 🍁

The playbook is identical in Canada, and the competitive bar is lower — fewer Canadian small businesses maintain their profiles, so a complete, photo-rich, review-fed listing stands out faster in a Canadian suburb than a US metro. Pair it with a .ca domain and a local phone number, and you look like the obvious local choice — because you are.