How do I get my business on Google?

1 Claim your Google Business Profile

A Google Business Profile is what shows on Google Maps and in the box of local results. It is free. Search for your business on Google Maps: if it is already there, choose Claim this business; if it is not, add it at business.google.com/add.

Google then asks you to prove you run it. You do not choose how. Google’s help pages say the method depends on your type of business, your region and what is already public about you, and it can be a phone call, a text, an email, a video recording, a live video call or a postcard.

If your customers do not come to you, you can leave your address off the profile and set a service area instead. Google allows up to 20 service areas, and says the whole area should be no more than about two hours’ drive from where the business is based.

2 Fill it in properly

Choose the category that matches what you do, set your opening hours and keep them right, add your phone number and your website, list your services, and add photographs of real work. Google says that if your details are not accurate, your profile might not show for relevant searches.

Google ranks local results on relevance (how well you match the search), distance (how far you are from the person searching) and prominence (how well known you are). It also says plainly that nobody can request or pay for a better local ranking. Anyone selling you one is selling something else.

3 Give Google a website to read

Your profile links to your website, and the website is where Google learns what you actually do. Name your services and your towns in ordinary text on the page, not only in a picture: boiler servicing in Evesham, not all aspects of plumbing. A page for each main service helps, because each one can answer its own search.

Make the phone number a link that can be tapped, keep the site quick, and put your name, address and opening hours on it exactly as they are on the profile. Each of the sector pages on this site, such as websites for plumbers or websites for garages, lists what that kind of business needs on its site.

4 Tell Google the site exists

Google Search Console is free. Add your domain, prove it is yours, then submit your sitemap in the Sitemaps report, which shows when Google read it and any problems it found. You can also name the sitemap in your robots.txt file, which Google reads the next time it crawls the site. For a single new page, the URL Inspection tool lets you ask Google to look at it.

Every website I build has a sitemap and is set up for this from the start.

5 Keep your details the same everywhere

Your business name, address, phone number and hours should match on the website, the Google profile, Facebook and any directory you are listed in. If one place says Unit 4 and another says Unit 7, or one has last year’s hours, people and search engines are left guessing which is right.

6 Ask for reviews, and reply to them

Reviews are part of how well known you look. Google says positive reviews and helpful replies can help a business stand out. The easiest way to get them is to ask at the end of a good job and send the review link straight away, while the customer is still pleased. Reply to every one, including the poor ones, calmly and briefly. Never write reviews yourself or pay for them.

7 Then do Bing as well

Bing has its own free listing, Bing Places for Business, and it can import your Google Business Profile, so once Google is done it takes a few minutes. Plenty of people search with Bing, the default in Microsoft’s Edge browser.

8 How long it takes

There is no fixed answer, because Google decides when it reads a page and where it shows it. Nobody can promise you a position, and my own terms say so. What you can control is giving Google a verified profile, a clear website and consistent details, and then keeping them up to date.