If you are a plumber, an accountant who visits clients, a cleaner, a consultant or any business that goes to its customers, you can still appear in Google's map results. Google Business Profile has a setting made for you: a service-area business.
What a service-area business is
A business that serves customers at their location rather than at its own premises. You can hide your address and show the towns, cities or regions you cover instead. This is also the right choice if you work from home and do not see clients there.
Setting it up
- Sign in at Google Business Profile with a Google account the business owns, not a staff member's personal account.
- Search for your business first. If a listing already exists, claim it rather than creating a duplicate.
- When asked whether customers can visit your location, choose no. Google may still ask for your address to verify the business, but it will not show it.
- Add your service areas: up to 20 towns, cities, postcodes or regions. Choose places you genuinely serve.
- Pick the most accurate main category, then add a few secondary ones.
- Verify the listing using the method Google offers you.
Get the details right
- Business name: your real trading name, the same as on your website and invoices, and on Companies House if you are a limited company. Adding keywords to the name breaks Google's rules and can get the listing suspended.
- Phone number: a local or business number that you actually answer, written the same way everywhere.
- Website: link to your home page, or to a page about the area if you have one.
- Hours: keep them accurate, including bank holidays.
- Services: list each one with a short description in plain English.
Reviews do the heavy lifting
Reviews are one of the strongest signals for local results, and they are what customers read first. Ask every happy customer, send them your direct review link and reply to every review, positive or negative. Never offer incentives for reviews and never post fake ones.
Keep the listing alive
- Post an update, offer or recent job every couple of weeks.
- Add real photos of your work, your van, your team. Before and after photos work especially well for trades.
- Answer questions people ask on the listing.
Do not stop at Google
Set up Bing Places and Apple Business Connect too. They use similar details, take a few minutes and put you in front of people using Bing, Apple Maps and Siri. Keep your name, phone number and website identical across all of them and across directories such as Yell.
Common mistakes
- Showing a home address when you do not see customers there.
- Listing service areas you do not really cover.
- Several listings for the same business.
- Letting the listing go quiet for months.
Setting up and managing Google Business Profiles is part of our SEO service. If you would like it done for you, get in touch.