Your Google Business Profile is the free listing that shows up on Google Maps and beside your business name in search. For a local business it’s often the first thing a customer sees, before they ever visit your website. Getting it right takes about an hour. Here are the 10 steps Alio! works through when we tune one up.
The checklist at a glance
- Claim and verify your profile
- Make sure you’re the owner
- Pick the right main category
- Use your real business name
- Set your address or service area
- Add your phone, website and hours
- Write your description
- Add services and real photos
- Ask for reviews and reply to them
- Check it every month
1. Claim and verify your profile
Search for your business name on Google. If Google has already made a profile for you, claim it. If there isn’t one, create one for free at business.google.com.
Google will then ask you to verify that the business is yours. The options vary by business and can include a phone call, an email, a video or a postcard. Until you’re verified, you can’t fully manage the profile, so do this first.
2. Make sure you’re the owner
Set up your profile with a Google account that belongs to you, not a staff member or an agency. A proper agency will make sure you’re listed as the owner and add itself as a manager.
If someone else set it up for you, ask them for owner access and check you have it. If you ever part ways with them, you keep your profile and every review on it.
3. Pick the right main category
Your main category tells Google what kind of business you are, so it decides which searches you show up in. Choose the most specific one that fits: “Plumber” beats “Home services”, and “Physiotherapist” beats “Health”.
Then add secondary categories for other services you actually provide. Google’s guidelines say to use the fewest categories it takes to describe your core business. Don’t list services you don’t provide, or haven’t started providing yet.
4. Use your real business name
Use your name exactly as it appears on your sign, your invoices and your ABN registration. Adding keywords or a suburb that isn’t part of your real name, like “Smith Plumbing Camden Emergency Plumber 24/7”, breaks Google’s guidelines and can get a profile suspended.
5. Set your address or service area
This step trips up the most tradies.
- Customers come to you (a clinic, a shopfront, a salon): show your address.
- You go to your customers (plumbers, electricians, mobile physios, cleaners): hide your address and list a service area instead. Google says to remove your address if you don’t serve customers there.
- Both (say, a mechanic with a workshop who also does roadside call-outs): you can show your address and a service area.
You can list up to 20 service areas, such as suburbs, postcodes or regions. Keep it realistic: Google’s guidelines say a service area generally shouldn’t stretch more than about 2 hours’ drive from where you’re based. If you work out of Camden, list the suburbs you actually travel to (Narellan, Oran Park, Campbelltown, Liverpool) rather than “Sydney” or “NSW”.
6. Add your phone, website and hours
- Phone: the number you or your staff actually answer. Google requires it to be under your business’s direct control.
- Website: a site that loads quickly on a phone. Google PageSpeed Insights will tell you how it’s performing.
- Hours: set your regular hours, then add special hours for public holidays: Christmas, Easter, Anzac Day and the King’s Birthday. That way you don’t show as open when you’re not.
7. Write your description
You get up to 750 characters. Say what you do, who for and where, in plain words. For example, a made-up electrician might write:
Licensed electrician serving Camden, Narellan and Oran Park. Switchboard upgrades, safety switches, lighting and EV charger installs for homes and small businesses. Fixed quotes before we start.
Skip links, phone numbers and keyword lists. Google can reject descriptions that read like ads.
8. Add services and real photos
List your services, with prices if the profile lets you. Then add real photos: your van, your work, your team, your shopfront or treatment room. Photos from your phone are fine.
Skip stock photos and low-quality AI images, because customers can tell. A before-and-after shot of a real job does more for you than any stock image.
9. Ask for reviews and reply to them
Reviews help people decide whether to trust you with their money. They’re also part of how Google judges how well known your business is.
- Make it easy. After each job, send your customer the direct link to your review page, or show them a QR code. You’ll find both in your profile under “Ask for reviews”.
- Only ask, never pay. Google’s review policy bans offering anything in exchange for a review, including money, discounts or freebies.
- Reply to every review, good or bad, in a sentence or two. Google’s own advice is that replying shows customers you value their feedback. Future customers read your replies too, especially the ones to negative reviews.
- Answer a bad review with a fix, not a defence. Caelan, who runs Alio!, has spent nine years in passenger transport customer service, and the rule there is that people are always right about what they want, but not always right about how to get it. Put yourself on their side: you and them against the problem. Say you understand why they’re frustrated, ask what went wrong and what they’d like you to do about it, if anything, then do it and tell them you have. When there’s nothing you can fix, there’s usually still something useful you can do. If the ferry isn’t running, you work out the light rail and bus that get them close. Some bad reviews turn good this way.
A reply can be as short as this: “Hi [name], sorry the [job] didn’t go the way you wanted. What would you like us to do to put it right? Call us on [your number] and we’ll sort it out.”
10. Check it every month
Add a post whenever you have news: a change in your offer, a finished job or new hours. Then check your profile at least once a month, because customers can suggest edits and Google sometimes changes details on its own.
While you’re there, look at the Performance tab. It shows how many people called you, asked for directions or visited your website from your profile. If you want to see which of those calls turn into paying jobs, read our guide to tracking enquiries from Google.
What should you expect?
A tidy profile won’t put you first overnight. Google decides where you show up based on three things, according to its local ranking tips:
- Relevance: how well your profile matches the search.
- Distance: how far you are from the person searching.
- Prominence: how well known your business is, which includes your reviews.
You can’t change where you’re based, but you can control relevance and work on prominence. Fixing the basics removes what’s holding you back, and improvements can show within weeks.
What does our tune-up cover?
Our Google Business Profile tune-up starts from $350. It covers everything in this checklist: your categories, details, service area, photos and a review link. It also sets up tracking for calls from your profile and taps on your number. Ongoing posts and review requests are part of our Local Growth plan. Wondering whether you need a website as well? Here’s what a small business website costs in Australia.