Getting your trade business onto Google Maps

When somebody searches for a trade near them, the first thing on the screen is usually a map with three businesses pinned to it. Those three get most of the calls. Getting into that map is a separate job from having a website, and it is free.

Set up the listing

The product is called a Google Business Profile. You create it with a Google account, tell it your business name, your trade and where you work, and Google posts a postcard with a code to verify you are real. That part takes a week or two and there is no way to hurry it.

If you work from home or from the van, you do not have to publish your home address. There is an option to hide it and set a service area instead. Use it.

Fill it in properly

The listings that do well are the ones that are filled in. Your hours, your phone number, the suburbs you cover, and the categories that match what you actually do. Pick the closest primary category rather than the most impressive one.

Add photos, and add your own rather than stock. Google shows them and people look at them.

Ask for reviews, properly

Reviews are most of what decides the order of those three pins. Ask the customer while you are standing there having just finished, not by email three weeks later.

Do not buy them and do not write them. Google is good at detecting it and the penalty is being removed from the map entirely, which is worse than where you started.

Then point it at your website

The listing has a website field. That is where your site earns its keep: the map gets you found, and the site is what the person reads before deciding to ring.

If you only do one of the two, do the listing first.