Search for almost any local service, a plumber in Belfast, a cafe in Holywood, a solicitor in Lisburn, and the first thing you see is a map with three businesses beside it. Those results do not come from websites. They come from Google Business Profile, and appearing there is free.
For many local businesses it is the single most valuable piece of marketing they are not doing properly.
The checklist
- Claim or create your profile at google.com/business and complete the verification. Until you are verified, you do not appear.
- Choose the most specific main category you can. "Wedding photographer" beats "Photographer". This one choice has more influence on which searches you appear for than anything else on the profile.
- Add every relevant secondary category, but only ones that genuinely apply.
- Get your name, address and phone number exactly right, and make them match your website and everywhere else you are listed, character for character.
- Write a proper description. Say what you do, who for and where, in plain language.
- List your services, with a short description of each.
- Set your opening hours, and keep them updated for bank holidays. The Twelfth catches a lot of businesses out.
- Add real photographs: your premises, your van, your team, your work. Profiles with genuine photos get far more calls than ones with a logo and nothing else.
- Link to the right page of your website, not always the home page. If the profile is for one branch or one service, link to that page.
If you work from home or travel to customers
You do not need a shopfront. Set the profile up as a service-area business: you hide your home address and instead list the areas you cover, for example Belfast, Holywood, Bangor and Lisburn. You still appear in local results for those areas, and nobody sees where you live.
Reviews: the part that actually moves you up
Once the profile is complete, reviews are the biggest factor you control.
- Ask every happy customer, at the moment they are happiest. A direct link to your review page makes it a ten second job for them.
- Reply to every review, good or bad, politely and briefly.
- Never buy reviews or offer incentives for them. Google removes them, and sometimes the whole profile with them.
A steady trickle of genuine reviews beats a burst of twenty in one week.
Keep it alive
Post an update or a new photo every few weeks. An active profile signals a business that is open and paying attention, to Google and to customers alike.
How this fits with your website
The profile gets you on the map. Your website convinces people to choose you and helps you rank in the normal results underneath. The two support each other, which is why local SEO covers both. If you would like a hand with either, have a look at our SEO service for Northern Ireland businesses.