Short answer: for a local business in the UK, the Google Business Profile is usually worth more than the website, because it is what appears in the map results when someone searches “plumber Chelmsford” or “beauty salon near me”. Optimising it is not a mystery: pick the right categories, set the service area correctly, list every service with a price, add real photos, collect and answer reviews, and keep it updated. The checklist below is the one I work through for clients in Kent, Essex, Cheshire and everywhere else; it applies to any town. Most of it you can do yourself in an afternoon. The last section covers when it is worth paying someone.
Before you start: verify it and check it is yours
Nothing else matters until the profile is verified. Go to google.com/business, find or claim the listing, and complete verification. For most UK businesses today this means a video walk-through showing the premises, signage, equipment and proof you work there; postcards are rarer than they were. If someone else set the profile up (a former employee, an agency you no longer use), request ownership from within the profile before doing anything else. A profile you cannot log in to is a liability, not an asset.
The checklist
1. Business name: the real one, nothing added
Your business name in the profile must match the name on your signage, invoices and website. “Smith Plumbing” is right. “Smith Plumbing | Emergency Plumber Chelmsford 24/7” breaks Google’s guidelines and is one of the most common reasons for suspension. Keywords in the name do lift rankings for a while, which is why people do it, and then the profile disappears.
2. Primary category: specific, not general
The primary category is the single most important ranking field. “Plumber” beats “Contractor”. “Dental clinic” beats “Health”. “Beauty salon” is right for a salon; “Nail salon” is right if nails are the main business. Add secondary categories for everything else you genuinely do, but keep the primary one for what earns most of your money. Look at what the top three competitors in your town use; Google shows it under their name in Maps.
3. Address or service area: set correctly, once
A business customers visit (shop, salon, clinic, office) shows its address. A business that goes to customers (plumber, cleaner, mobile hairdresser, driving instructor) is a service-area business: hide the address and list the towns, districts or postcodes you cover. Do not list a home address as a shopfront, and do not use a virtual office or a mailbox as the address; both get profiles suspended. Service areas should be realistic. Claiming the whole of Essex when you work within twenty minutes of Billericay does not help you rank in Colchester, and it dilutes the areas you do serve.
4. Services, each with a description and a price
Under “Services”, add every service you offer, one by one, with a short description and a price or “from” price where you can. This is the field most UK small businesses leave empty, and it is what lets Google match your profile to “boiler service” rather than only “plumber”. A price range reassures customers and filters out those hunting for the cheapest possible quote.
5. Opening hours, including the awkward ones
Regular hours, plus special hours for bank holidays and Christmas, set in advance. “Closed” on a day you are open costs you the customers who searched that morning. If you offer emergency work outside normal hours, say so in the description and use the “24 hours” option only if it is true.
6. Description: what you do, for whom, where
Seven hundred and fifty characters. Use the first sentence to say what you do and where, in the words customers use. Then who you serve, how long you have been trading, accreditations (Gas Safe, NICEIC, CQC, professional bodies), and how to book. No keyword lists, no “we are passionate about”.
7. Photos: real, recent, regular
Photos of the premises inside and out, the team, the van, the work, before-and-after where relevant. Taken on a phone is fine; taken from a stock library is not, and Google’s guidelines prohibit it. Add a few new ones every month. A profile whose newest photo is from 2022 looks abandoned. Set a logo and a cover photo so the profile is recognisable in Maps.
8. Reviews: ask every time, reply every time
Reviews are among the strongest signals Google uses for local ranking, and in my experience the biggest factor in whether a customer picks you over the profile next to yours. Ask every satisfied customer, the same day, with the direct review link from your profile (Google provides a short link under “Ask for reviews”). Reply to every review, including the bad ones, calmly and briefly. Do not offer incentives for reviews and do not buy them; both breach Google’s policy and, for incentives, the UK consumer protection rules enforced by the Competition and Markets Authority.
9. Posts: short, monthly, with a purpose
A post a month is enough: a seasonal offer, a new service, a job you are proud of, a change of hours. Posts show on the profile for a limited time and signal to Google that the business is active. Skip the motivational quotes.
10. Q&A: answer your own questions
The Questions & Answers section is public and anyone can post in it, including competitors and bored people. Get ahead of it: add the five questions customers ask most (do you charge a call-out fee, do you take card, is parking available, do you work weekends, are you insured) and answer them yourself from the business account.
11. Products and booking, if relevant
Shops and salons can list products with prices and photos. Salons, clinics and trades that take appointments can connect a booking link so customers book from the profile without visiting the website. Use whichever applies; leave the rest empty rather than filling it with padding.
12. Website link and consistency
The profile should link to your website, and the website should show the same business name, address, phone number and opening hours as the profile. Google cross-checks. If the profile says “Chelmsford” and the site says “Essex and surrounding areas”, make the site specific. A profile without a website still ranks, but the website is where customers check prices and proof before calling, and a profile linked to a complete site tends to do better.
The mistakes that get UK profiles suspended
In roughly the order I see them:
- Keywords or town names added to the business name.
- A virtual office, mailbox or co-working address listed as the business address.
- A home address shown as a shopfront for a service-area business.
- Duplicate profiles for the same business, often created by a well-meaning employee.
- Stock photos, or photos of other people’s work.
- Reviews from staff, family or bought accounts, or reviews given in exchange for a discount.
If your profile has been suspended, the reinstatement form asks for evidence: photos of signage, utility bills, registration documents. Fix the breach before you appeal, or the appeal fails and the second one is harder. I have written separately, in Polish, about scammers who phone businesses claiming their listing is “about to be deleted”; the short version is that Google never phones you.
Doing it yourself versus paying someone
Everything above can be done by the business owner. The setup takes an afternoon if you have the photos and the list of services ready; the ongoing routine is an hour or two a month for photos, a post and review replies. If you have one location and some patience, do it yourself using this list.
Paying someone makes sense when you would rather spend that afternoon on paying work, when the profile has been suspended and needs untangling, or when you have more than one location. With me, a one-off setup and optimisation starts at £147 and covers everything on the checklist; ongoing management at £97 a month covers monthly posts, review replies, updates and a visibility report showing how many people found and contacted you through Maps. Details on the Google Business Profile optimisation page. If the profile is fine and the problem is the website it links to, the SEO audit from £97 is the better starting point.
Photo: Amina Filkins / Pexels.