What this involves
Your Google listing is the whole game.
When somebody searches for what you do near where they are, Google puts three businesses on a map above everything else. Those three get the calls. Everyone underneath shares what's left.
Most businesses I look at have a listing somebody set up years ago and never went back to. Wrong category. No services listed. Four photos from 2019. No reply to a single review. Google reads all that as a business that might not exist any more, and ranks it accordingly.
It's the cheapest fix on the whole list. Costs nothing but time, and it moves more work than a website will.
What I do
- Claim it or build it, and get it verified properly in your name
- Set the right primary category, then every secondary one that applies
- List everything you actually sell or do, with the area you cover
- Load it with real photos and keep adding them
- Turn on messaging so people can ask a question without ringing
- Answer the questions sat in the Q&A that nobody's replied to
- Post to it weekly so it stops looking abandoned
Straight up
What it won't do
Every one of these is something an agency would leave out of the pitch.
- Put you first overnight. Map rankings move over weeks, not days
- Beat a business with 200 reviews when you've got four. That's what the reviews work is for
- Help much if the address on the listing is nowhere near where you actually trade
Also worth doing
Goes well with.
Reviews
A steady drip beats a burst two years ago. Most businesses ask nobody, then wonder why the page looks dead.
What this involvesWebsites
Built for a phone on 4G, with your photos and a button that opens WhatsApp. From £750.
What this involvesSocial and content
The work you did on Tuesday is the advert. Most of it sits on a phone and never gets seen.
What this involvesQuestions
Questions people ask
I haven't got a shop or an office.
Then you run it as a service area business, which hides your home address and shows the places you cover instead. Plenty of businesses should be set up that way and aren't.
Who owns the listing?
You do. It goes in your name, on your email. If we stop working together it stays with you and I come off it.
How long before it does anything?
You'll usually see views and calls climbing in the dashboard inside a month. Getting into the top three takes longer and depends who you're up against.
Mine says suspended.
That happens, usually over the address or the category. It can be appealed. Send me a message and I'll tell you whether it's fixable before you pay me anything.
Free, no strings
Want this sorting?
Send me your business name. I'll look at where you stand on this and tell you whether it's worth paying anyone to fix.