To appear in Google's map results: claim and fully complete your Google Business Profile, keep your name, address and phone number identical everywhere, collect reviews steadily, and make sure your website clearly says what you do and where.
1. Claim and complete your Business Profile
- Claim your profile at business.google.com and complete verification.
- Choose the most specific primary category you can, then add a few accurate secondary ones.
- If customers don't visit you, set up as a service-area business and list the towns you cover instead of showing your home address.
- Add opening hours, including holiday hours, and keep them current.
- Write a clear description of what you do and where, in plain language.
2. Keep your details identical everywhere
Your business name, address and phone number should match on your website, your Business Profile, Facebook, Yell, Bing Places, Apple Business Connect and any other directory. Small differences like 'Rd' and 'Road' are fine; different phone numbers or old addresses are not.
3. Reviews, steadily
Ask every happy customer for a review, and reply to every review, good or bad. A steady trickle over months does more than a burst in one week. Google gives you a short review link in your profile that you can text or email.
4. Make your website back it up
- A page for each main service, saying clearly what you do and where.
- Your town names in page titles and headings where they naturally belong.
- Fast pages on a phone. Slow sites lose visitors before they've read a word.
- Structured data describing your business, so Google can connect your site and your profile.
5. Keep it alive
Add new photos, post updates or offers, and answer questions people ask on your profile. Active profiles tend to do better than ones set up once and left.
Google says local results are based mainly on relevance, distance and prominence. You can't change how far you are from the person searching. Everything else on this list you can.
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