Get the basics exactly right
- Primary category: the one thing you most want to be found for (Lawn care service, not Landscaper, if mowing is the business). Add a few secondary categories, not twenty.
- Business name: your real name, as it appears on your truck and invoices. No towns or keywords added.
- Service area: if customers don’t come to you, set it up as a service-area business and hide your home address. List the towns you actually serve.
- Phone and hours: the number you answer, the hours you answer it, and holiday hours before each holiday.
Fill in what customers compare
- Services: every job you do, each with a short description, and a price or starting price if you can give one.
- Attributes: set every one that’s true for you, such as online estimates, veteran-owned or women-owned. Which ones you see depends on your category.
- Photos: real ones of your work, your team and your truck, added through the year, not all on day one. Before-and-after photos work well for trades.
- Website and quote link: send people to a page where they can call or ask for a quote in one tap.
Keep it alive
- Ask for a review after every job, with a direct link, and reply to every review, good or bad, within a few days.
- Post an update now and then: a finished job, a seasonal reminder, a schedule change.
- Check the listing monthly. Google and the public can suggest edits, and they don’t always ask first.
Mistakes that get listings suspended
Keywords in the business name, a virtual office or mailbox used as an address, more than one listing for the same business, and paying for or swapping reviews. All four break Google’s guidelines, and a suspended listing can take weeks to come back.
Every plan includes your Google Business Profile, set up or cleaned up.