What a Google Business Profile actually is
It is the free listing that puts you in the map results when somebody nearby searches for your trade. For most trades it brings in more calls than the website does in the first few months, because people searching on a phone tap the number in the map before they read anything else.
It is also the one thing you control completely. Nobody has to approve it, there is nothing to pay, and the work is a few hours up front and twenty minutes a month after that.
The settings that matter
Pick one primary category that matches the work you want most, then add secondary categories for the rest. The primary category does most of the heavy lifting, so do not bury your main trade behind something vague.
If you work from home or out of the van, hide your address and set service areas instead. Use the towns you genuinely travel to, not every place within an hour. Keep your business name exactly as it is on your van, your invoices and your website, with no extra words stuffed in.
Fill in your hours honestly, including whether you answer the phone at weekends. A missed call from the map is a lost job.
Photos, and why most profiles fail here
Photos are the difference between a profile people scroll past and one they call. Get in the habit of six shots on every job: the mess before you start, two of the work in progress, the finished result, a wide shot of the property, and one of the van or the team on site.
Upload a handful every week rather than fifty in one go. Real photos from a phone beat stock images every time, because people are checking whether your work looks like the job they need doing.
Reviews, without nagging
Ask at the moment the customer is happiest, which is usually when you are packing up and they are looking at the finished job. Send the review link by text the same day, with one line saying what it helps with.
Reply to every review, good or bad. A calm, factual reply to a bad one does more for the next reader than the review itself does against you.
Common mistakes
Adding town names into your business name, listing service areas you never travel to, leaving the services list empty, and letting the profile sit untouched for months. None of these get you banned on their own, but together they are why one trade shows up in the map and the one down the road does not.
See it in practice
If you'd rather have it done for you, see how we set up profiles for landscapers. For what this looked like for a real business, read the Mr BoTangles case study, 7 new reviews in 3 weeks.