Google Business Profile for tradespeople: the free 45-minute setup
The free Google listing wins more local work than most paid ads. A tick-off checklist to set up and optimise your Google Business Profile properly in under an hour.
Before anyone visits your website, they meet you somewhere else: the map pack — those three businesses Google shows first for “electrician near me”. Getting into that box is free. Most of your competitors have half-finished profiles. That’s the opportunity.
The stakes are real: BrightLocal’s 2025 consumer survey found 83% of consumers use Google to check reviews of local businesses, and just 4% never read reviews at all. The map pack is where that checking happens.
The 45-minute checklist
Work through it with a brew. Your progress saves in your browser, so you can come back after the next job.
The three things Google actually ranks you on
Everything in that checklist feeds one of these:
Relevance — categories, services, description and your linked website tell Google what you do. This is where most trade profiles are thin: a profile that says “Plumber” competes with everyone; one that says emergency plumbing, boiler installation, bathroom fitting — backed by matching pages on your site — competes precisely.
Distance — you can’t change where the searcher stands, but honest service areas stop you wasting impressions on towns you won’t drive to.
Prominence — reviews (count, rating, recency, and the words in them), photos, and how established your business looks across the web. A customer writing “fixed our boiler in Headingley same day” is local SEO you can’t buy.
Keep it alive or lose the spot
A Google Business Profile isn’t set-and-forget. The profiles that hold the map pack do three small things forever:
- A few new reviews every month — here’s how to ask without being awkward
- New job photos — monthly, straight from your camera roll
- Answers within a day — to every review, question and message
Fifteen minutes a week. That’s the whole cost of owning the most valuable advertising space in your town.
The profile gets the click — the website wins the job
The map pack gets you seen, but 83% of those people are evaluating, not buying. They click through, and what they find decides whether they call: real photos, reviews on the page, prices, a form they can fill in at 9pm.
That’s the half we build. Get a free mockup and make the click count.
Quick answers
Is a Google Business Profile free?
Completely free. It's the listing that appears in the map pack and on the right of search results — Google makes money from ads around it, but the profile itself costs nothing.
Do I need a website if I have a Google Business Profile?
The two work together. The profile gets you into the map pack; the website converts the click, proves you're legitimate and gives Google the service and area detail that pushes rankings. Profiles with linked websites consistently outperform those without.
How many reviews do I need to rank in the map pack?
There's no magic number — recency and consistency beat totals. A steady drip of a few new reviews a month, each mentioning the job and the town, outperforms a burst of twenty old ones.
How long until my Google Business Profile shows up?
Verification usually takes days (video verification is now common for trades). Ranking movement follows over weeks as reviews, photos and website signals build up.