Google Business Profile
Not on the web at all, or on it and not getting called? We right-size your online presence to what your business actually needs: domain, Google Business Profile, local search, reviews, and a site that works on a phone. The aim is simple. When someone nearby is looking for what you do, they find you and they ring.
Where trade work actually comes from now
Word of mouth still wins most jobs, but the shape of it has changed. Someone gets your name from a neighbour, then searches it before they call. If nothing comes up, or what comes up is a Facebook page last updated in 2019, a proportion of those people ring the next name on the list instead. You never hear about that job, so it is easy to believe it did not happen.
The other half is people with no recommendation at all, searching “electrician near me” at nine at night with a dead switchboard. That search returns a map with three businesses in it. Those three get most of the calls. Everyone below the fold is competing for what is left.
Neither of those is won by having a website. They are won by having a complete, active Google Business Profile with recent reviews, and a site that loads fast enough on a phone that people do not give up on it.
What actually moves the needle, in order
Google Business Profile comes first. It is free, it is what feeds the map results, and it is the single highest-return thing a trade business can do online. Complete categories, real service areas, correct hours and actual photographs of your work. Most profiles we look at are half filled in and have never had a photo added.
Reviews are the trust signal the algorithm reads. Volume, recency and whether you reply all count. The hard part is not getting reviews, it is asking consistently, which is why we wire the ask into the end of a job rather than leaving it to you to remember on a Friday.
We ask every customer, not just the ones we think will say something nice. There is no toggle to skip a job that did not go well, and we will not build one. That is the law — a hotel operator was fined $3 million in 2018 for quietly leaving unhappy guests off the review request — and it is also the only reason the reviews are worth having. A five-star average that was filtered into existence tells a customer nothing, and the tradie who has fourteen genuine reviews and one bad one he answered well reads as more trustworthy than the one with a suspiciously perfect page.
Then the website. It has to load on a phone on mobile data, say what you do and where you do it, and make the phone number tappable. Beyond that, the returns drop off quickly for most trade businesses. A five-page site that is accurate and fast beats a twenty-page site that is neither. See Website for the three sizes we build and what each one costs.
Local search content comes last, and only if the first three are done. Pages for the suburbs and the specific jobs you want more of, written honestly rather than stuffed.
What we do
- Domain and business email set up properly, on your own name rather than a Gmail address
- Google Business Profile claimed, verified and completed, including categories and service areas
- Your Google review link on every invoice, so every customer gets asked: no filtering, no suppression, and we say so publicly. That is part of Automation, $429 once
- A website sized to your business, fast on mobile, with your details consistent everywhere
- Consistent name, address and phone number across the directories that matter in Australia
- Bing Places, because it is fifteen minutes and it feeds Copilot as well as Bing
- Plain reporting on what is actually bringing you calls, not a dashboard nobody opens
What it costs
| What it covers | Price | |
|---|---|---|
| Google Business Profile setup | Claim and verify, categories, services, service area, hours, description, photos, tracked website link, first post | $440 |
| Profile Upkeep | Ongoing: we check nothing has been changed on your listing behind your back, then hours and holiday hours, services, categories, photos, and a post each quarter | $506 a year |
| Reviews on your site | Your live Google reviews shown on your own site, refreshing themselves | $110 |
| Service Area Setup | An honest “where we work” page, backed by travel-time analysis, with the map and the data behind it | $209 |
| Where your next jobs are | Free government data mapped against your service area — a ranked suburb list and what to do about it | $759 |
| Site scorecard | What is wrong with the site you have now | Free |
Prices include GST. Profile Upkeep is billed annually, like all our ongoing services. The website itself is priced on the Website page, and the bundles combine the two.
What Profile Upkeep is really for. Google lets the public suggest edits to your listing, and Google itself changes listings on its own. Your hours, a service you offer, even your category can change without anybody telling you, and the first you hear about it is a customer turning up to a closed door. Catching that and putting it back is the part of this service you cannot see, and it is the reason it is worth paying for in a quarter when nothing else happened.
What we do not do
We do not sell an ongoing SEO retainer to a sole trader who needs three things fixed once. For most trade businesses the honest answer is a setup project and then an annual review, and that is what we will quote. If your market genuinely warrants continuing work, we will say that instead, and explain what it would be spent on.
We do not handle your reviews for you. Profile Upkeep is exactly that — the profile. It does not include replying to reviews, disputing them or getting them removed, and that is deliberate rather than a gap. Nobody can promise a review removal: Google decides, and knocks back roughly half of what gets reported on the first go. What we will do is sit down and help you write a reply worth publishing, charged as support time. That is the part that actually helps.
We do not build suburb pages by the dozen. Ten thin pages naming ten suburbs you have barely worked in is a pattern Google penalises, and it is the single most common thing sold to trades as local SEO. One honest service-area page, plus a real job written up in a real suburb, does more and does not put your domain at risk.
What changes for your business
More of the people who already have your name find you when they search it. You appear in the map results for your own suburb rather than three suburbs away. Reviews accumulate instead of depending on you remembering to ask. And you stop paying for a directory listing from 2018 that nobody has ever clicked.
How we work
We start by looking at what is already out there under your business name, which is often more than owners expect. Old listings, a profile someone else claimed, a duplicate with the wrong phone number. Checking that is part of the $440 setup, and you keep the findings whether or not you go further.
From there we scope the work. Most trade businesses need a setup project measured in days rather than weeks. We do it, we show you what changed, and we set a reminder to review it in twelve months. If a directory or profile needs claiming and Google’s verification takes a fortnight, we manage the process rather than handing you a task list.
Who this suits
Trade businesses working a defined local area, from sole traders to small teams. It suits you particularly well if you have never had a proper presence, or if you had a website built years ago by someone you can no longer reach. If you are running paid advertising at scale or competing nationally, that is a different problem and a different provider.
Common questions
Do I actually need a website if I have a Google profile? You need both, but not in that order. The profile brings the calls; the website is what people check before they ring. A profile with no site to back it up loses some of those calls.
How long before I see anything? Google Business Profile changes can show up within days. Map ranking moves over weeks to months and depends heavily on how many competitors are in your area. Anyone promising a specific position by a specific date is guessing.
Can I do this myself? Most of it, yes, and we will tell you which parts. Claiming and completing a profile is genuinely something an owner can do in an afternoon. The parts worth paying for are the ones that are fiddly, easy to get wrong, or need to keep running without you.
What if someone else has claimed my business on Google? That is more common than you would think, usually an old listing or a former partner. There is a recovery process and we run it for you.
Related services
- Website — the site itself, in three sizes with the price against each
- Business Email — your own domain, set up properly and protected
Next step
If you want to know what your business currently looks like to someone searching for you, book a 20-minute technology conversation and we will go through it with you.