Getting your business on Google Maps.

Search for a trade and a town, say "plumber Largs" or "breakfast Saltcoats", and look at what Google shows first. You may see a map and local business listings alongside the ordinary results. A complete, accurate Google Business Profile helps customers understand your business and contact you. It works alongside your website; neither guarantees a place in the local results.

1. Find or claim your businessCheck for an existing listing before creating another.
2. Complete the verification Google offersFollow the instructions in your account for your business type.
3. Make the useful details completeAdd your category, hours, services, website and real photographs.
4. Keep it in step with your websiteUpdate changed hours and contact details in both places.

What it actually is

A Google Business Profile is the panel that appears beside search results showing your opening hours, photographs, reviews and a button to call you. It's free. It's separate from your website. You can have one without a website at all, and a website without one.

It's also the thing that decides whether you appear on Google Maps when someone's standing in the street looking for you.

Setting one up

Go to google.com/business and sign in with a Google account. Use one that belongs to the business, not a personal address you share with family, and not one belonging to an employee who might leave. This account will own the listing.

Search for your business name first. Listings sometimes already exist, generated from other sources or created by a previous owner. If yours is there, claim it rather than making a second one. Keeping one accurate profile avoids confusing customers and makes the listing easier to manage.

Verification

Google needs to believe you're really there. Depending on the business it will ask for a video, a phone call, an email or a postcard to your address. If video verification is offered, follow the instructions Google gives for your type of business. You may need to show your location, equipment and evidence that you manage the business.

For a video, use one continuous recording and follow the requirements shown in your account. Review times and verification options vary.

If you work from home or travel to customers, set yourself up as a service-area business. You give your address for verification but hide it from the public and list the towns you cover instead. Plenty of trades get this wrong and publish a home address they didn't mean to.

Filling it in properly

This is where the difference is made, and where most people stop too early.

Your category. Pick the most specific primary category that fits. "Italian restaurant" beats "restaurant". It carries more weight than almost anything else on the listing. Add secondary categories for the other things you genuinely do.

Your name. Use the name on your sign. Not "Smith Joinery, Best Joiner in Ayrshire". Keyword-stuffing the name is against the rules, competitors can report it, and the listing can be suspended.

Hours. Get these right and then keep them right. Special hours for Christmas, New Year and local holidays matter more than you'd think. Someone driving to a closed shop is the one experience Google is actively trying to prevent.

Photographs. Real ones, taken on a decent phone, in daylight. The outside of the building from the pavement, so people recognise it as they approach. The inside. The work, the food, the room. Stock images are obvious and do nothing. Add a few every month rather than forty once.

Services and description. List what you do in plain words customers would use. Write the description for a person, not a search engine.

Reviews

Reviews move you up the local results more reliably than almost anything else, and they're the first thing a customer reads.

Ask. Genuinely, that's it. Ask in person when someone's pleased, at the moment they're pleased, and make it easy: Google gives you a short link you can put on a card, a receipt or an email signature.

Reply to every one, good or bad. A calm, non-defensive reply to a poor review does more for the people reading it than the review itself does against you. Never pay for reviews and never post them yourself; it's against the rules and when it's caught it's ugly.

Keeping it alive

A profile that's updated beats one that's abandoned. Every month or so, add a photograph or two, post an update if you've something on, check the hours are still right, and answer any questions people have asked. Ten minutes.

One more thing worth doing: make sure your name, address and phone number are written identically everywhere they appear: your website, your profile, Facebook, directories. Inconsistent details make Google less confident it's all the same business.

Where the website fits

Your profile links to your website, and the two support each other. Matching details on the site, your address and hours in a format search engines can read, and pages that answer what customers actually ask. It all adds to the same picture.

But get the profile right first. If you only do one thing this month, do that one. I set it up as part of every build and hand it over properly, because it's your listing and it works best when you're the one posting the photographs.

If you'd like a hand with any of it, get in touch. If you'd rather do it yourself, do that instead. It's an hour well spent either way.