How to get your business on Google Maps

If you run a shop, a clinic, a salon, a gym or a coaching centre, this is the first thing to do and it is free. A complete Google Business Profile puts you on Maps, in the little box of three businesses above the search results, and in the panel on the right when someone searches your name.

For a lot of local businesses it brings in more customers than the website does. It also takes about an hour.

Claiming the listing

1. 01Search your business name on Google first. A listing may already exist, created automatically, and claiming it is better than making a second one.
2. 02Go to the Google Business Profile site and sign in with the Google account you want to own this permanently. Use a business account, not a staff member's personal one.
3. 03Enter the exact name of the business as it appears on your signboard. Do not add your city or your services to the name.
4. 04Choose your primary category carefully. This one field decides which searches you can appear in.
5. 05Add your address, or set a service area if you travel to customers instead.
6. 06Verify. Google will send a postcard, a call or a video, depending on the business type. Nothing goes live until you finish this.

The primary category matters more than anything else on the listing. "Beauty salon" and "hair salon" reach different searches.

Completing it properly

A claimed but half empty profile does very little. The listings that show up are the complete ones.

• →Hours, including the days you close. Wrong hours are worse than no hours, because someone will drive over and find you shut.
• →Phone number, as a real number people can tap.
• →Website link, if you have one. Link the relevant page, not always the home page.
• →Photos: the outside of the building so people can find the door, the inside, and your actual work. Add a few every month.
• →Services or products, with prices where you can. This feeds the searches you appear in.
• →A description written for a person, saying what you do and where.
• →Secondary categories, but only ones that are genuinely true.

Reviews, honestly

Reviews affect how you rank locally and they affect whether anyone calls. Ask happy customers directly, in person, at the moment they are happy. Google gives you a short link you can put in a WhatsApp message.

Do not buy reviews and do not write them yourself. Google is good at spotting both, the penalty falls on your listing, and the businesses that get caught tend to be small ones with a sudden burst of five star reviews in one week. Reply to every review you get, including the bad ones, calmly.

Keeping it working

• →Update your hours before every festival closure. This is the single most common complaint customers have.
• →Post occasionally. A new offer, a new product, a photo of this week's work.
• →Answer the questions people leave, and add the obvious ones yourself.
• →Keep your name, address and phone number identical everywhere they appear online. Inconsistency confuses Google about whether you are one business or three.

What the website adds on top

The listing gets you found. The site is where someone decides. A profile cannot hold your full price list, explain a service properly, or make a business look established, and those are the three things people check before they spend money.

We set up the Google Business Profile as part of every package, including the ₹3,000 one, because a site that nobody local can find is only doing half the job. If you would rather do it yourself using this guide, do. It is genuinely free.