The free thing most Leicestershire trades still get wrong
Your Google Business Profile decides whether you show up in the local map pack. It is free, takes an afternoon, and most rivals have half-finished theirs.
If you only do one thing after reading this, do this one. It is free, it takes an afternoon, and it will almost certainly move you up the map results: the three business listings that appear above the normal blue links when someone searches for a trade near them.
That block is the map pack, and for local trades it gets more clicks than every organic result combined. What decides who appears in it is mostly your Google Business Profile.
Why it matters more than your website
Uncomfortable truth: for a plumber in Shepshed, a well-filled-out Business Profile with thirty reviews will out-earn a beautiful website with none. Google decides map pack rankings on three things: relevance, distance, and prominence. Your profile is where it reads all three.
Your website supports the profile. It does not replace it. Anyone who sells you a site without touching your profile has left the easiest win on the table.
The bits people skip
Go to your profile and check each of these. Most local listings I look at are missing at least four.
- Primary category. This matters enormously and people pick it carelessly. “Plumber” and “Heating contractor” surface for different searches. Pick the one that matches your best-paying work, then add the others as secondary.
- Service areas. List the towns you actually cover: Shepshed, Loughborough, Coalville, whatever it is. Do not list all of Leicestershire hoping for wider reach; a vague radius performs worse than an honest list.
- Services, itemised. There is a services section almost nobody fills in. Each entry is a phrase Google can match a search against. Add every job you do, with a sentence each.
- Photos, regularly. Not stock images: your van, your work, your finished jobs. Profiles with fresh photos get more calls, and “fresh” means monthly, not once in 2021.
- Opening hours, including the awkward ones. If you take emergency calls at 9pm, say so. It is a filter people actively use.
- A description that mentions where you work. 750 characters. Use them.
Reviews are the whole ballgame
If prominence is the factor you can most influence, reviews are how you influence it. Not just how many, but how recent, and whether you reply.
The practical version, which works: when a job goes well and the customer says so out loud, that is the moment. Not a week later by text. Have the link saved on your phone, hand them the phone, done. Two a month beats twenty in a burst and then nothing for a year, because a profile that stopped collecting reviews eighteen months ago looks dormant.
Reply to every one, including the bad ones. Especially the bad ones: a measured reply to an unfair review reads better to the next customer than no reply at all.
What not to do
- Do not use a fake address in a town you want to rank in. Google verifies, competitors report it, and suspension is a genuine nightmare to reverse.
- Do not keyword-stuff your business name. “Dave’s Plumbing Shepshed Emergency Plumber 24hr” is against the guidelines and gets edited or suspended.
- Do not buy reviews. They are increasingly easy to spot and the penalty lands on the profile you depend on.
Then the website
Once the profile is right, your site’s job is to back it up: matching name, address and phone, a page that genuinely covers each town you work in, and fast loading on a phone. That is when the two start compounding.
If you want a second pair of eyes on your profile, send me the link and I will tell you what is missing. No charge, and no obligation to buy a website afterwards.