How to set up a Google Business Profile

Your Google Business Profile (you may still know it as Google My Business) is the free listing that puts you on Google Search and Google Maps when a nearby customer looks for what you do. Setting it up is the first move in local SEO, and it takes about 15 minutes. Here is exactly what to do, screen by screen.

Before you start: have these ready

Setup goes faster if you gather a few things first. You need a Google account for the business (create a free company one rather than using your personal Gmail), your exact business name, your address or the area you serve, your main phone number, your website, and your hours. A handful of real photos - your storefront, your team, finished work - will come in handy once the profile is live.

Step 1: Create the profile

Go to google.com/business and sign in with the company Google account. Click to add your business, then type your business name. If Google already shows a listing for it (Google often creates a basic one from public data), select it to claim it instead of making a new one - a duplicate splits your reviews and confuses Google. If nothing matches, choose to create a new profile.

Step 2: Pick your primary category

Google asks what kind of business you run. This is one of the most important choices in the whole setup, because your primary category is a major factor in which searches you can show up for. Pick the single category that best describes your core business - "Plumber," "HVAC contractor," "Dentist" - not a vague catch-all. You can add more categories later. See how to choose the right category before you settle on one.

Step 3: Add your location or service area

Next, Google asks whether customers visit you at an address. There are two paths, and picking the right one matters:

• You have a storefront or office customers come to. Enter the full street address. This is where your business pin sits on the map.
• You go to the customer (you run a truck, work from home, or cover a region). Set yourself up as a service-area business. You still enter an address for verification, but you hide it from the public and instead list the towns, counties, or zip codes you serve.

Do not list a fake storefront or a virtual office you do not staff - that is against Google's rules and risks getting your profile suspended.

Step 4: Add your phone and website

Enter the main phone number customers should call and your website address. Use the same business name, phone, and address here that appear on your website and elsewhere online - keeping that information consistent everywhere is what local citations are about, and it helps Google trust that you are one real business.

Step 5: Verify that you own the business

Google will not show your profile publicly until you prove it is yours. Depending on your business, you will verify by postcard mailed to your address, phone call or text, email, or a short video. This is the step that trips owners up most, so if it stalls or Google asks for a video you are not sure how to record, read how verification works and what to do if it gets stuck. Until you finish this step, your listing stays hidden.

Step 6: Fill out every field

A bare, verified profile will technically appear, but a complete one is what actually ranks and earns calls. Once you are in, add your hours, a real description of what you do, the specific services you offer, and plenty of photos. Every field you complete is a signal to Google that you are a legitimate, active business. Work through the optimization checklist to cover the fields that move rankings - it feeds straight into your Profile Score, which shows you at a glance what is still missing.

What to do after setup

Setup is the foundation, not the finish line. The next biggest factor is reviews, so start asking every happy customer and make it effortless with a one-tap review link or QR code. From there, the work of climbing the map results is covered in how to rank higher on Google Maps. And if you have not yet seen the bigger picture, the getting-on-Google overview ties the whole process together.

Every local business should get this set up well, whether you run a plumbing company, an HVAC business, or any other local service. Take the extra ten minutes to do each field properly now, and the rest of your local SEO has something solid to build on.