Do I need a new website, or a better Google profile?
If the phone has gone quiet and most of your work comes from people nearby, look at your Google Business Profile before you spend anything on a new website. Fixing it costs nothing but your time, it takes an evening rather than weeks, and on a search like "plumber near me" or "nail salon in Leeds" the map results are often the first thing a customer sees. A new website only helps the people who get as far as clicking on it.
The two do different jobs. Our local SEO page puts it this way: the profile wins the call from people who have already decided, and the website convinces the ones comparing you with two others. Someone with water coming through the ceiling wants a number and a few decent reviews, and rings from the map. Someone planning a kitchen refit, or picking the salon they will go to for the next two years, opens three websites and reads them.
Google keeps figures for your profile that tell you which one is letting you down: how many people saw it, and how many rang, asked for directions or clicked through to your website. Look at the last three months. If few people see the profile at all, a new website will not change much, because hardly anyone is reaching it. If plenty of people see the profile and click through, and still nobody gets in touch, the website is where they give up.
The profile problems we come across most are dull ones. A main category that does not match the work you want, so Google is unsure when to show you. Services left blank. Opening hours from two summers ago. A newest review that is a year old, which makes the business look quiet however good the older ones are. A phone number that differs from the one on your website and in the directories, so some customers ring a line nobody answers. An owner can put most of that right in one sitting, and we would rather you did than paid us for it.
Website problems look different. The site was built for a desktop, so people on a phone have to pinch and zoom, and they go back to the map instead. The phone number sits at the foot of the page. The page takes long enough to appear that people stop waiting. The site never names the towns you work in, which leaves a search near you with nothing to match. Or it opens with how long you have been trading, when the customer wants to know whether you can come this week and roughly what it will cost.
Often it is a bit of both, and then the order matters. Sort the profile first, because it is quick and it sends people to the site. Then judge the site with a month of fresh figures in front of you. A site that loses people may need a redesign, which we do from £900, keeping what works and fixing what loses enquiries. If it is past saving, our Starter website starts from £800. If a few fixes would do the job, we tell you that instead.
If nobody in the business has time to keep the profile current, that is what our Care Pro plan is for. From £195 a month, it keeps your Google profile and local visibility up to date and reports on them each month, on top of hosting, daily backups, updates and small changes to your site. Setting up a profile from scratch goes on a fixed quote. These prices are before VAT, and the plan cancels with 30 days' notice. Nobody can promise you the top of the map, us included, since distance from the person searching counts for a lot and nobody controls it.
If you cannot tell which side your problem is on, send us your business name and your website address. We will look at both the way a customer would and tell you which to fix first, even when the answer is an evening on your own profile.
Written by Maksym Gavrylenko · Published