Picture a plumber in Wimborne who’s done everything right. Good reviews, van on the drive, phone number on the side. But when someone in Colehill types “emergency plumber near me”, he’s nowhere to be seen, while a firm from Ringwood with half the reviews sits pretty in the map pack. Late last month local search specialists Whitespark gave us a big clue why. They looked at roughly 1.8 million Google Business Profiles across 4,209 categories, and the results are worth five minutes of any tradesperson’s time.
First, the category. Businesses using a specific primary category turned up in the top 10 results 12.5% of the time. Those using a generic one managed 9.2%. So “Roofing contractor” beats “Contractor”, and “Electrician” beats “Contractor” too. It’s one dropdown box in your profile and it takes about thirty seconds to change.
Second, completeness. Whitespark scored each profile out of five: website link, description, opening hours, photos, and whether the profile had been claimed. Profiles with all five averaged around position 43. Profiles with none of them averaged position 62. And the full five-out-of-five profiles reached the top 10 about 13% of the time, against 4% for the emptiest ones. That’s more than three times the chance of being found.
Now, it’s a correlation, not a guarantee, and we’d never pretend otherwise. But it matches what we see from Poole to Dorchester. Keep your business name, address and phone number identical on your website and your profile, right down to “Rd” versus “Road”. Upload real photos of real jobs, not stock pictures. Put your hours in, Saturday mornings included if you work them. Because Google won’t recommend a business it can’t make sense of.
If you’d like someone to go through your profile and your website with you, in plain English and without the jargon, Simply Digital provides SEO services across Dorset from our office in Poole. Have a look at https://simply-digital.co.uk/ or give us a ring for a chat.