Google Business Profile for a Portsmouth business: the district version

Open your own Google profile on a phone, as a customer in Fratton would see it, and read it top to bottom. The name and the stars. The category under them. The open-now line. The photographs. The address or the service area. The services. The reviews and whether anyone replied. That is the order Google shows it and the order a customer judges it, so it is the order this guide follows, with the Portsmouth setting for each and three district examples at the end.

The first screen: name, stars, category, open now

Four things decide whether the thumb stops. The name must be the business name and nothing else; a name with the trade or the district stuffed into it ranks for a few weeks and then the profile is suspended, and half the plumbers on the island have tried it. The stars are the last three months' reviews more than the lifetime count. The category is the single most important field on the profile: Plumber, not Contractor; Italian restaurant, not Restaurant; Marine surveyor, not Boat dealer. And the open-now line is read literally, so hours that say open at 9pm for a business that stops answering at five lose the customer and the trust.

The second screen: photographs

The customer swipes the photographs before reading a word. The profile needs the frontage or the van, the people, the work and the room, added monthly with a caption that names the district, because Google reads captions and so do the assistants. Stock images do the opposite of what people think. A Southsea cafe with a photograph of its own counter beats one with a photograph of someone else's latte.

The third screen: address, service area, hours

A business customers visit shows its address. A business that goes to the customer hides it and draws a service area to the districts and towns it genuinely works: the island and Gosport, say, or the island and Havant. Drawing it to the whole of Hampshire to look bigger dilutes the map everywhere and wins nothing anywhere. Hours are this week's real hours, with the Sunday or the late evening if you work them and special hours for bank holidays and the summer, because the customer searching at 7pm on a Saturday is the one the honest profile catches.

The fourth screen: services and the description

The services list is where Google learns what to show you for. Left at the defaults it guesses; ticked and extended with your own services and from-prices, it matches the searches you want. The description is two or three plain sentences saying what you do and where, with the districts named as people type them. A paragraph of keywords helps nothing; the founder's life story helps less.

The last screen: reviews, replies, questions

The reviews section is read by the customer and by Google in the same way: recent ones with words in them count, old stars without text do not. Every review gets a reply within a day, written for the next reader rather than the reviewer, with the job and the district named again. The questions section is either empty, which looks abandoned, or filled with the five things customers ask, answered by you, which looks alive. Posts once a month keep the whole profile current: a job done, a change of hours, a seasonal service.

Three Portsmouth profiles, three settings

A Southsea cafe

Address shown. Category Cafe with Breakfast restaurant and Brunch restaurant added. Hours by the day, with the summer weekend opening set as special hours. Photographs of the counter, the room, three dishes and the street outside. Services as the menu sections with prices. Reviews asked for with the bill, mentioning Southsea. Posts for the new menu and the bank holiday hours.

A Cosham plumber

Address hidden, service area drawn to Cosham, Drayton, Farlington, Paulsgrove and the island. Category Plumber with Heating contractor and Boiler installer. Hours honest, with the emergency line as a separate attribute rather than a claim of 24 hours. Photographs of the van, the engineer and finished jobs with the district in the caption. Services ticked with from-prices for the common jobs. Reviews asked for at the handover, mentioning the job and Cosham.

A Gosport boatyard

Address shown at the yard. Category Boat repair shop with Marine engineer and Boat storage facility. Hours by season, with winter hours set in October. Photographs of the yard, the lift, the workshop and a boat on the hard. Services as the makes and the jobs: engine servicing by make, antifouling, rigging, storage. Reviews asked for in the invoice email a week after launch, mentioning the boat and the water.

The ten mistakes we fix most often

• The trade or the district in the business name.
• A broad category chosen because it sounded safe.
• A service area covering half the county.
• Hours copied from somewhere and never touched again.
• No photograph newer than the van's last MOT.
• Services left at Google's defaults.
• A description written for a search engine in 2012.
• Reviews without replies, and a burst of twenty in a week from a purchased batch.
• The website link pointing at a Facebook page or an old domain.
• A duplicate profile created by a well-meaning relative.

How long it takes

1. Ninety minutes to set the profile up properly, once, with the photographs and the services done in the same sitting.
2. Ten minutes a week for the review ask and the replies.
3. Ten minutes a month for a post and a photograph.
4. Weeks, not months, for the map to move in your district once the routine is running.

The profile is judged by a customer in ten seconds and by Google continuously. Set it up as the customer sees it, keep it as Google reads it, and it decides more Portsmouth searches than the website ever will.