Your Google Business Profile
is the shopfront now.
For a Perth trade business, more people see the Google listing than ever see the website. It is the three results with the map above them, it is what shows when somebody searches your name, and it is where the call button is. Most profiles we look at are half filled in — not because the owner is lazy, but because the work is tedious and nobody ever said which parts of it matter.
What actually decides who appears
The map pack runs on a different ranking system from ordinary search, and your website matters to it far less than most people assume. Google weighs three things, and only two of them are yours to change. Knowing which is which is the difference between work that pays and work that feels productive.
Relevance
How well the profile matches what was typed: primary category, services, the description. Fixable in an afternoon, and the most commonly wrong.
Distance
How far you are from the person searching. Not changeable without moving, which is why the rest of the list is ordered around it.
Prominence
How established the business looks. Reviews are the largest visible part. Months of asking properly, no shortcut that is not a suspension risk.
That third factor is why a competitor with a worse website than yours can sit above you, and why the answer is almost never “build a new website”. The full diagnosis, in the order worth checking, is in our post on why a Google Business Profile is not showing up — it is free, it is the same sequence we follow, and if you work through it yourself you will not need this page.
What the work actually is
None of this is clever. It is a list of tedious things done properly and then kept up, which is precisely why the businesses above you have usually done it and you usually have not.
Verification and ownership
Confirm the profile is verified and that you own it — not a previous marketer, and not an auto-generated duplicate nobody claimed. Surprisingly often this is the entire problem, and it is free to fix.
Primary category, then secondaries
The single highest-leverage field on the profile. An electrician listed as “Contractor” will struggle no matter what else is right. We check what the three profiles currently above you have chosen, because that is public and it tells you what Google associates with the search.
Every service listed individually
Not left to the category to imply. Each service is another chance to match what somebody typed, and this is the field most often left completely empty.
Real service areas, not a radius
If you go to the customer, the address comes down and the suburbs go up — the ones you genuinely work in. A service area covering all of Perth does not make you rank across Perth. It dilutes relevance, and it is the most common self-inflicted wound on this platform.
Photos, on a cadence
Real job photos added as you go rather than thirty uploaded in one afternoon and then nothing for a year. We set up a way for your crew to send them in from the van, because a system that depends on you remembering will not survive a busy fortnight.
A review habit that survives
Asked at handover, when the customer is happiest, not by email a week later. And asked for something specific — mentioning the suburb and the job — because a review containing the words people search for is worth several bare five-star ratings. More on how we handle this on the reviews page.
Answers, hours, description
Google retired the profile Q&A section in late 2025 and now answers customers’ questions itself, from the profile, your website and your reviews. So the questions people actually ring up and ask belong in the description, the services and a page on your site, where that answer gets drawn from. Hours including public holidays, because wrong hours cost you calls directly and Google flags profiles it thinks are stale.
Monthly reporting on calls, not positions
The performance tab is the honest measure: calls, direction requests, website clicks. Checking your own ranking from your own kitchen tells you almost nothing, because position varies with where the searcher is standing.
If the profile gets suspended
It happens more than people expect, and it almost always follows an edit — a name change, an address change, or a second profile created to cover more categories. The listing vanishes from the map entirely while it is under review, and for a business that gets most of its calls from the map that is the phone going quiet with no warning.
The one thing not to do is create a replacement profile. It feels like the fast fix and it makes reinstatement materially harder. The appeal runs on the existing profile, supported by evidence that the business is what and where you said it was: registration documents, a rates notice, insurance, signage, vehicle livery.
We will take on an appeal, and we will tell you honestly what we think the odds are before you pay for anything. Nobody can promise reinstatement and there is no way to hurry the review — anyone who tells you they have a contact at Google does not.
The shortcuts that cause this: keyword-stuffing the business name, a second profile at the same address, offering a discount for a review, or buying reviews outright. All four are detectable, all four get reported by competitors, and all four cost more than they ever returned.
Transparent Monthly Pricing
No lock-in contracts. Results speak for themselves.
Local Starter
$299/mo
incl. GST
Best for solo tradies & small crews (1–3 suburbs).
- Google Business Profile optimisation
- Basic on-page SEO (5 core pages)
- Local citations & directory listings
- Monthly performance report
Metro Growth
$999/mo
incl. GST
Best for growing teams covering the whole metro area.
- Everything in Starter
- Advanced on-page optimisation
- Content strategy (2 blogs/month)
- Local area landing pages
- Competitor analysis & tracking
Market Leader
POA
Best for competitive niches (emergency, 24/7 services).
- Everything in Growth
- Aggressive backlink acquisition
- Weekly content publication
- Conversion rate optimisation
- Dedicated account manager
All prices include GST. Month-to-month — cancel any time.
These are the published local SEO bands rather than a separate price list, because profile work is the first month of that service and it would be strange to charge differently for it depending on what you called it. Local Starter at $299/mo covers the profile and five core pages, which suits a solo operator across a few suburbs. If the profile is genuinely all you need and your website is fine, say so on the phone and we will scope it down — and if the checklist above is already done, we will tell you there is nothing worth paying us for.
Want us to look at your profile first?
Send the business name. You will get back a plain list of what is wrong with the listing and what it would take to fix, whether or not you hire us.
Or call 08 6323 2970
Google Business Profile questions
Can you guarantee I will be in the top three?
How long before anything moves?
I already manage it myself. Is there any point?
What if I do not have a shopfront?
Do I have to hand over my login?
My profile has been suspended. Can you get it back?
Is this the same as local SEO?
The profile is half of it
Distance is the factor you cannot change, and the way around it is to compete in ordinary search as well as the map — a real page for each service and each suburb you want work in. If you are not sure whether your site is up to that, the free check takes a minute and tells you where you stand before you speak to anybody.
Looking for something more specific?
Four jobs that come up often enough to have a page of their own.
The rest of what we do
One team and one point of contact. See all services or pick one below.
Every price we charge is published — no "contact us for a quote". See the full pricing page.
Get the profile sorted
Tell us the business name and what you think is wrong. If the answer is that nothing is, we will say so rather than sell you a plan.
Prefer to talk? Call 08 6323 2970