The free Google listing most businesses half-finish

Search for any local business and the box on the right, or the map with three names at the top, usually gets the click before any website does. That box is a Google Business Profile. It's free, most businesses half-finish theirs, and finishing it properly is the best hour you can spend on your visibility.

Getting it right

• Claim it. Search your business name, and if a profile exists, verify you own it at google.com/business. If it doesn't, create one.
• Fill in everything. Category, opening hours, services, service areas, phone, website. Google visibly favours complete profiles, and customers trust them more.
• Add real photos. Your premises, your work, your face. Profiles with photos get dramatically more clicks than logo-only ones.
• Keep hours honest. Nothing earns a one-star review like driving to a closed shop that said open.
• Collect reviews steadily. A few genuine reviews a month beats a suspicious burst of twenty. Just ask happy customers; most will if you make it easy.
• Reply to reviews. Including the bad ones, briefly and gracefully. Future customers read your replies as closely as the reviews.

The catch

The profile links to your website, and Google notices what happens next. If people click through to a slow site that's clumsy on a phone, that experience feeds back into how often you're shown at all.

So finish the profile, then check the site it points to. The free SiteMOT check takes about a minute and tells you whether your website is holding up its end of the deal.