Google Business Profile setup.

What the $399 Setup Covers

One profile, built from scratch or cleaned up if you already have one. Six pieces, in the order I do them.

Categories

The primary category decides which searches you're eligible for at all. A roofer listed under "Contractor" instead of "Roofing Contractor" doesn't rank low for roofing searches, he isn't in them.

• One primary category, picked from what you actually make money on.
• Secondary categories only for services you really offer. A category you can't deliver is a suspension risk.
• Attributes set: wheelchair access, women-owned, appointment required, whatever applies.

Services

Google lets you list individual services under the categories, each with a short description. Most profiles I open have that section empty.

• Every service you sell, named the way a customer would say it.
• A plain description on each one, written by me and approved by you.
• Menu items instead if you're a restaurant, and service areas set if you drive to the customer.

Photos

Photos are the first thing somebody looks at, and they're the piece owners skip.

• Logo and cover sized right so Google doesn't crop the important part.
• Up to 10 photos you send me: the storefront, the inside, the truck, the team, finished work.
• Your actual photos. I don't buy stock images of somebody else's business. If you don't have usable ones, I'll tell you what to shoot on your phone.

Posts

Posts sit on the profile under everything else. They're not a ranking trick. They're proof the business is open and somebody's home.

• Your first posts written and published during setup.
• The offer, event, and update formats explained so you know which to use.
• A short handoff so you can keep going. If you'd rather not, posting is in the monthly plans below.

Review responses

If reviews are sitting there unanswered, I answer them during setup, good and bad, in your voice. You also get your short review link, the one you can text or print on a card. The rules I follow on reviews are in their own section below, and that's the part that gets businesses in trouble.

NAP matching

NAP is name, address, phone. Google cross-checks the profile against your site and the directories, and mismatches make it less sure the two are the same business.

• Name, address, and phone identical on the profile and the site, down to the suite number.
• The business name as you actually trade it, with no city or service words stuffed on the end. That's against Google's rules and it's a common reason a profile gets pulled.
• The site's schema markup updated to match, and old addresses or numbers flagged wherever they're still sitting.

What the $399 doesn't include

Suspension appeals, duplicate suppression, and multi-location cleanup are quoted separately. Those aren't a bigger version of this job, they're a different job, and Google controls how long they take.

What a Profile Will and Won't Do for Your Rankings

Nobody outside Google knows the exact weights, and anybody quoting you a percentage made it up. From doing the work, the profile is roughly a third of what decides the map pack. Your website carries a big share of the rest and your reviews carry the remainder. That's why a perfect profile on a thin website stalls out, and why a good website with no profile never enters the map at all.

What it will do

• Put you in the running for the "near me" searches.
• Give somebody your hours, phone, directions, photos, and reviews without them clicking anything.
• Make the phone ring straight from search. Plenty of those calls never touch your website.
• Put you on Maps, which is a different surface from search and gets used like one.

What it won't do

• Rank your website in the blue links under the map. That's on-page work and links.
• Beat a competitor with a real service page and years of reviews when you have neither.
• Fix a slow site, a broken contact form, or a page that looks wrong on a phone.
• Keep working on its own. A profile set up once and never touched again drifts.

I won't promise you the map pack. Nobody honest will. What I'll tell you is which of the three pieces you're weakest on, and the profile is usually the cheapest one to fix first.

How I Handle Reviews and Review Responses

Reviews carry real weight in local search, and they're also where a business is most likely to break Google's rules without meaning to. So here's what I do and don't do.

What I won't do, ever

• No incentives. No discount, no free drink, no entry in a drawing in exchange for a review. Google tightened this in July 2026, and it applies whether the review is positive or not. Read Google's review policy yourself if you want the source.
• No gating. Gating is asking "would you give us five stars?" first, then sending only the happy ones to Google. Google doesn't allow it. You ask everybody the same way or you don't ask.
• No writing them. I don't write reviews for clients, I don't ask my family to, and I don't buy them. A bought review is worth less than no review, and it can take the profile down with it.

What I do instead

• Set up the short review link and a way to hand it out that fits how you work: a card at the counter, a text after the job, a line on the invoice.
• Answer every review, not just the good ones. An unanswered one-star sits there as the last word.
• Write responses that sound like you. Short, specific to what the person said, signed. No template with a name dropped into a slot.
• On a bad review, own the part that's yours, skip the argument, and move it to a phone number. Anybody reading later is judging how you handled it.

The longer version, including when to ask and what to say, is in How to Get More Google Reviews. Ongoing responses are part of the monthly plans, not the one-time setup.