In short and in plain language
Many customers find a firm on the map in search. There, your profile shows who you are. This post shows how to set it up.
Choose your main trade as the primary category. If you have no shop, show your service area, not your address.
Only enter hours you can keep. List your services one by one, in the words your customers use.
A few entries with matching details often help more than many with errors.
We can help you with this.
Someone looking for an electrician in Hildesheim rarely types a company name. They type the trade and the town, get a map with three entries and call one of them – usually before opening a single website. The business profile therefore decides whether a company appears in that shortlist at all. 88 percent (Bitkom) of trade businesses are listed in online directories, so the listing itself is no longer an advantage but basic equipment. The difference is made in the details: which primary category is set, whether a service area is stored instead of a shop address, whether the opening hours are accurate, whether services are recorded as a list, and in which order the photos appear. This article works through those points one by one – and explains why four consistent listings usually achieve more than twelve contradictory ones.
Key takeaways
- The primary category determines which searches a business can appear for on the map at all. Secondary categories add to it but never replace it, which is why this field belongs to the trade that carries the largest share of turnover.
- Businesses without walk-in customers store a service area instead of a publicly visible shop address. The postal address stays on file for verification while the radius or the list of towns served is what people see.
- Opening hours in a profile work like a promise. A business listed until 6 pm that stops answering the phone at 4 pm collects disappointment at exactly the point where the decision is made.
- Services belong in the dedicated list as individual entries, not in a block of prose. They are written in the words customers use: replace a consumer unit, bleed a radiator, clean a gutter.
- Consistent details across a handful of directories usually carry more weight than many listings with a different spelling, an old phone number or an outdated legal form.
- 88 percent (Bitkom) of trade businesses are listed in online directories. The listing alone therefore no longer sets a business apart from its neighbour – completeness and upkeep do.
Why the map decides whether the phone rings
Local search is not a side channel in the trades; it is frequently the very first contact. Somebody is standing in a cellar with a dripping pipe, reaches for the phone and searches for the trade and the town. What they see is a short list on a map: name, category, distance, open or closed, reviews, a button to call. That view is the actual first contact, and it consists almost entirely of details stored in the business profile. 85 percent (Bitkom) of trade businesses see a clear expectation of constant availability among their customers – on the map that expectation is displayed as a status long before anybody dials the number.
For a trade business this view has a second, underrated function: it sorts by distance. A business without a sensible service area either appears too far away or not at all. And because travel time in the trades feeds straight into the margin, the question of the radius in which a business shows up is not a marketing question but a commercial one. What maintaining such a profile looks like in practice is set out on the page about the business profile.
The division of roles matters: the profile answers whether somebody calls. The website answers why they stay with you instead of clicking on to the next entry. Together they form a chain that breaks at its weakest link – a perfectly maintained profile leading to an unreadable home page gives away exactly the advantage it built. How a website for tradespeople forms the counterpart is a subject of its own.
Where a profile shows up
The primary category decides, secondary ones add
No other field carries as much weight as the primary category. It is not a description but an assignment: it tells the directory which searches a business is eligible for. A company listed as a construction firm that in fact spends nine tenths of its time refitting bathrooms will simply not be considered when somebody searches for a plumbing business. The choice therefore falls not on the broadest category but on the one that carries the largest share of turnover.
The second common mistake is a category that matches the ambition rather than the reality. A business that would like to do more solar work but today mostly invoices electrical installation moves its own visibility away from the running business with a premature switch. The better route is the other way round: primary category at today's focus, the new field as a secondary category and as its own service page on the website. What such a page has to deliver is described in the area on SEO for tradespeople.
Secondary categories exist to complete the picture of what a business does – not to collect every conceivable search. Three to five are usually enough, and each one should correspond to a service the business genuinely offers and invoices. Categories taken along for good measure produce enquiries nobody wants to accept: they cost time on the phone, produce refusals and leave the caller with the impression of having landed in the wrong place.
- Electrical contractor: primary category electrician, secondary categories such as solar installations, electrical installation, security systems.
- Plumbing and heating: primary category plumber or heating engineer – whichever carries the turnover, not both on equal footing.
- Roofer: primary category roofer, secondary categories such as roof repair, sheet metal work, scaffolding, provided the business does that itself.
- Joinery: primary category joiner, secondary categories such as bespoke furniture, windows and doors, interior fit-out.
- Painting business: primary category painter, secondary categories such as facade painting, drywall, floor coverings.
- Tiler: primary category tiler, secondary categories such as bathroom refits, natural stone work, waterproofing.
A service area instead of a shop address
Most trade businesses have no shop counter. The workshop sits on an industrial estate, the yard next to the family home, and anybody ringing the bell unannounced will usually find nobody there. For precisely this case there is the setting that hides the postal address and shows a service area instead. The address stays on file in the profile and is used for verification – it is simply not visible to the person searching. This is no minor switch: it prevents visits at the wrong moment and at the same time makes clear how far the business travels.
A service area can be stored as a radius or as a list of towns. Both have their place. A radius suits businesses whose journeys run similarly in every direction; a list of towns suits areas where a river, a motorway or a state border distorts travel time. The sensible limit is where the journey still pays; that depends on the trade, the size of the job and the traffic situation. An area covering half of Lower Saxony does not create visibility, it creates enquiries that get turned down later.
Alignment with the website matters. Storing twelve towns in the profile while the website names only the home town creates a break: the caller from the neighbouring village looks on the site for confirmation and finds none. The towns listed in the profile therefore belong in the structure of the site as well – as a service area on the contact page and, where it is worth it, as a location page with real content rather than a swapped-out town name.
| Detail in the profile | Business with walk-in customers | Business without walk-in customers |
|---|---|---|
| Postal address | publicly visible, with directions | stored but not displayed |
| Service area | optional, in addition to the location | central: radius or list of towns |
| Opening hours | hours when somebody is in the shop | hours when somebody answers the phone |
| Photos | premises, showroom, team | finished work, vehicle, workshop |
| First action | calculate a route | call or send a message |
| Verification | address is confirmed | address is confirmed but stays hidden |
Honest hours, a findable emergency service
In a profile, opening hours are not a note but a promise. They appear as a status: open, closing soon, closed. A business listed until 6 pm that lets nobody answer the phone after 4 pm produces disappointment at exactly the point where the decision is made. 74 percent (Bitkom) of trade businesses find that customers have become more critical – a promise that does not hold is more likely to be commented on today than forgiven. Realistic hours are therefore not a retreat but the more durable route.
The second point is special hours. Works holidays, bridging days, the week between Christmas and New Year: a business that does not store these shows as open and receives calls that go nowhere. Special hours can be entered in advance, and that is the trick – they are set once a year for the whole year, together with the holiday planning, instead of being patched in at short notice every time.
An emergency service needs separate treatment. A business offering an on-call service should name it as a service and in the profile text, but should not therefore list itself as open around the clock. Otherwise the map shows an ordinary working day where in reality an on-call arrangement with clear conditions applies. The cleaner approach is to separate the two: regular times in the opening hours, the on-call service as its own note with a number, the conditions and the area in which it applies.
Around the clock is a statement about the business
Services as a list, not as prose
There is a dedicated field for services in a profile, and it is rarely used. Yet it is the place where a business can explain what it actually does – in far more detail than a category ever could. Half the buying decision sits between the category electrician and the service replacing a consumer unit. Filling in the list gives the directory something to work with and gives the person searching an answer to the question they happen to have right now.
The wording follows the customer, not the quotation. Nobody searches for remedial measures on building services installations; people search for bleeding a radiator, cleaning a gutter, adding a socket, renewing bathroom tiles. A good source for this wording is the last fifty quotations and the call notes in the office – they already record the words people use to describe their problem. The same wording later carries the service pages of the website.
One line per service
Each entry describes exactly one job. Blanket terms such as all kinds of electrical work help nobody and cannot be evaluated later.
The words customers use
Enter what people actually ask for. Technical terms belong in the quotation, not in a list read with wet hands in a cellar.
A short explanation
Where the field allows a description, add one or two sentences on how the job runs. That answers follow-up questions before they are asked on the phone.
Only what you accept
A service with no room in the calendar does not belong in the list. Otherwise the profile produces enquiries that cost time and end in a refusal.
Reviewed twice a year
Services change with staff and equipment. A fixed date in spring and autumn is enough to keep the list at the level of the business.
Prices only where they hold
Fixed prices for clearly defined jobs build trust. Anything depending on the property stays with a note about a quotation after an inspection.
Photos in the order in which people decide
Images in a profile are not read, they are scanned. In practice the first handful decides: the cover image and the shots visible without swiping. Those places belong neither to the company sign nor to the office building but to finished work – the neatly tiled bathroom, the new roof, the installed consumer unit. Next comes what builds trust: the team, the sign-written vehicle, the tidy workshop. Details and before-and-after pairs come last, because they only work on closer inspection.
Two legal points deserve attention. First, people: photographs of staff require their consent, and that holds even when the relationship is good – once somebody has left, the question becomes awkward. Second, other people's property: a customer's house is her house, even if your roof sits on it. A short written agreement, if need be a sentence in the order, settles that without effort. Number plates and doorbell name tags do not belong in the frame in any case. For a specific case, the legal assessment remains a matter for qualified advice.
Technically a current phone is enough if three things are right: daylight, a tidy background and a straight angle. The most common cause of unusable business photos is not a poor camera but the timing – the picture is taken too late, once the tools are lying around and the light has gone. How to build this into the working day is covered under photos for trade websites.
Five images, one order
The best image in a profile is not the prettiest one but the one in which somebody can picture their own job.
Consistent details beat the number of listings
Around local visibility the idea persists that quantity is what counts: the more directories, the better. That is the wrong lever. What matters is that name, address and phone number are written identically everywhere. 88 percent (Bitkom) of trade businesses are listed in online directories – the question has long ceased to be whether a listing exists and has become whether the existing listings say the same thing.
The typical discrepancies build up over years and in passing: the street spelled out in one place, abbreviated in another. The old landline number from before the move. The business name once with, once without its legal form. A listing created seven years ago by an intern whose login nobody can find any more. Each of these is harmless in isolation; taken together they produce a blurred picture of the business, and it blurs precisely where clarity counts.
The clean-up is unspectacular and happens once. You define how the business is written – one line, binding, including legal form, the spelling of the street and the phone number in international format. Then the existing listings are found, aligned or deleted. Four to six maintained listings are a better foundation than thirty abandoned ones. Keeping that state afterwards requires only one place where the binding spelling lives – ideally the same line that appears in the legal notice of the website.
- Business name defined in one binding spelling, including the legal form.
- Street written the same way everywhere, spelled out or abbreviated, but not mixed.
- One phone number as the leading number, stored in the same format everywhere.
- Old listings with a former address or number found and aligned or deleted.
- Login details for every listing documented in one place in the business.
- Details in the profile, the legal notice and the contact page checked against each other.
- A fixed date each year on which the list is worked through again.
Step by step through the setup
The setup itself takes less time than most people expect – provided the material is ready. Anyone who first picks ten photos, pulls the list of services from old quotations and settles the binding spelling of the business name is through in about an hour. Without that preparation the same work drags on for weeks, because every step gets stuck on some missing detail.
One point requires patience: confirming the address. Depending on the case this runs by post, by phone or through a short recording of the premises, and it takes a few days. During that time the profile can already be filled in completely; it only becomes visible after confirmation. Anyone who knows the launch date of the website sensibly starts on the profile one or two weeks earlier so that both go live together.
Check what exists
Search for your own business first. An automatically created listing with outdated data frequently exists already. Claiming it is the shorter route than creating a second one and resolving duplicates later.
Settle the categories
Choose the primary category at the turnover focus and add three to five secondary categories for services genuinely offered. Agree this decision briefly in the business rather than making it in passing.
Address and service area
For businesses without walk-in customers, hide the address and store a service area – radius or list of towns, guided by the journey that still pays commercially.
Enter the hours
Set regular hours realistically, store special hours for works holidays and public holidays for the whole year at once, and keep the emergency service as a separate note with its conditions.
Services and description
Fill the list of services from recent quotations, in the words customers use. The description names the trade, the service area and anything distinctive – without advertising language, in a few sentences.
Upload photos
Start with finished work, then team, vehicle and workshop. Ten good shots are enough to begin with, more follow with every completed job.
Confirm and link
Complete the address confirmation and set the link to the matching page of the website – not to the home page in general but to the service or location page belonging to the category.
Search for your own business first. An automatically created listing with outdated data frequently exists already. Claiming it is the shorter route than creating a second one and resolving duplicates later.
Choose the primary category at the turnover focus and add three to five secondary categories for services genuinely offered. Agree this decision briefly in the business rather than making it in passing.
For businesses without walk-in customers, hide the address and store a service area – radius or list of towns, guided by the journey that still pays commercially.
Set regular hours realistically, store special hours for works holidays and public holidays for the whole year at once, and keep the emergency service as a separate note with its conditions.
Fill the list of services from recent quotations, in the words customers use. The description names the trade, the service area and anything distinctive – without advertising language, in a few sentences.
Start with finished work, then team, vehicle and workshop. Ten good shots are enough to begin with, more follow with every completed job.
Complete the address confirmation and set the link to the matching page of the website – not to the home page in general but to the service or location page belonging to the category.
Where the profile ends and the website begins
A business profile is rented ground. The operator sets the rules, the presentation changes without notice, and reviews appear there whether the business likes it or not. That is no argument against the profile, but it is an argument for not treating it as a substitute for a site of your own. 94 percent (Bitkom) of trade businesses run their own website – the difference therefore no longer lies in whether one exists but in whether profile and website tell the same story.
In practice that means the link from the profile leads to the page that matches the category. A business found through the category heating engineer should land on the heating page, not on a home page where the right thing still has to be hunted down. The services from the profile should reappear on the website too, in the same language. This alignment looks unspectacular but decides whether somebody stays after the click.
Reviews are the third building block and the only one you cannot write yourself. 72 percent (Bitkom) of trade businesses see online customer reviews as a considerable opportunity to win new work and build trust. In practice reviews almost never arrive on their own – they arrive because somebody asks at the end of a job, at the moment when the work is finished and the mood is good. A small card with a short link, handed to the fitter, works better for that than any later reminder by email.
The link points at the right page
Who maintains the profile when the day gets in the way
Setting it up is the easy part. The hard part starts afterwards: entering special hours, adding new photos, replying to reviews, recording changed services. In many businesses somebody does this on the side – and on the side, in peak season, means not at all. Anyone who can foresee not managing it should hand the upkeep over. With us, ongoing care of local visibility starts at 290 euros per month, cancellable monthly, with no minimum term; plain website care starts at 49 euros per month, likewise cancellable monthly with no minimum term.
That covers the ongoing work, not a one-off tidy-up day: keeping details current, setting special hours, adding new photos, preparing replies to reviews and keeping the listings in the remaining directories in step. What a business keeps and what it hands over is settled beforehand – together with the question of whether an existing website can carry the traffic from the profile at all. Getting in contact is straightforward; a website at a fixed price starts at 1,490 euros net.
Related Articles
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One website for several trades: structure and legal notice
Electrical, plumbing and painting firms on one site: a page per trade, requests routed to the right firm, the legal notice under § 5 DDG and GDPR roles.