Setting up a Google Business Profile as a Tri-Cities service-area business

Are you a service-area business, a storefront, or both?

The answer decides how your profile should look. Google's guidelines for representing your business describe three cases:

• Service-area business: you travel to customers and don't serve them at your address. Hide the address and set a service area.
• Storefront: customers come to you, during staffed hours, at a location with signage. Show the address.
• Hybrid: you do both, like a shop that also offers on-site service. Show the address and add a service area.

Most Coquitlam trades are the first type, even if they have a small yard or workshop. A clinic in Austin Heights or a shop near Coquitlam Centre is a storefront.

The guidelines are firm on one point: a service-area business can't list a virtual office unless that office is staffed during business hours. Renting a mailbox in City Centre to look local is the quickest route to suspension.

Step 1: Claim and verify the profile

Search for your business name on Google Maps. If a profile exists, claim it; if not, create one. Use your real business name exactly as it appears on your signage, vehicles and invoices.

Verification methods vary and Google decides which ones you're offered, which may include a video showing your vehicle, tools and business documents. Prepare these before you start:

• a vehicle or equipment with your business name, if you have it
• a business licence, registration or utility bill matching the address
• access to the business phone number

Don't add keywords or neighbourhoods to the name. "Smith Electric" is fine; "Smith Electric Coquitlam Burke Mountain EV Chargers" is a guideline breach and invites suspension.

Step 2: Hide the address and draw a real service area

Enter your business address for verification, then switch off public display if customers don't visit you there. Next, add the areas you serve.

Draw the area from your job records, not your ambitions. Ask:

1. Where did the last 50 jobs happen?
2. How long does it take to reach each area during the hours you work? Burke Mountain to Maillardville at 4 p.m. isn't the same trip as at 10 a.m.
3. Which areas produce profitable work, and which produce small jobs with long drives?

For many Coquitlam businesses, a sensible area is Coquitlam plus one to three neighbours: Port Coquitlam, Port Moody, Burnaby or New Westminster. Listing all of Metro Vancouver rarely helps, because Google weighs distance heavily for local searches anyway.

Step 3: Choose categories carefully

Your primary category has more influence on which searches you appear for than almost anything else you control. Pick the one that matches your main money-making service, then add a few secondary categories for other genuine services.

Tips:

• Look at the categories used by the businesses that appear above you for your main search.
• Don't add categories for services you rarely do. They dilute relevance.
• Revisit categories once a year; Google adds and renames them.

Step 4: Fill in services, description and hours

Complete every section that applies:

• Services: list each one with a short, plain description. "Panel upgrades for older homes, including permits arranged through the appropriate authority" tells people more than "Electrical".
• Description: two or three sentences on what you do and where. Mention Coquitlam neighbourhoods you serve if it reads naturally.
• Hours: set the hours you actually answer the phone. If you offer after-hours emergency service, say so only if someone really picks up.
• Phone: use a number that rings a person or a well-managed voicemail. A tracking number can be used with care, keeping your main number listed as an additional number.

Step 5: Add real photos on a schedule

Photos of real work help people decide and give Google fresh activity on your profile. Aim for a few new photos a month:

• finished jobs, with permission, and no house numbers or faces visible
• your team and vehicles
• before-and-after pairs for visual trades like landscaping, painting and flooring

Skip stock images. Customers recognise them, and they add nothing.

Step 6: Build an honest review routine

Reviews feed the prominence factor Google describes in its local ranking tips, and they're the first thing most homeowners read. Build a routine that runs after every job:

1. Finish the job and confirm the customer is happy.
2. Send a short text the same day with your direct review link.
3. Send one polite reminder three or four days later if they haven't left one.
4. Reply to every review within a couple of days, positive or negative.

Things to avoid:

• Paying or discounting for reviews. It breaks Google's policies.
• Asking only the happiest customers. Ask everyone after a completed job.
• Writing reviews for yourself or having staff do it. Google detects patterns and removes them, sometimes with the profile.

When a negative review arrives, reply calmly, acknowledge the issue, and offer to resolve it offline. Future customers read your reply more closely than the complaint.

Step 7: Keep it active

A profile that hasn't changed in a year looks abandoned to people and to Google. Spend 20 minutes a month on this checklist:

• Add three to five new job photos
• Reply to any new reviews and questions
• Post one update: a recent project, seasonal tip or service reminder
• Check hours, phone number and service area are still right
• Look at the profile's performance figures: calls, direction requests and website clicks

Mistakes we see in Coquitlam profiles

• Two profiles for the same business, often created by different staff or a past agency. Merge or remove the duplicate.
• A service area that includes Abbotsford or North Vancouver because "we'd go there for the right job". It adds little and blurs relevance.
• Old phone numbers left on profiles and directories after a switch.
• No replies to reviews, which reads as indifference.

When to get help

You can do everything in this guide yourself. If you'd prefer someone to set it up, audit an existing profile or run the monthly routine, that's part of our local SEO service. To see how profile work fits with ads and other channels, visit the services hub, or read about trust signals homeowners check once your profile is in order.