PeakLeadsLocal search
Do you still need a website if you have a Google Business Profile?
Yes, you still need a website alongside your Google Business Profile if you want more work than referrals and one town can give you. Set the profile up first: it is free, and it puts your number, reviews and photos in Google Maps and the local results. But Google makes the rules and can suspend it, and one listing has to cover every service and suburb you work. A website gives each of those its own page, takes quote requests and ad clicks, and belongs to you if it is in your name.
If your profile is already making the phone ring, it is a fair question, and for a few businesses the honest answer is that the website can wait. This post covers what the profile does well, where it stops, and how to run both. Where the profile sits next to paid ads is covered in Google Ads vs Facebook ads for South African trades.
What does a Google Business Profile do well for a trade?
It puts you in front of people nearby who are searching for what you do, and it costs nothing. When someone searches for a business near them, Google shows local results in Maps and Search, and your profile is what they see.
For a trade, the value is in what a customer can do without leaving Google. They can phone you with one tap, read your reviews and look at photos of jobs you have done. They can check whether you work in their suburb, because the profile shows your service area. If customers can visit your yard or showroom, they can get directions. Google even reports what the profile brings in: calls, clicks through to your website and direction requests.
Can you get a Business Profile if you work from home?
Yes. Google's guidelines for representing your business allow a profile for a business customers can visit, or for one that travels to customers where they are. Most trades are the second kind. Google's rule is in-person contact with customers during your stated hours, so online-only businesses do not qualify and a roofer plainly does.
If you work from home, hide the address. Google's own example of this is a plumber who works from a residential address. You set a service area instead: the suburbs and towns you go to.
Two more rules catch people out. Google has to verify the business before the profile shows on Search and Maps. And you get one profile for the business, not one per town, unless you run separate branches with their own staff. A website, on the other hand, is optional. The guidelines ask for a phone number that reaches the business or a website that represents it.
What can a Business Profile not do?
It cannot give each service and each area its own space. You get one listing, and Google's rules limit what goes in it.
The name must be your real business name, the one on your bakkie and your invoices. Google's guidelines say extra information in the name is not permitted and could get the profile suspended, so "Geysers Benoni 24 Hours" on the end is out. Categories say what the business is, in as few as possible. The description is one short block of text, with no links allowed. Service businesses can list their services too, but a list is not an explanation.
Say you are a plumber in Benoni. One customer types "burst geyser Boksburg", another "leak detection Kempton Park", a third "how much is a new geyser". Each would trust a page written for exactly their problem. Your profile cannot be a page about burst geysers in Boksburg, and it cannot walk anyone through what a geyser replacement involves.
What happens if Google changes or suspends your profile?
If Google changes a feature, you live with it. If Google removes your profile, the public cannot see it until it is reinstated. The profile is Google's product: Google reviews your edits before they go live, and anyone can suggest a change to your listing.
In March 2024 Google turned off the basic websites businesses could build from their Business Profile information. Anyone visiting one was sent to the profile until June, then got a "Page not found" error. At the end of July that year, Google switched off the chat built into Business Profiles, and its help page says customers can no longer request quotes through the profile. If that was how you got work, it stopped on Google's timetable, not yours.
Suspension is the bigger risk. Google may suspend or disable profiles that do not follow its guidelines, and getting one back means an appeal, ideally with evidence such as your business registration. Google can also take the owner role away, and the first reason on its list is not having signed in recently. If your profile sits on a Gmail address nobody checks, fix that this week.
Keep the profile anyway. Just do not let it be the only thing you have.
What does a website give you that a profile cannot?
Room, and the final say over what fills it. A website built around your services and areas carries what the profile has no space for:
- A page for each service and area, so a search for burst geysers in Boksburg has a page to match.
- Proof of your own work: finished jobs with the suburb named, what was wrong and how you fixed it, the guarantee you give.
- A quote form, which the profile no longer offers, and online booking.
- Somewhere to send paid clicks. A Google Ads click costs money, and it needs a page built to turn it into a call.
- Something that stays yours, as long as the domain and the logins are in your name.
AI search adds one more reason. Google's guidance for site owners says AI Overviews and AI Mode show links to supporting web pages, and a page has to be indexed to be one of them. The same guidance says to keep your Business Profile current too. So the profile still counts, but to show up as one of those links, you need web pages of your own.
How do the profile and the website help each other?
The website helps the profile rank, and the profile sends people to the website. Google's help page on how local ranking works says local results depend mainly on how well a business matches the search, how far it is from the searcher, and how well known it is. On that last point, Google says it takes in "how many websites link to your business and how many reviews you have". Links need somewhere to land, and a supplier or the local paper will link to a website far more readily than to a map listing.
Google's guidelines also say it can tell what kind of business you are from your website and from mentions of you across the web. So make sure the two say the same things. Most of it is basic local SEO housekeeping you can check yourself:
- Put your full website address in the profile's website field, and make sure the site does not block Google's crawler.
- Use the same business name, main phone number and service areas everywhere, invoices and Facebook page included. Google wants the name as it appears on your signage, website and stationery.
- Point the profile at the matching page. With one base, that is usually the homepage, if it shows the same name, number and areas. Separate branches with their own staff each get a profile and a page of their own.
Is a Google Business Profile ever enough on its own?
For a while, in one situation. Say you have just gone out on your own as an electrician in Howick. You work alone, nearly every job comes from someone who knows you, and you are not running ads. A verified profile with real photos, a few honest reviews and the right service area may bring in all the extra work you can take on.
Do not let it stay that way for long. Referred customers still look you up, and a bare listing answers few of their questions. Bought leads do the same, as we said in exclusive vs shared leads. The day you want work in Pietermaritzburg too, or want to run ads, you need pages the profile cannot give you. A new site also takes a while to rank on Google, so build it while work is good, not when the diary goes quiet.
How does Peak Leads handle the profile and the website?
We do both, under two services. Google Business Profile work is part of SEO. So are a review and citation strategy, service and location pages added as you take on new suburbs, and plain-English monthly reports on rankings, traffic and calls, with the month's work listed against them. There is no lock-in contract, and SEO is scoped on the call, not sold off a shelf.
Websites sit under web design. Every build has a page for each service and each area you work, click to call, quote forms and booking on every page, and technical SEO in place from the day it goes live. It is built for phones first, and the finished site is yours outright. It goes live two to three weeks after the first call. There is no upfront payment on the build, and if you are not happy you do not pay. We quote it on the free call once we know your services and areas.
What can you do this week without spending anything?
- Claim and verify your profile. If someone else set it up, Google's rules say they must hand ownership over when you ask.
- Make the name and number on the profile match your bakkie, invoices and website, word for word.
- If you work from home, hide the address and set the suburbs and towns you actually go to.
- Add your website to the profile. No website yet? List every service you want more of and every area you want work in. That list is your site's page list, whoever builds it.
- Ask all your recent customers for reviews, not just the happy ones, and reply to the reviews you already have.