Google Business Profile optimisation in Newcastle, NSW: get the call.

It is the free listing Google keeps about your business, separate from your website. It is what appears in the map, and it is what a customer taps to call you or get directions.

Google holds two separate things about a business. The website earns the ordinary blue results, and the listing earns the map. A business can have a good website and still be missing from the map, because nothing on a website fixes an empty listing.

It costs nothing to have and it takes an afternoon to fill in properly. That is why it is the first thing worth doing rather than the last.

What lives on the listing

• Your name, address and phone number.

  Written exactly the same way as they are written everywhere else the business appears online.

• The categories the business sits under.

  One primary and up to nine more. This is the field deciding which searches you are eligible for at all.

• The services the business offers.

  Every job you do, listed by name. It is a separate field to categories, and it is the one most listings leave empty.

• Photographs, hours and the service area.

  The business's own photographs, real hours including public holidays, and the area covered where there is no shopfront.

• The reviews, the posts and the questions.

  The parts that keep moving after the setup is finished, and the reason a listing is never really done.

Your primary category tells Google what your business fundamentally is, and it is the strongest single field on the listing. The secondary ones open up searches you are otherwise invisible for.

Categories come from a fixed list Google maintains. You do not write your own, you pick from theirs. Their wording rarely matches the wording customers use, and that gap is where most of the work sits.

A business with one broad category is eligible for a narrow slice of the searches it could win. Adding the genuine secondary ones is usually the fastest change available on a Newcastle listing, and it takes minutes.

How the categories get chosen

• The primary one is what you mainly are.

  Not what is most profitable, and not what you would like to be known for. The one a customer would use to describe the business.

• The secondary ones are what you genuinely also do.

  Every one added has to be a service really delivered. Adding categories you do not serve is a fast route to a suspension.

• The businesses above you show theirs.

  Their categories are visible from the outside, and the gap between theirs and yours is often the whole explanation.

Google's own guidance on categories is short and worth reading before anybody touches the field. The primary category moves a listing further than any other setting on it.

Services is a separate field to categories, and it is where you name every job in your own words. It is one of the few fields where you are not picking from Google's list.

Categories say which type of business Google files you under. Services say what the business actually does. Most Newcastle listings carry the first and leave the second empty, so Google is guessing at half the business.

The list itself is the part that counts. Google offers a description box under each service and it carries very little weight. A sentence or two naming the service and the area is enough, and a link never goes in one.

How the list comes together

• Name every job you do.

  Not the categories over again. The actual jobs, in the words a customer would use on the phone.

• The descriptions all stay short.

  A sentence or two on each of them. This field is not where positions are won, so a long one is time spent for nothing.

• No link ever goes in a description.

  It does not help the listing, and it looks exactly like what it is.

Almost all of it comes from the address and the name. An address that is not really yours, keywords stuffed into the business name, or a service area business showing a street address it should have hidden.

A suspension takes the listing off the map while it is appealed, and the appeal is slow. So it is worth knowing what causes one before touching anything.

What causes a suspension

• Keywords added to the business name.

  The name field is for the name on the paperwork. Adding a service and a suburb to it is the most common cause, and the easiest one to avoid.

• An address that is not really yours.

  A mailbox, a co-working desk nobody staffs, or a relative's house. Google verifies addresses and it does check them.

• A service area setting left the wrong way round.

  A business that travels to customers hides the street address and sets an area instead. Getting that backwards can remove a listing from the map entirely.

• Categories the business does not serve.

  Added to catch more searches, and read by Google as exactly that.

The rules are published in Google's guidelines for representing your business. That is the document an appeal is judged against, so it is the one worth reading.

Correct the name and address first, then the categories, then the service list, then the photographs, then the hours and the service area. Posts and questions come after all of it.

The order matters because the early fields decide whether the later ones are even seen.

1. Match the name and address to the paperwork

The registered name, written the way it appears on the Australian Business Register. No service words, and no suburb bolted on the end.

2. The primary category goes in, then the secondaries

One primary describing what the business is, then every secondary it genuinely delivers. This is the field that moves a listing the most.

3. List every service by name

In the customer's words, with a short description each and no links in any of them.

4. The business's own photographs go on

Real jobs, real vehicles, real premises. Stock photography on a local listing is obvious to a customer and worth nothing to Google.

5. The hours, the holidays and the service area get set

Public holidays go in as well. A listing saying open while the door is locked collects a bad review from somebody who drove there.

6. Then keep it moving

Reviews every week, a reply to each one, the occasional post, and answers to the questions people leave. A listing untouched for a year looks like one.

The filling in is an afternoon. The categories can move a position quickly. Reviews and photographs are the slow half, and they are what holds a position once it arrives.

Asking every customer at the moment the job finishes is most of the work, and doing it steadily beats doing it once.

The order it happens in

• The listing is corrected and filled in.

  Name, address, categories, services, photographs, hours. One sitting, and the categories are the part that can move a position on their own.

• Then the weekly routine starts running.

  Review requests going out after every job, a reply to each one, and photographs added as jobs finish.

• Then the position starts to settle.

  Strongest close to the address and weaker further out, which is distance working normally rather than something being wrong.

A listing is never finished, which is the difference between it and a page on a website. The businesses holding the top three in Newcastle are the ones still adding to theirs.

Ask whose Google account the listing sits in, what changes in the first week, whether anybody will touch the business name, and what the monthly report shows. The name question separates the careful from the reckless.

These are worth asking of any agency, including this one, so the answers given here are underneath each question.

• Whose account does the listing sit in?

  The business's own, with the owner as the owner and everybody else as a manager. That is how it is set up here from the start.

• Will you change my business name?

  Not here, it stays as it is registered. Anybody offering to add a service and a suburb to it is offering a suspension.

• What changes in the first week?

  The categories, the services, the photographs and the hours. Where the first week is a report, the work has not started yet.

• What does the monthly report show me?

  Calls, direction requests and the searches people used, all of which the listing reports on its own.

This is also the most doable of everything on this website. An owner with an afternoon can do the whole setup, and plenty of Newcastle businesses have done exactly that.

Paying somebody to keep the listing right is its own decision, and what listing management costs sets out the published bands.