📍 Google & Online Presence
This is your storefront before your storefront. Most local customers decide here — before they ever walk in.
Quick win · 30 minutes · once
Claim it and fix the basics.
Search your business name on Google. Claim the listing if you haven't. Then fix the four things people actually check: hours (including holidays), phone, address, and category. Add 8–10 real photos. Done — and it keeps working for you every day.
What actually works
- Correct hours. A "Closed" that's wrong on a Saturday loses you a customer who drove over. Update holidays too.
- Real photos beat fancy photos. The space, the product, your team. Phone photos in daylight are perfect.
- Reply to reviews. All of them. It tells every future reader a real person is paying attention.
- The right category. "Restaurant" vs "Mexican restaurant" changes who finds you. Be specific.
- Post once a month. A special, a new item, a photo. It signals you're open and alive.
- Verify it. An unverified profile quietly hides your edits — you can fix everything and customers still see the old version.
- Same name, address, and phone everywhere. Google cross-checks your Facebook, LinkedIn, Yelp, and website. When they disagree, it trusts you less.
The 1-hour online tune-up
Most businesses have old information scattered across the internet — an old address, an old website, a bio from years ago. Customers find it before they find you. Once a year, walk this list:
Online tune-up checklist
GOOGLE BUSINESS PROFILE
☐ Claimed AND verified (unverified = your edits are hidden)
☐ Hours correct, including holidays
☐ Category specific ("Hair salon", not "Beauty")
☐ Areas served (every town you work in)
☐ Logo + cover photo + 8–10 real photos
☐ Website link correct
☐ 5+ reviews — ask every customer, not just the happy ones
FACEBOOK / INSTAGRAM (Meta Business Suite — free)
☐ "About" text is current (not an old bio from years ago)
☐ Category, website link, phone, address all current
☐ Profile photo = your logo
EVERYWHERE ELSE (LinkedIn, Yelp, Nextdoor, industry sites)
☐ Same business name, address, and phone as Google
☐ No old website addresses or old phone numbers
YOUR WEBSITE (if you have one)
☐ Google Search Console set up (see below)
☐ Works on a phone
☐ Every button and link actually goes somewhere
Have a website? Tell Google about it
Google Search Console is free. It's how you tell Google your site exists, and how you see what people search to find you.
- Go to search.google.com/search-console and add your domain.
- Google gives you a short "TXT record" to prove you own it. Add it where your website's DNS is managed — which is often not where you bought the domain. (Bought on GoDaddy but your site is on Wix, Squarespace, or Netlify? The record usually goes in the website host.)
- Click Verify. If it says "not found," wait an hour and try again.
- Under Sitemaps, submit your sitemap (usually
sitemap.xml). Most website builders make one for you.
Not sure who manages your DNS? Paste the AI prompt below into ChatGPT with your domain name and ask it to walk you through it.
AI prompt
Rewrite my Google Business description to sound welcoming and clear, under 100 words, in plain language. Here's what I do and who I'm for: [describe your business, your best-known items or services, and your ideal customer]. Mention the town: [town].
My business website is [yourdomain.com]. I bought the domain from [GoDaddy / Namecheap / other] and the website is built on [Wix / Squarespace / WordPress / other]. Walk me step by step, in plain language, through setting up Google Search Console and adding the verification TXT record in the right place. Assume I'm not technical. One step at a time.
Templates — ready to use
Google description — fill-in skeleton
[Business name] is a [what you are] in [town], known for [the 1–2 things people love]. [One sentence on who you're for / the feeling of the place]. Walk-ins welcome · [parking note] · [hours note].
Reply — positive review
Thank you, [Name]! That made our day. We'll see you next time — [Your name], [Business]
Reply — negative review (never argue)
Thank you for telling us, [Name] — I'm sorry that was your experience. That's not the standard we hold ourselves to. I'd like to make it right: please call me directly at [phone]. — [Your name], owner
Monthly Google update post
This month at [Business]: [one new thing — a special, an item, an event]. Come see us — [hours or a day]. 📍 [street], [town]
Examples
Except where noted, these are illustrative examples — not promises. Your results depend on your business.
Us, honestly: when we built this toolkit, we ran the tune-up on Cambium Commercial first. We found an unverified Google profile, LinkedIn pointing to a website we'd retired, and a Facebook bio left over from a residential real estate business years ago. An hour fixed all of it. If it happened to us, it's probably happened to you.
Café: fixed a wrong "closed Sundays" listing. Sunday traffic appeared within two weeks — people had been driving past to a competitor.
Contractor: added 10 job-site photos and started replying to every review. Calls from Google doubled without spending a dollar on ads.
Salon: changed category from "Beauty salon" to "Hair salon" and added the word "balayage" to the description. Started showing up for the searches that actually book.
Related
Next step
Claim and verify your Google listing today. Then run the 1-hour tune-up this week.
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