Google Business Profile copy

What this is

This is the writing that lives on your Google Business Profile: the business description, the service and product list, the attributes, and the short posts that appear on the listing. For a local business it is usually the most-read text you own, because a searcher who types a trade and a town sees the map results first and often decides from them without visiting anybody's website.

It is worth being blunt about what makes this job different from every other writing job on this site. It is not a page on your website. You do not control the layout, the order things appear in, how much of the description is shown before a reader has to tap, or whether a given field is displayed at all. Fields have hard character limits, and the platform trims without asking. The category system is a fixed taxonomy you choose from rather than write: your trade may not be on the list, and the nearest entry decides which searches you are eligible for more than any sentence you write. Anything I write here has to work inside those constraints, and part of the job is telling you where the constraint, not the copy, is the problem.

When you need it

You need it when the listing exists but was filled in once, years ago, in a hurry: a description that reads like a company registration, no services listed, a category chosen at random, and no posts since the year it was claimed. That is the common state and it costs calls quietly.

The second case is when the listing and the website disagree. Different hours, a phone number formatted three ways, services on the site that are not on the listing, or a service area the site claims and the listing does not. Both a person and a machine treat contradiction as a reason to doubt.

You do not need this as a first purchase if you have no local pages at all. The listing points somewhere, and pointing it at a generic home page wastes most of the benefit. Start with local SEO pages and add the listing copy to that job.

What I write

• The business description. Written to the character limit, with what you do, where, and who for stated in the first sentence, because the rest may be hidden behind a tap. It is a description, not a slogan, and it has to survive being read on a phone in a car park.
• The service list. One entry per thing you sell, named the way customers name it rather than the way your invoicing software does, each with its short description written to fit.
• The category recommendation. A primary category and the secondaries, chosen from the taxonomy as it stands, with a note where none of the available entries actually fits and what the closest honest option costs you.
• The posts. A batch of short updates you can publish over the following months, written to the limit, each with one thing to say and one action.
• The questions and answers. The genuine questions worth seeding on the listing, drawn from your local FAQs, answered in full rather than deflected to the phone.

What I do not do is invent review text, post about nothing to keep the listing looking busy, or stuff a town list into the description. The description field is read by people, and a list of nineteen towns reads exactly like what it is.

What you get

The listing copy document. Every field written out, labelled, and already inside its character limit, so whoever has access can paste each one straight across. Nothing needs trimming on the way in.

The consistency sheet. Your name, address, phone, hours and service area as they appear on the listing, on your website and on the directories I can see, with every mismatch marked and the one correct version chosen.

The post batch. Eight to twelve short posts, dated in a suggested order, so the listing has something to publish for months without anybody having to think of it on a Monday.

A worked example

An illustration, not a client. A small appliance repair business in Moncton has a claimed listing with a two-sentence description written in the third person, one category, no services listed and no posts. The website lists nine services. The hours on the listing are the hours from before the business dropped Saturdays.

The work produces a description that names the trade, the city and the brands worked on inside the character limit, nine service entries matching the website exactly, and a primary category change with two secondaries added. The category note explains that the taxonomy has no entry for one of the nine services, so that service will have to earn its searches from the website instead. Twelve posts are drafted, one per month, mostly seasonal: what goes wrong with fridges in August, what a call-out includes, and when a repair stops being worth it. The consistency sheet finds the Saturday hours, a phone number written two ways, and an old suite number on two directories.

How it runs

1. A half-hour call. What the listing says now, who has access to it, and what you actually want people to call about. No charge.
2. A fixed price in writing. Agreed before anything starts, including whether the post batch is part of it.
3. Access or a look. Read-only access to the listing if you can give it, or screenshots if you cannot. I do not need to make the changes to write the copy.
4. The writing. Five to eight working days. Fields written to the limits, categories checked against the taxonomy as it stands that week.
5. Delivery and paste-in. The document, the consistency sheet and the posts. I can enter it for you if you would rather not.

What it costs

Quoted as a fixed price in CAD after the half-hour call, because a listing with three services and one with thirty are different amounts of writing. It is a small job on its own and is most often added to a set of local pages, where it costs less than buying it separately. The pricing page shows how fixed pricing works here and the published bands for the services that have them.

What happens next

A listing that starts working brings calls and reviews. Review response templates give you a calm public reply ready before you need one. If the website pages the listing points at are thin, local SEO pages are the next real job, with service-area pages for the towns you travel to. This piece of work is complete on its own and nothing further is assumed.