Google Business Profile vs Having a Website

You've set up your Google Business Profile, you're turning up on the map, the phone rings often enough. So why would you bother with a website? It's a fair question, and it comes up on nearly every job we quote.

The short answer? Ideally, both — because they do different jobs. One helps people find you. The other helps them decide on you. Here's the honest version of the difference.

What a Google Business Profile actually is

It's the free listing Google gives your business. It's what puts the pin on the map, and it's the panel that appears beside the search results with your details in it.

What a customer sees on it:

• Your business name and category
• Phone number, with a Call button
• Your location or the areas you service
• Opening hours
• Your Google reviews and star rating
• Photos
• A list of your services
• A link to your website, if you've got one

It's genuinely powerful, it's free, and every local business should have one. The catch is in the wording: it's Google's profile of your business. You fill in the fields Google gives you, in the format Google decides, sitting on Google's page next to your competitors.

What a website does

A website is your own space. Nobody else's competitors sit next to it, and nothing is limited to a field on a form.

It's where you can:

• Explain each service properly, rather than as a one-line entry
• List every suburb you cover
• Show the jobs you're proud of, with before-and-afters and detail
• Say who you are and how long you've been doing it
• Answer the questions that come up on every single quote
• Give people a way to get in touch that isn't just ringing you mid-job

It's also the only part of your online presence you actually own. Profiles get suspended, platforms change their layouts, social feeds bury things. Your website stays put.

Side by side

Notice that hardly anything is a straight either-or. They overlap, and where they overlap the website usually does the fuller version of the same job.

So which one do you need?

If you've only got the budget or the patience for one thing right now, do the Business Profile. It's free, it takes an afternoon, and for a local trade it's the single highest-value hour you'll spend. Nobody should be buying a website before they've claimed and verified their profile.

But they're not substitutes. The profile is discovery — it gets you in front of someone who's already looking. The website is what happens next, when that person is deciding whether to ring you or the bloke underneath you.

What this looks like in practice

Two electricians turn up next to each other on the map.

The first has a phone number, a handful of reviews and a profile that's half filled in. That's it. If the customer wants to know whether they do EV chargers, or whether they come out to their suburb, they've got to ring and ask.

The second has the same profile, filled in properly, plus a website. Two clicks and the customer can see the services listed out, the suburbs covered, photos of similar jobs and a form to request a quote at nine at night without talking to anyone.

Both might rank in exactly the same spot. That's not the point — a website doesn't buy you a position on the map, and anyone telling you otherwise is guessing. The point is what happens after someone finds you. The second sparky has already answered the questions the first one is waiting for a phone call to answer.

Haven't got a website yet?

Then don't stress about it. You're not doing anything wrong, and there's plenty you can get on with in the meantime — that's what 5 simple ways to show up better on Google is for, and none of it needs a website.

A website becomes worth doing when you want more credibility than a listing can carry, more information available without you having to explain it, somewhere to show your work properly, and a way for people to enquire when you're up a ladder.

If you're still not sure whether you're at that point, does a tradie really need a website? goes through it honestly — including the cases where the answer is not yet.

The simple answer

That's the whole thing. They're not competing, and neither one does the other's job.

If you're a tradie, start here

The first six are free and yours to do. If you're starting from scratch, how to get your business on Google covers the setup, and how Google Maps works for tradies explains what the map is weighing up. If you've done all this and still can't find yourself, work through the usual causes here.

Got Google sorted but still no website?

That's most people, and it's almost never because they don't see the point. It's that the quotes come back at three or four grand and it goes in the too-hard basket for another year.

That's the bit ONYA fixes. We build the site, you pay monthly instead of upfront, and the domain, hosting and ongoing care are all part of it — $0 upfront, from $49/month, usually live in 7 days or less.

Have a look at some of the sites we've built or how it works, and if it stacks up, tell us what you do and we'll sort the rest.