Red flags when an agency pitches you
- A guaranteed position on Google. Nobody can deliver this — results vary by searcher location and change constantly — so it is either meaningless or about to be gamed.
- No audit before a proposal. An agency quoting without looking at your listing is quoting a package, not your problem.
- Reporting made entirely of impressions, clicks and rankings, with no number for calls or enquiries.
- Vagueness about who does the work. The person selling is rarely the person delivering; the question is whether you can reach whoever is.
- The agency registering your domain, website or Google Business Profile in their own name. Ask what you keep if you leave, and get the answer in writing before you start.
- Pressure to sign a long minimum term before any work has been shown. A term can be reasonable — but only alongside an explanation of what the front-loaded work actually is.
1. Stuffing keywords into your business name
Adding "Plumber Wolverhampton Emergency Boiler Repair" to a profile that's legally called "Smith & Sons" does sometimes lift rankings — which is exactly why it's tempting and exactly why Google penalises it. It breaches the guidelines, competitors can and do report it, and the consequence is a suspension that takes your profile off the map entirely while you appeal. Your profile name should be your real-world business name, nothing more.
2. Choosing the wrong — or too broad — a category
The primary category is the most powerful ranking field on the profile, and it's routinely wasted. A kitchen fitter listed as "Contractor", a physio listed as "Doctor", a takeaway listed simply as "Restaurant" — each is competing in the wrong contest. Pick the most specific category that matches your core trade, and use secondary categories for everything else you do.
3. Ignoring the services section
Google gives you a structured place to list every service you offer, in the words customers search — and most profiles leave it empty or half-filled. It costs an hour to complete properly and it feeds the relevance factor directly. If you offer twelve services and your profile lists three, you're invisible for nine of them.
While you're in there, write a short plain description for each service rather than leaving bare labels. It helps Google match you to more searches and gives customers scanning three profiles a reason to pick yours.
4. Leaving reviews unanswered — or worse, buying them
Two mistakes live here. The first is neglect: reviews sitting unanswered for months signal an inactive business to Google and an indifferent one to customers — reply to every review, positive and negative, like a human being.
The second is far more serious. Buying reviews, review-swapping with other businesses, or incentivising five stars breaches Google's policies and UK consumer law. When detected — and detection has only tightened — the consequences run from bulk review removal to full profile suspension, wiping out years of legitimate reputation in one strike. There is no version of this that's worth it.
5. Inconsistent name, address and phone details
Your business appears on dozens of directories, many of which you never created — and every mismatch between them chips away at Google's confidence in who you are. Common culprits:
- An old address still live on directories from before you moved
- A landline in some listings and a mobile in others
- Trading name variations — "Ltd" here, "& Sons" there, an old brand name somewhere else
- Duplicate Google profiles splitting your reviews between two listings
6. A logo and nothing else in the photos
Customers choosing between three map pack businesses look at photos before anything else. A profile showing a logo and one blurry shopfront picture from years ago loses that comparison to any competitor showing their team, their vans and their recent work. Real photos, added regularly, are the cheapest conversion improvement in local SEO.
7. One page trying to rank in every town
A homepage that says "serving Bradford, Leeds, Halifax, Huddersfield and all surrounding areas" is targeting five towns and ranking in none. Each town you seriously serve needs its own page with genuinely local content — not the same paragraph duplicated with the place name swapped, which Google recognises and discounts. Fewer, better area pages beat a long list in a footer every time.
If writing several proper pages feels like too much, start with the one or two towns that send you the most valuable work and do those well. Coverage can grow later; thin pages just sit there being ignored.
8. Set-and-forget syndrome, and 9. flying blind with no tracking
A profile built once and never touched again slowly loses to competitors who stay active — Google notices freshness in photos, posts, reviews and Q&A, and so do customers checking whether you're still trading.
And underlying everything: most small businesses track nothing. No ranking checks from around their area, no call source data, no eye on profile views. Which means they can't tell whether anything they do is working, can't spot a drop until the phone goes quiet, and are easy prey for anyone selling snake oil. Tracking is the mistake-detector for all the others — fix it first, and the rest become visible.