Google Business Profile for Houston Service Businesses

When someone in Houston has a leak, a dead AC or a damaged roof, they often pick up their phone and search for a company near them. The map results at the top of the page are what they see first. A Google Business Profile is how your business shows up there, and it is free.

This guide covers what to set up, what to keep up to date, and what to do with the calls and messages it starts sending you.

What a Google Business Profile is

It is the listing that appears on Google Search and Google Maps with your business name, phone number, hours, photos, reviews and a button to call or message you. You manage it yourself from your Google account.

For a local service business, it is often the first thing a customer sees, before your website.

Set it up properly

Take twenty minutes and fill in every field you can.

• Name: use the real name of your business, the one on your truck and your invoices. Adding extra keywords to the name can get a profile suspended.
• Category: pick the main category that best matches your work, such as plumber, roofing contractor or house cleaning service. Add a few extra categories only if they are true.
• Phone number: use a number you actually answer, or one that is set up to catch missed calls. More on that below.
• Service area: if you travel to customers, list the parts of Houston and nearby cities you actually serve. Do not list places you will not drive to.
• Hours: keep them correct, and update them for holidays and storm weeks.
• Website: link to your site, or to a simple page that explains what you do.
• Verification: Google will ask you to confirm the business is real, often by phone, text, email or video. Finish this step, because an unverified profile does much less for you.

Photos and descriptions that help

Real photos of your crew, your truck, your finished work and your team do more than stock images. Add new ones now and then. Write a plain description of what you do and where, in your own words.

Reviews: ask, and answer

Reviews are the part owners find hardest, and the part customers read most.

• Ask every happy customer, ideally the same day the job is finished.
• Send a text with a direct link to your review page, so it takes them seconds.
• Reply to every review. Say thank you to the good ones. Answer a bad one calmly, offer to make it right, and keep it short.
• Never pay for reviews, trade gifts for them, or write them yourself. It breaks the rules and customers can tell.

Know the Houston seasons

Houston work comes in waves. AC and heating calls spike in the hottest and coldest weeks. Roofers and plumbers get busy after storms and freezes. Update your hours and your posts before those weeks so people see you are open and taking calls.

What happens after the call

A good profile sends you more calls, texts and form messages. If you are up a ladder or under a sink, those can go unanswered, and the customer simply calls the next company on the map.

Two habits protect the work you are paying time to earn:

1. Reply fast. See How Fast to Respond to a New Lead.
2. Do not let missed calls disappear. See Stop Losing Leads From Missed Calls.

How Puffly helps

Puffly is a CRM for service businesses, free to start. It keeps your leads, contacts and jobs in one pipeline, and its lead form can collect inquiries from your website or a link you put on your profile. Puff, the AI assistant, helps you follow up. Call and text features run on the plans that include them, and only after you switch them on. Puffly does not manage your Google profile for you. You keep full control of that.

If you want to see how it would fit a Houston business like yours, look at the Houston pages or start free.