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Getting Found on GoogleGoogle 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?
The short answer: ideally both, because they do different jobs. The profile helps people find you, and the website gives them what they need to decide whether to ring. 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
- Give Google more to go on. A profile is mostly a name and a number, while a website confirms what you do, where you do it and that there's a real business behind the pin
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
| Business Profile | Website | |
|---|---|---|
| Helps people find you locally | Directly | Backs it up |
| Puts you on Google Maps | Yes | Not on its own |
| Shows reviews | Google reviews | Testimonials you choose |
| Lists your services | Briefly | In full |
| Shows your work | Photos | Photos and detail |
| Answers a customer's questions | Limited | Properly |
| You control how it looks | Barely | Completely |
| Somewhere that's yours | No | Yes |
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 probably the most useful afternoon you'll spend on this. Nobody should be buying a website before they've claimed and verified their profile.
They don't replace each other, though. The profile helps you get 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 if I've only got the profile?
Then you're further along than plenty of businesses, and for some trades that genuinely is enough for a while. Word of mouth plus a well-kept profile has kept a lot of people busy.
But it's worth being straight about what a profile on its own can't do:
- Depth. A services list is a list. It can't explain how you work, what's included in a quote, or why the cheap bloke down the road is cheap.
- Control. You fill in Google's fields, in Google's layout, on Google's page, with your competitors sitting right beside you in the same panel.
- Proof. A handful of photos isn't the same as a job shown properly, start to finish.
- Somewhere to send people. Quotes, ads, a sign on the ute, an Instagram bio: they all need somewhere to point that isn't a Google listing.
- Ownership. Profiles can be suspended, merged or edited by strangers. It's the one part of your online presence you don't actually hold the keys to.
You don't need a website tomorrow because of any of that. But the profile has a ceiling, and it's worth knowing where that ceiling is before you hit it.
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. A website doesn't buy you a position on the map, and nobody can promise you one. What changes 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.
How it plays out, trade by trade
The pattern is usually the same. People find you through the profile, then look for whatever helps them decide, and that's often on your website.
Electrician
Found on the map, decided on the website
Someone searches "electrician near me" because they want an EV charger installed. Three profiles come up. All three do electrical work, but only one has a page explaining which chargers they install, what the switchboard side of it involves and roughly what it costs. That's the one most likely to get the call, from a customer who's already half sold.
Plumber
Found on the map, decided on the website
Burst pipe at 7pm. The customer isn't reading anything. They're hitting Call on the first profile that says it does after-hours work. Here the profile does almost the whole job. But the same customer, three months later, looking to redo a bathroom? That one gets researched properly, and the plumber with photos of finished bathrooms has the edge.
Builder
Found on the map, decided over a fortnight
Nobody picks a builder off a star rating. They find you on Google, then spend two weeks looking at your past work, reading about how you handle variations, and showing your site to their partner. A profile can't carry a decision that size. For builders, the website does a lot of the convincing.
Landscaper
Found on the map, decided on the pictures
Almost entirely visual. The profile gets you in the running, and the before-and-afters are what people judge you on. Ten photos on a listing is a taste. A page per project (the brief, the problem, the finished thing) is what makes someone imagine their own backyard.
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
They work together, 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?
Plenty of tradies are in the same spot. Often it's because 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 your web address set-up (you buy the domain, about $20–$50, in your name), hosting and ongoing care are all part of it. It's $0 upfront, from $49/month, and usually live within 7 days of getting your photos and details.
Have a look at our example sites (two real client sites, the rest concepts) or how it works, and if it stacks up, tell us what you do and we'll sort the rest.
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