How to get an auto repair shop found online

Get your short Google review link from the profile, save it in your phone as a text you can send in two taps, and send it to every customer as the job finishes, while you are still standing there. Not the next week by email.

Reviews move because of the share of customers who are actually asked, and most owners ask far fewer than they think. A text sent at the moment the work is done, with the person still holding their phone, is the version that gets answered.

Asking is allowed. Paying, discounting or offering anything in return is against Google's review policy, and that includes a dollar off, which owners assume is harmless. Do not filter who you ask based on how happy they seem. On a site built by us this is a button in the app on your phone: your link and your wording are already saved, so asking is one tap at the end of a job rather than something to remember and retype.

How long: ongoing

Write, in plain words, what you charge or your price range, exactly which towns you cover, what you do and do not take on, how soon you can come, and your licence or insurance number. One page, your own words, no polish.

This is the content of your website, and it is the part nobody else can write for you. Every build that stalls stalls here. Every generated page that reads as empty reads that way because this page did not exist, so the words had to come from somewhere generic.

If you only do one thing from this plan, do this one. It makes every later step cheaper and faster, including the ones you pay someone else for.

How long: an afternoon

Write the languages you and your staff actually work in into the Google profile description, into the top of the site, and into every bio. Name them: Spanish, Russian, Mandarin, whichever it is. Do not write the word multilingual.

Somebody looking for a plumber who speaks their language searches the name of the language, so the name of the language has to be written down somewhere a search engine can read it. It works in the other direction too. A customer who has already read that English is your second language is not surprised by it on the call, and the few who mind will pick somebody else before they have taken an hour of your afternoon.

List only a language you can serve in start to finish, including the follow up two days later. A language on the page that nobody in the business speaks today produces exactly the enquiry you cannot answer.

How long: an afternoon

Answer each review in a sentence or two. On a complaint, say what happened, say what you did, and give a way to reach you. Do not argue the facts in public and do not copy the same reply onto ten reviews.

The reply is not written for the reviewer, who has moved on. It is written for the next person reading, who is deciding between you and the listing below you. A calm answer under a one-star review does more for that decision than the star average does.

Reviews that break Google's policy can be reported, but most unfair reviews stay up. Plan on answering them well rather than on getting them removed.

How long: ongoing

We search your business name, find the listing if one is already there, and claim it in your name. If there is none we create it, under the real business name and nothing else. Then we take it through verification, which for most small businesses now means a recorded video: one continuous take, no cuts, starting outside with the signage or the unit number, then branded equipment or stock, then something printed with the business name such as a licence or a utility bill, then opening, unlocking or operating something only staff could. We write that shot list for your premises and run the attempt with you. Ninety seconds of it has to happen on your phone at your address, because that is where the camera has to be. Everything either side of those ninety seconds is ours: the list, the order, the submission, and the appeal if it comes back rejected. The login is yours at the end of it.

The profile is what puts you in Maps and in the local results, and until it is verified in your name nobody can set the hours, the phone number, the categories or the photographs those results are built from. Video verification is checking three things at once: the place is real, the business is real, and you are the person who runs it. Filming only the inside proves one of the three, which is why most rejected submissions look fine to whoever filmed them. It is the step owners fail at, and failing it twice is how a profile ends up stuck for a month. It is near the top because it is quick to start and it comes with the build, not because it does the website's job: a profile cannot hold your prices, explain a service or answer the questions that decide between you and the next listing.

We enter the real business name only. “Smith Plumbing” verifies. “Smith Plumbing Emergency Plumber Chicago” is the most common cause of a failed verification and of a suspension months later. After two rejections we stop resubmitting and appeal with documents, using exactly the address format we typed in. We cannot promise any profile gets verified or reinstated, and nobody who tells you otherwise can either.

How long: a few days, most of it waiting on Google

Your half, and only you can do it: twelve to twenty photographs on your phone of the finished work, the van or the shop front with your name on it, you and your staff, the equipment. Our half is everything after the shutter: we pick the keepers, crop and size them, upload them into the sections Google sorts them into, and take down anything generic that is on there now. We cannot photograph your work for you, and we will not put a bought stock photo of somebody else's job on your profile.

Photographs are what a customer compares when two listings look otherwise identical. A real finished job from this month tells them you exist and you do this work. A stock photo tells them nothing, and people recognise stock photos faster than owners expect.

Real and slightly imperfect beats polished and generic. If there is nothing real for a section we leave it empty rather than fill it with a stock image.

How long: an hour of yours, an afternoon of ours

We design and build the site, $99 one time, from the page of answers you wrote and the photographs you took. Three to five pages is the right size for a local business: what you do, the towns you cover, prices, who you are, how to reach you. If you already have a site, this replaces it, and the addresses people have already linked to are kept pointing at the right pages.

This is the only part of your presence you own, and the only one that can actually sell. It holds what a Google profile structurally cannot: your prices, a service explained in more than two sentences, your licence number, and the answers to the five questions that decide between you and the next listing. Being able to edit the wording of a site is not the same thing as the site being able to do that work. Where we could read yours, the line under this says what it is missing. Where we could not, judge it yourself: open it on your phone, press the number, and try to book a time without telephoning anybody.

After the build you pay the real running costs directly: a .com is roughly $12 to $20 a year and hosting is in the region of $5 to $30 a month. Check current prices, they move. A blog is not part of this and for a referral-driven trade it is not worth starting one.

How long: a week