Do I Need a Website if I Have a Google Business Profile
Plenty of Irish trades run entirely off a Google Business Profile and a mobile number. The phone rings, the jobs come in and a website feels like an expense with no obvious return. Sometimes that instinct is right. This post is about spotting when it stops being right.
What a Google Business Profile does well
It puts you on the map, literally. When someone searches for an electrician in their area, the map results appear before almost everything else and a well-kept profile can put you in them. It collects reviews, shows your photos, displays your hours and gives people a call button. It costs nothing.
For a one-person operation serving a local area, that is a lot of business value for free. If you have no profile, or an unclaimed one, fixing that comes before any website conversation.
Where the profile stops
You do not own it. Google can suspend a profile without warning or a clear reason, and reinstatement can take weeks of appeals. Businesses that live entirely on their profile go dark when that happens. Their phone number, reviews and visibility vanish together.
There is no room to explain. A profile shows your category and your reviews, but a customer choosing between three roofers cannot see how you work, what a typical job costs or photos of a project like theirs with any context. Everyone's profile looks the same because Google controls the layout.
Your competitors are on it. Search results around your profile carry ads and a "People also search for" box that helpfully lists the competition. You are renting space in Google's building and Google sells the walls.
And a profile on its own ranks worse than a profile with a website behind it. Google has confirmed that website signals feed local ranking. Two similar businesses with similar reviews will often be separated by exactly this.
When a one-page site is enough
For most trades and local services the first website should be one page. What you do, the areas you cover, photos of real jobs, a few reviews and a phone number that works with one tap. No blog, no news section, nothing that needs feeding.
A page like that gives your profile somewhere to send people, gives you something you own if the profile ever has trouble and gives customers the context that wins the job. It also gives local SEO something to work with beyond the map results.
When we build a site for a trade business, speed to contact is the whole design brief. The site we built for AutoVav Mobile Tyres in Dublin is organised around one moment: someone stranded with a flat tyre who needs a number to tap right now.
The honest answer
If you are booked out for months from repeat work and word of mouth, you do not need a website this year. Keep the profile sharp and bank the money.
If you want more work, better work or protection from a suspended profile, a one-page site is the cheapest insurance and marketing combined that you can buy. Our post on what websites actually cost in Ireland has real numbers for exactly this kind of site.
FAQ
Is a Google Business Profile free?
Yes, completely. Claiming and maintaining your profile costs nothing and takes about an hour to set up properly. Beware of cold callers charging to manage it.
Can I use my Facebook page instead of a website?
A Facebook page has the same core problem as a profile: you do not own it and it looks like everyone else's. It also ranks poorly in Google searches compared to even a simple website.
Does a website help my Google ranking?
Yes. Google uses your website as a ranking signal for local results, so a profile linked to a relevant fast website generally outranks the same profile alone.