Recently, I spoke with a plumbing business owner who wanted help to fix his Google Business Profile after it kept getting hit with numerous suspensions. The repeated suspensions seemed to stem from issues with the address for his Google Business Profile because the company wasn’t following Google’s guidelines for Service Area Businesses (SABs).

Although many in the industry are going through a slow period, he estimated that since the suspensions started the previous summer, his business revenue had plummeted by 50% in the last 12 months.

What is a Service Area Business (SAB)?

A SAB is a business, such as plumbing or HVAC, that provides services directly to customers at their homes or businesses rather than the customer coming to them at a physical location, such as the local Screwfix, sandwich shop, or boozer.

The issue arises when trade businesses incorrectly display their home address rather than their office or showroom, if they have one. Under Google’s current guidelines, SABs should only show the areas they serve rather than a public-facing address.

Avoiding suspensions

How can you ensure that your Google Business Profile doesn’t get suspended? The key lies in understanding Google’s guidelines, making sure you follow them, and the consequences of a temporary suspension.

Here are the most common mistakes to avoid:

• Incorrectly displaying your home: If you run your business from home and serve customers at their locations, you should not be listing your home address on your Google Business Profile. Instead, mark yourself as a Service Area Business and only specify the areas you cover
• Using virtual addresses: Some businesses list virtual offices or co-working spaces to have a more ‘professional’ presence or to locate their business closer to the town centre. Unfortunately, Google doesn’t allow this for SABs and this is a common reason for profile suspensions
• Keyword stuffing your business name: Another easy to miss mistake is keyword stuffing in your business name. Some businesses try to improve their search rankings by adding unnecessary keywords to their company name, like ‘Jack’s Plumbing, Boiler & Emergency Plumber Manchester 24/7’. Other than looking strange to your customers, it is easy for Google to check your listed name across the internet and enforce a change of name or possible suspension for breach of Google’s guidelines
• Making too many changes at once: Although making legitimate changes to your Google Profile is not against its guidelines, it is advised to just make one change at a time. Major changes to your profile, such as business name or business address, can flag your profile for review.

Avoiding a ranking drop

Warning! Changing to a Google SAB may have a negative affect your ranking on Google Maps, but this is often a sign of deeper SEO issues. While many people blame the SAB switch for their drop in rankings, it’s likely that other areas of their SEO needs improving.

To help outrank your local competition, you need to make sure you have worked on the following three areas of your local SEO. These are: content, authority, and technical SEO, or what I like to call ‘CAT’.

• Content: Regularly update your Google profile and website with relevant words, images, and video content surrounding your most profitable services and the location that you serve. This could include mini blog posts, individual sales pages for all your services, and local customer case studies
• Authority: Build your business’ online authority by collecting positive reviews, and by making sure your business is listed accurately across as many business directories as possible. Attracting backlinks to your website will also improve authority but is far more complex than building reviews and business directories
• Technical SEO: Ensure that you have completed your Google Business Profile and that your website is hosted by a top hosting company. Paying Dave down the pub with a pint and pork pie is unlikely to get you decent hosting. If you want Google’s reward of free incoming leads and sales, taking the time to learn about optimising your Google profile and paying a few more pounds per month for decent hosting is not much to get in front of the competition.

Take action

Investing time in improving your overall SEO will lead to better results in the long term. Next issue, we’ll take a deeper look into how to improve your content, authority, and technical SEO. For now, make sure you’re following Google’s guidelines for SABs by searching online for ‘Google service area guidelines’.