Google Business Profile — the highest-return hour you will spend

For a local service business, the Google Business Profile outranks the website in importance. It is free, it appears above the organic results, and the map pack is where "pressure cleaning near me" actually gets decided.

## Setup, field by field - Business name. Your real trading name. Do not stuff keywords into it — Google suspends listings for that and the recovery is painful. "Coastal Pressure Cleaning" is fine. "Best Cheap Pressure Cleaning Sydney NSW" is a suspension waiting to happen. - Category. Primary: Pressure washing service. Add secondaries: gutter cleaning service, window cleaning service, roof cleaning service. - Service area business. Hide your address if you work from home, and set the suburbs you actually service. Twenty suburbs maximum — a service area covering an entire state ranks for nothing. - Hours. Real hours. If you answer at 7am, say 7am. - Phone. A mobile is fine. Use the same number everywhere on the internet, forever. - Website. Point it at your homepage now; a service page later. - Services. List every service with a description and a price range. This fills the "services" panel most competitors leave blank. - Description. 750 characters. Suburbs, services, and the reason to pick you. Write it for a human.

## Verification Usually postcard or video. Video verification means filming your vehicle, your gear and the area — have signage on the ute before you record it. Do not skip this: an unverified listing does nothing.

## What actually moves you up the map pack 1. Proximity to the searcher. You cannot change it, which is why suburb-level focus matters. 2. Reviews — count, rating, recency and whether they mention the service and the suburb. 3. Photos — geotagged, frequent, real. Ten photos a week beats a hundred once. 4. Posts — weekly updates with a photo and a call to action. 5. Consistency — identical name, address and phone everywhere online. 6. Q&A — post your own common questions and answer them.

## The weekly habit Ten minutes, every Monday: upload five job photos, write one post, answer any question, respond to every review. Do it for six months and you will outrank operators who have been trading for a decade.