When you’re starting a new business you don’t always have a ton of money to spend on a retail location, storefront or office space. That’s why many small businesses start from home.
Small business owners know that when you start a new business its success depends on clients being able to find you. Those first few sales are what will make or break your business when you are starting.
A great way people find local businesses today is on google maps, but can you list your home office on google maps?
I asked myself this question when I first started my web design business. Here’s a picture of me at my first home office in 2015.
Well, I have good news for you. Google my business does allow home-based businesses to show up on google maps.
There are only a few requirements you need to meet to get your home business listed on google.
To start, you need to really have a business that you are running from home. This means you can’t list your home as your business if you are actually running your business from your friend’s basement or a different location that’s not the address you are using.
As long as you really are running your business or home office you can add your home office to google maps.
Will people be able to see my house on google my business?
The answer, it’s up to you.
Google my business gives you 2 options as to how your home office will show up on maps.
First, you can have your address show as an exact location. This is good if you will have people traveling to your home. For example, if you do accounting, manicures, consultations, or anything else that requires people to travel to you.
But what if you don’t want visitors to see your home on google maps?
There’s a great option for that as well. You can have your business show up for a specific region instead of an exact address. For example, you could say that you provide services to an area of 30 miles around your home office.
This way anyone within 30 miles will see your listing but not see your address. This is a great option if your service requires you to travel to your customers, like AC repair, landscaping, plumbing or any other service where you have to travel to your clients.
How to add your home based business to google maps
Great! So now you know that you can add your home business to Google maps! But how do you do it exactly?
Adding your home business to google maps is easy, here is how to do it.
- Go to https://www.google.com/business/ and sign up for a free account, or use your existing Gmail.
- Make sure you contact information and hours of operation are correct.
- Add your logo and as many images of your work as possible to make yourself stand out!
- Once you have filled out your listing google will verify it either by a phone call or sometimes buy mailing you a postcard with a verification code.
- Use the code to verify your business with Google.
Congratulations! Your home business is now on google maps! You want to make your listing stand out as much as possible, in this article I have some times on how you can make your Google listing look professional and get more people to view it. Now that your business is on google maps it will actually be a lot easier to get it to show on other directories as well and reach even more customers.
If you need any help getting your business seen on Google, our team of experts is ready to help!
