How to add your website to your Google Business Profile
The website field takes two minutes. The four link fields under it are the ones nobody fills in, and they are the ones people press.
A real Clay site, built from a Google listing
Adding the address is easy and almost everybody stops there, which leaves four fields empty that Google will happily show as buttons on your listing.
A Business Profile has a website field and then separate fields for a menu, for ordering, for booking and for appointments. Filled in, each becomes a button on the listing, right where somebody is standing on the pavement deciding. Left empty, that person taps the website and starts looking.
Two minutes, in order
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1
Open the profile as the owner
Search your own business name while signed in to the account that manages it, or go to the profile manager. Editing from the public listing is the long way round.
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2
Put the address in the website field
The full address including https, and the home page rather than a deep link. If you have a Clay site it is name.clay.site, or your own domain when you have one.
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3
Fill in the link fields under it
Menu, order online, book a table, appointments. Each takes a URL and each becomes a button. Point them at the page that does that job, not at the home page again.
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4
Check it on a phone an hour later
Look at your own listing as a stranger sees it. If the buttons are there and each lands on the right page, the job is finished.
The page that does the job
A menu link that lands on the home page makes somebody scroll for the thing they already asked for. Point it at the menu page and the tap is one press instead of three.
The same is true of booking. Somebody who pressed a button marked booking has already decided, and the worst thing to show them is a page about the business.
The listing changes and the site should follow
Hours, the phone number and the address all change over a year, and they end up living in two places at once. Whatever you use, keep one of them the master and let the other read it.
A Clay site takes them from the listing when it is built and keeps the opening hours current after that, which is the one that goes wrong most often.
The links worth filling in
Where this pays off
On the listing itself
Most people find you there rather than on your site, and the buttons are the whole of what they can do without leaving it.
On a phone, on the pavement
The listing is what somebody has open while standing outside. A booking button beats an address every time.
In the search result
A profile with a menu link tends to show more of itself in search, and it costs one field to find out.
What it looks like when it is live
Drawn rather than described, the page, the address, and what it can switch on.
Questions
How long before the link shows up?
Usually within a day, sometimes within minutes. If a week passes, check the profile for a pending edit that was never approved.
Can I link to a social profile instead?
You can and it is worse. The listing already links to social separately, and a page you control answers hours, prices and directions in one place.
Should the website field be the home page?
Yes. The deep links belong in the fields made for them, and putting a menu link in the website field costs you the menu button.
What if I do not have a website?
Then the listing is your whole presence, and it is doing the job of a site badly. A page built from that same listing takes about a minute: a website from your Google listing.
Does adding the site help me rank?
Nobody outside Google can promise that. What it certainly does is give the person reading the listing somewhere to go, which is the reason to do it.
What about my opening hours?
Keep them on the listing and let the site read them: opening hours that say open or closed.
How do I show up better on the map?
That is a longer answer and mostly about categories, hours and photographs: how to show up on Google Maps.
Try it with your business
Search your business and see your site in seconds, free, no signup.