Doing it yourself, or hiring someone

What you can do yourself this weekend

• Claim and verify your listing. See the verification guide.
• Set the correct categories with our category finder.
• Write your service list and your description.
• Take 20 photos and upload them.
• Make a review link and send it to your last 20 customers.
• Correct your business information on the main websites with our business info checker.

Our free six-lesson course covers all of it. This work produces most of the early improvement.

What is difficult to keep doing

The setup is one weekend. The weekly work is the part that fails.

• Photos each week. You must remember at each job.
• A post each week. Three minutes, 52 times each year.
• A review request after each job, without exception.
• A reply to each review within 48 hours, including the difficult ones.
• Corrections when Google changes something or a customer suggests an edit.
• Measurement across your area, not from your office.

In our experience this is where owners stop. The listing then holds its position for a while, and falls when a competitor works harder.

The time and the money

Estimate the weekly work honestly.

• Photos and one post: 30 minutes.
• Review requests and replies: 30 minutes.
• Corrections and measurement: 30 minutes.

That is about six hours each month. Put your own hourly value on those hours, then compare it with a monthly fee. Also count the jobs that you do not win while you do office work.

When hiring makes sense

• You did the setup, and the weekly work stopped after a month.
• Your competitors add reviews faster than you do.
• Your position is strong at your address and weak across your area.
• Your listing was suspended, or another party controls it.
• Your time is worth more than the fee.

If none of these apply, keep doing it yourself. We publish the same guides that we use.