How to get your business listed online for free

Start with the basics

Write your details down once, then copy them everywhere. Small differences between listings, such as a different phone number, "Ltd" on one and not on another, or an old address, confuse customers and make it harder for search engines to treat the listings as one business.

• Your business name, exactly as you trade
• Your address, or the area you cover if you visit customers
• One phone number you answer and one email address you read
• Your website address
• Your opening hours, including bank holidays
• Two plain sentences on what you do and where
• Your logo and a few real photos of your work or premises

If you do not have a website yet, make that your first job. Most good listings link to your website, and some, including ours, will not list a business without one. A Facebook page is not a substitute.

1. Claim your Google Business Profile

This is the listing most customers see first on a local search, on Google Search and Google Maps. It is free. Google decides who is eligible: your business needs a real address that customers can visit, or a genuine area that you travel to. A PO box or a virtual office does not count. If you visit customers and do not want your address shown, you can set up as a service-area business and hide it.

Google will ask you to confirm that the business is yours. The method varies, and can be a phone call, a text, an email, a video or a postcard. Fill in every section, choose your categories with care, add photos, and keep your hours right. Google's rules change from time to time, so read its current guidelines before you apply. A profile does not guarantee that you appear: Google decides who to show, based on how relevant, how close and how well known a business is.

Google Business Profile

2. Add Bing Places and Apple Business Connect

Both are free, and quicker than Google once your basics are written down. Bing Places puts your business on Bing and can import your details from your Google profile. Apple Business Connect covers Apple Maps. Not every customer uses Google, so these are worth an evening.

Bing Places · Apple Business Connect

3. Join free directories, with care

A directory listing can send you some customers, and gives your website a link from another site. Look for a directory that:

• is genuinely free to list, rather than charging before it will show your details or selling "guaranteed first page" packages
• checks something about each business, so it is not full of abandoned or fake entries
• links to your website and shows your details as you wrote them
• is aimed at your area or your trade, because a well-run local directory beats a huge general one

Do not expect a directory listing to change your search rankings overnight. Links from a handful of relevant, well-run directories are a modest help, not a shortcut.

4. Join the register or scheme for your trade

If your trade has an official register or an accreditation scheme, being on it is worth more than most directory listings, because customers can check it for themselves. Gas work in Great Britain, for example, must be done by someone on the Gas Safe Register, and carrying other people's waste as a business generally needs a waste carrier registration (in England, GOV.UK explains how). Your trade body or local chamber of commerce may also list its members.

Put your registration number on your website, with a link to the register so customers can look you up.

5. Make your own website do its share

Every listing points back to your website, so it has to be worth arriving at.

• Show your name, address or area, phone number and email as text, not only in an image
• Give each main service its own page
• Check it works on a phone and loads quickly
• Add a short page on who you are, how long you have traded and the area you cover

Getting listed with Best Rated Company

We are a free UK business directory. We list usually up to three businesses per trade in each town, and a business gets a Verified badge only after three checks:

• We look them up online
• We ring the business
• The business confirms by email

Nobody can pay to be listed, to be verified or to appear higher on a page, and the order on each page changes every day. Small and medium-sized businesses are welcome, new or long established. We do not list national chains. You need your own website, a UK base, a phone number we can ring and an email address you read. How the checks work explains each one in full.

What a free listing will and will not do

A listing gives customers another place to find you and to check you, and gives your website a link from a site that applies the same checks to everyone. It does not guarantee enquiries, rankings or a place on the first page of Google, and it is not a substitute for a Google Business Profile or a good website. We do not check insurance, audit accounts or inspect work, and a listing here does not mean we recommend a business.

Mistakes to avoid

• Paying for a package that promises page-one results. Nobody can promise that.
• Fake or paid-for reviews. They are banned in the UK and can get your listings removed.
• Different details in different places.
• Using a PO box, a virtual office or someone else's address as your premises. Google may suspend a profile that does.
• Setting listings up and never looking at them again. Put a date in your diary every six months to check your details everywhere.