All answers

Do I need a website if I already have a Google profile?

A Google Business Profile on its own will get a local business found and phoned, and for a one-van trade with a full diary it can be enough. It cannot do 3 things: rank you for the services people search for, say anything a competitor cannot also say, or survive being the only thing you own. A profile with a website behind it also ranks better than one without, because Google reads the site to decide what you do.

Last measured
September 2026
Keyword
do i need a website for my business
Searches a month
210

What the profile does well

It puts you on the map, shows your hours, collects reviews, and gives somebody a button that rings your phone. For a search like plumber near me, that is most of the job, and a well-filled profile beats a badly-filled one from a bigger company most of the time.

The 3 things it cannot do

  • Rank you for the job rather than the trade. People search boiler replacement, EICR certificate, loft conversion. A profile has no page for any of those. A website does, and that is where the higher value work is.
  • Differentiate you. The profiles in your town all have the same fields, filled in the same order. There is nowhere on it to show a finished job, state a guarantee, or explain why you are worth more than the cheapest quote.
  • Belong to you. It is an account on somebody else's platform, suspendable, and it has been suspended by mistake to plenty of honest businesses.

When you do not need one at all

2 cases, and they are real. If you are booked 6 weeks ahead on word of mouth and do not want to grow, a website is a cost with no job to do. And if you sell entirely through a marketplace or a platform that owns the customer relationship, your effort belongs there instead. Anybody telling you otherwise is selling websites.

What the 2 do together

The profile catches the person searching for your trade near them. The site catches the person searching for the specific job, tells them why you and not the other three, and gives Google the text it needs to trust the profile. Linking one to the other is 15 minutes of work and is the single most underdone thing on the UK high street. We do it as part of every build, and we build the site before you pay for it, from £47 a month with VAT included.

Questions we get asked

Still deciding? Have the site built and see.

Build mine free hello@webwelders.co.uk

It helps. Google reads the linked website to work out what a business does and where it works, and a profile with a relevant, fast, local website behind it is consistently stronger than one with no site or with a site that does not mention the town.

It is better than nothing and worse than a profile. A Facebook page ranks poorly for local searches, hides your opening hours behind an interface, and shows your competitor's advert next to your own posts.

A new site on a new domain usually takes a few months to be trusted for competitive local searches. Linking it to an established Google Business Profile shortens that considerably, which is why the 2 are done together.

Want to see what we would build you?

Talk into your phone for 5 minutes. We build the whole site, then send it over finished. Nothing is charged until you have seen it and said yes.

Build mine free

Tell us about the work.

Answer 6 questions, add your photos and say where to send it. It takes about 5 minutes, talking or typing. No call, no card, nothing to sign.

All 6 questions 1 / 3

Talk us through all six.

Press record once and answer the 6 below. Take as long as you like.

  • What do you do, and who for? Example: I am a plumber. Mostly emergency callouts for homeowners, some landlords.
  • Which towns do you cover? Name the places you would actually drive to, or the postcodes you work.
  • What jobs do you want the phone to ring for? The work you want more of, and not everything you are able to do.
  • Why do people pick you over the next name on the list? Say it the way you would say it standing in somebody's kitchen.
  • What should someone do when they land on your site? Ring you, fill in a form for a quote, or send a message?
  • Anything you want it to look like? A site you like, the colour on your van, or nothing at all. Nothing at all is a fine answer.

Any order is fine. Say something twice, come back to a thing you forgot, stop to think. It all stays in one recording and we sort it out at our end.