Create or claim a free Google Business Profile at google.com/business, verify it by postcard, phone or video, then fill in your hours, category, photographs and a description. Verification usually takes a few days to two weeks in Nigeria. You do not need a website to do this, and it is the single cheapest thing most Nigerian businesses can fix.
If your listing is unclaimed, anyone can suggest changes to your address, your phone number or your opening hours: and you will not be told. If there is no listing at all, the customer searching for what you sell is shown your competitors and never learns you exist.
Search for your business name on Google Maps first. If a listing already exists, claim it rather than creating a second one: duplicates split your reviews and confuse the map.
Choose the most specific category available. "Pharmacy" beats "Store"; a wrong category is the most common reason a business never appears in the searches it should.
Add your real opening hours, a phone number that is answered, and at least five photographs. Listings with photographs are chosen far more often than listings without, and a stranger deciding between two shops uses them.
Verify. Google will offer postcard, phone, email or video depending on the category and location. Nothing you enter goes live until this is done.
Reply to every review, including the bad ones, in public and calmly. The reply is not written for the person complaining: it is written for the next customer reading it.
Post something once a month. An offer, a new product, a notice about hours. A listing that has not moved in two years reads as a business that may have closed.
A Google listing gets you found. It does not give a customer anywhere to go afterwards, and it does not give you an email address at your own name. If your listing sends people to a Gmail address, they notice.
Yes, entirely. Anyone charging you a monthly fee purely to "list you on Google" is charging for something you can do yourself in under an hour.
Usually a few days to two weeks. Postcard verification is slowest; phone and video verification, when offered, are much faster.
Yes. A Google Business Profile works without one, and for many businesses it is the better first step. It is also why "no website" does not disqualify you from a Health Check.
Ozah Digital Limited works with businesses in Asaba, Onitsha, Warri, Agbor, Delta State and across Nigeria. Consultation by appointment, on site or online.
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