Before You Start: Building the Right Foundation for Your Real Estate Google Business Profile

A well-optimized Google Business Profile (GBP) is essential for real estate professionals aiming to improve their visibility, attract clients, and dominate local search rankings. Before diving into the setup, it’s crucial to lay a strong foundation. This lesson focuses on key preparatory steps that ensure your GBP is set up correctly, and for long-term success.

From using a consistent and professional Google Workspace email to optimizing your address and ensuring uniform business information across all platforms, these foundational strategies are vital for building credibility and enhancing local SEO and therefore lead generation. Additionally, this lesson highlights how preparing your website and social media accounts can simplify verification and strengthen your profile’s legitimacy in Google’s ecosystem.

By following these steps, you’ll establish a solid base for your GBP that maximizes ranking potential, improves impressions, and drives meaningful engagement with prospective clients. If you want to work with PropertyProsHQ for any of our GBP Services, you’ll need to first take these steps.

I. Setting Up a Google Email (preferably Workspace): 

• One of the biggest mistakes real estate professionals make when setting up their GBP is not using a Google email and/or using different emails or Google accounts for various platforms. To maximize your visibility and ensure Google correctly associates your business across its ecosystem and the web, you must use the same Workspace or Gmail account for your GBP, website, YouTube channel, social media accounts, real estate sites like Zillow and realtor.com, etc.

• Google relies on consistency and entity recognition to connect all of your online assets. When everything is linked under a single Workspace or Gmail account, it strengthens your local SEO signals, improves your ranking potential, and increases impressions and clicks. 

• You can use a free Gmail account, but we strongly suggest using a  Google Workspace account for several reasons: First, it allows you to have a .com at the end of your email address instead of a gmail.com, which is much more professional and helps generate more leads. It should be [email protected] (for example: [email protected]). Second, this is a paid Google subscription costing about $8 per month, making it affordable while also signaling to Google that you are a trusted, paying user. Google tends to favor and trust accounts that invest in its services. Third, Google Workspace accounts offer better integration and enhanced data analytics across multiple Google platforms, improving your overall visibility and performance.

• Don’t make the mistake of not having a consistent Google email (preferably Workspace) for all of your digital assets. Please take the time now to complete these steps if you haven’t already done so.

II. Optimizing Your Address

• Choosing the right address for your Google Business Profile is important because Google will use that location as the starting point to show your business to people in your service area.

• Use the Best Address:

o Think carefully about whether or not you want to use your brokerage or office address because if there are a number of other real estate agents or investors located there, then you will be competing with all of them.

o If you are already ranking well in a 2 square mile radius around your current location, then it would be best to continue with that location.

o Otherwise, it would be better to either use your home address or be a service area business.

o If your home address is located in one of the primary areas in which you list or buy properties and you’re comfortable showing it on Google, then we suggest doing that.

o If you're not comfortable using your home address or it is far away from your service area, you can hide it and list yourself as a service area business.

o This can be more complicated and harder to rank for, especially if you are in a very large city, in which case you might want to list your service area as the specific neighborhoods and ZIP Codes that you do the most listings or buy the most properties in.

o It all depends on how strong the competition is where your physical address is, which is why it is important to do an audit before listing or changing your address in your GBP. We offer free audits.

o How Google Handles a Service Area Different from the Physical Location:

 Google uses the physical address for internal ranking signals but will show the business in searches based on the selected service areas.

 If a competitor has a listed address, they may have an advantage in very localized searches.

 However, we can mitigate this with good SEO. For example, strong reviews, engagement, and content mentioning your service area can outweigh the address factor over time (please see Module 4 – Lesson  9).

 Google does not require service area businesses to have their address match citations across the web, unlike businesses with a physical location.

o Do not use a PO Box or virtual office because Google will not verify your account. Only use physical addresses that you can verify.

III. Ensuring Name, Address, Phone Number (NAP) Consistency

• It is very important to make sure that your business name, your listed address, and your phone number are consistent everywhere on the Internet (website, GBP, social media accounts, citations, back links, online directories, etc). If you choose the service area business route with your GBP, that is fine to have that be different because it is unlisted.

• When your NAP details are the same across all online directories, social media platforms, and your website, Google sees your business as more credible and authoritative. Inconsistent NAP information can confuse search engines, weaken your local SEO, and reduce your chances of ranking well in Google Search and Google Maps.

• Now is the time to make sure that you have chosen a consistent business name, a consistent address, and a consistent phone number and go through all your online accounts and make sure that your NAP is consistent.

IV. Making Verification Easier

• If you are a new agent and investor and have not set up your website or social media accounts, it is best to do that before getting a GBP because it will make the verification process much easier.

• When verifying you, Google will search to see how legitimate and trustworthy you are so having a website and the full retinue of social media and real estate accounts (Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, X (Twitter), Pinterest, LinkedIn, Reddit, Zilllow, Realtor.com, etc.) will make it more likely that you will be easily verified.

V. Action Steps/Homework

• By following these steps within the next few days, you’ll establish a solid foundation for your GBP and prepare for successful verification and optimization.

• Step 1: Set Up Your Google Email

A. Create a Google Workspace account (recommended) or Gmail account.

B. Use a professional email format like [email protected].

C. Ensure this email will be used consistently across all platforms (GBP, website, social media, etc.).

• Step 2: Audit Your Address

A. Decide whether to use your home address, office address, or set up a service area business.

• Step 3: Verify Name, Address, Phone (NAP) Consistency

A. Check your business name, address, and phone number across all platforms (website, social media, directories like Zillow).

B. Update any inconsistent NAP details to ensure uniformity everywhere online.

• Step 4: Prepare for Verification

A. Set up your website and social media accounts if they aren’t already live.

B. Include your NAP details prominently on your website (e.g., footer or contact page).

C. Gather documents for verification:

• Business license, utility bills, etc.

• Photos of your location or signage (if applicable)

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