This comes up on almost every call with a local business. They have a budget that will stretch to one thing, and they want to know which one actually brings the phone calls.
The short answer
If you serve customers in person in a specific area, set up the Google Business Profile first. It is free, it takes days rather than months, and for local searches it sits above everything else on the page.
But it is not really a choice between two things. The profile is how people find you. The website is what decides whether they pick you. Doing one without the other leaves most of the value on the table.
What each one actually does
The Google Business Profile is your listing on Maps and in that box of local businesses at the top of search results. Name, hours, phone number, directions, photos, reviews. Somebody searching for a plumber near them at nine at night is looking at that box, and often nothing else.
It is free, and for a local business it is the fastest thing you can do that has any effect at all.
Your website does the things a listing cannot. It explains what you actually do and who you are right for. It answers the questions people will not ask out loud. It takes bookings, sells products, holds your prices and policies, and gives someone a reason to choose you over the two other listings sitting next to you in the same moment.
The profile gets you into the conversation. The website is the conversation.
Why the profile comes first for a local business
Three practical reasons.
It is free and it is fast. You can have it live and verified in a few days. A website takes weeks. If you need work this month, start where the speed is.
It sits above the organic results. For anything with local intent, the map results come first. You can have the best-ranked website in your town and still sit below three businesses with a properly filled-in profile.
Reviews live there. For a local service business, the review count next to your name does more work than any sentence you will ever write about yourself. That only builds up on the profile, and only over time, so the sooner it starts the better.
Where the profile stops working
Here is what people find out a few months in.
The profile gets you seen. It does not get you chosen. Someone comparing three businesses in the map results taps into each one, and the ones with a real website get a proper look. The one without gets a phone number and a guess.
You also cannot say much on a listing. There is nowhere to explain why your work costs more than the cheapest option, no room to walk someone through what actually happens, no way to answer the doubt sitting behind their question. That is the job of a website, and it is exactly the job that decides who gets the call.
And you do not own it. Google decides what your listing looks like, what appears on it, and whether it stays there at all. Your website is the one part of this you actually control.
When the profile is the wrong priority
Not every business should start there, and some cannot have one at all.
You need in-person contact with customers to qualify. Google is explicit about this. If you never meet customers face to face and never travel to them, you are not eligible, and setting one up anyway gets it suspended.
I know this one from my own side of the desk. I cannot have a Google Business Profile for my own studio, because I work with clients remotely and never meet them in person. Every customer I have comes through search, referrals and word of mouth instead. So when I set a profile up for a local client, I am doing something I am not allowed to do for myself.
If you sell online, the profile does very little. An online store selling to the whole country is not competing in a map. Your effort belongs on the website and on search.
If you serve a whole region rather than a town, it helps less than you would hope. It is built around proximity, and proximity is the one thing you cannot change.
The order I would actually recommend
First, claim and fill in the profile properly. Not half of it. Correct categories, every service listed, real photos of real work, accurate hours, service area set correctly. Most profiles I look at are about a third complete, and the owner has decided the profile does not work.
Second, start asking for reviews. Immediately, and then keep doing it. Every finished job. This is the slowest-building asset you have, so it needs the longest run-up.
Third, build the website. Even a small one. Somewhere for the profile to send people, that explains what you do and makes getting in touch easy.
Fourth, connect them. Website linked on the profile. Same business name, same address, same phone number in both places. Consistency between the two is what makes them work as one thing instead of two.
The mistakes I see most
Setting it up and never touching it again. A profile that has not been updated in two years, with opening hours from before the last change, tells people you might not still be trading.
Vague categories. The primary category matters more than almost anything else on the profile. Choosing something broad because it feels safer keeps you out of the searches you actually want.
No photos, or stock photos. Photos of your actual work, your actual premises, your actual team. This is one of the few places where a slightly imperfect real photo beats a polished fake one every time.
Ignoring reviews, good or bad. Replying calmly to a bad review does more for the next person reading it than the review itself did against you.
Sending profile traffic to a homepage that answers nothing. Someone taps through from a listing for emergency drain clearing and lands on a page that says welcome to our website. That visit is over.
What it looks like when both are doing their job
Someone searches for what you do near them. Your profile comes up with real photos, a full list of services, and more reviews than the business below you. They tap through to your website, it answers the two questions that were going to stop them, and they book or call from their phone without having to think about it.
That is two systems doing two different jobs. Neither one does both.
I have written before about why a site can get visitors and still not ring the phone, and about what a small business website actually costs. Both are worth reading if you are working out where your first money should go.
If you are still not sure
Tell me what your business does and where your customers come from, and I will tell you which one to spend on first. If the answer is that you should set the profile up yourself and wait a few months on the website, I will say that, and it costs you nothing to hear it.
I set profiles up as part of the work when it makes sense, and I will tell you plainly when it does not.
