How to Set Up Your Business Online: The Complete Profile and Listing Guide

Every account and listing your business needs, in priority order — with exact image sizes, character limits, and step-by-step guides for each one.

Specifications verified August 2026.

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Who this guide is for

You own or manage a business. You know you should have profiles set up, and you either have never done it or did it years ago and no longer remember who has the passwords.

This guide assumes no prior experience. It covers what to decide before you create anything, the exact specifications for every image and text field, and which platforms are worth your time. Each platform links to a full step-by-step walkthrough.

Work through it in order. Step 0 exists because the mistakes made there are the ones that cost the most to fix later.

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Step 0: Six decisions to make before you create anything

1. Create a dedicated business email address first

Not a personal Gmail. Not an employee's inbox. Something like marketing@yourbusiness.com on your own domain, treated as a permanent asset that survives staff turnover.

Every account below will be tied to that address. If you use an employee's email and that person leaves, you lose access and spend weeks filing recovery requests.

2. You own the accounts — not your marketing vendor

If an agency creates your accounts under their own business account, they own them. When the relationship ends, you may not get them back.

The rule: you create the account with your business email, then grant the vendor admin or manager access. Access can be revoked. Ownership cannot.

3. Lock your business name to one exact string

Write down exactly how your business name will appear and use that identical string everywhere. Decide now: LLC or nothing? Ampersand or "and"? City included?

Then write your address and phone the same way. This is your NAP — Name, Address, Phone. Inconsistent NAP across platforms weakens local search visibility, because search engines can't confirm the listings describe the same business.

4. Claim your handle everywhere, even on platforms you won't use

Handles are first come, first served. Claiming yours on a platform you might want in two years costs ten minutes today.

5. Turn on two-factor authentication as you go

Not later — as you create each account. Compromised business accounts are common and recovery is slow. Use an authenticator app rather than SMS where offered.

6. Keep a credentials record

One securely stored document listing every platform, the login email, who has admin access, and the date created. Give a copy to whoever runs the business.

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Which platforms do you actually need?

Two different families here, demanding very different amounts of work.

Listings are set-and-verify assets. Claim them, complete them, check them once or twice a year, and they work quietly. They carry more weight than most businesses realize, because map results and AI assistants pull from them directly.

Social platforms require ongoing posting to be worth anything. A dormant page with a three-year-old post signals a business that may no longer be operating.

Do the listings first. They pay off with no ongoing labor.

Tier 1 — Do these first

Most of these already exist without you. Google, Apple, Yelp, and the BBB all generate business records from third-party data. If you have never claimed yours, it is live right now showing whatever a data broker supplied — often an old address or a disconnected phone.

LinkedIn is the one Tier 1 item that is not a listing, and it needs two builds rather than one: a Company Page for the business, and a properly configured personal profile for each owner or key employee. Personal profiles typically outperform the company page, so don't stop after the page.

Tier 2 — Data aggregators

Data Axle, TransUnion Digital Business Profile (formerly Neustar Localeze), and Foursquare. Wholesale data suppliers that feed hundreds of smaller directories and apps. They work differently from everything else here — see the full section before spending time on them.

Tier 3 — Everything else

Instagram, YouTube, Nextdoor, X, and your industry's directories. Claim the handles now; commit to posting on at most one or two.

By business type

Industry-specific profile guides

Four industries have directories that function almost like licensing records — profiles generated from public data, live whether or not you claimed them:

• Attorney directories: Avvo, Justia, Martindale, and FindLaw — auto-generated from state bar records
• Zillow and Realtor.com agent profiles — plus why listing photos go to your MLS, not the portals
• Houzz Pro profiles — for design, renovation, and visual trades only
• Healthcare directories: Healthgrades, Zocdoc, and the rest — including the HIPAA rule that makes review responses different from every other industry

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Every character limit, in one place

This is where most businesses lose. You write a good description, paste it in, and the platform silently cuts it off mid-sentence — or refuses to save it and you never find out why.

Two numbers matter for every field. The hard limit is what the platform accepts. The visible limit is what people actually read before a "More" link. Write for the visible limit; use the rest for supporting detail.

Google Business Profile

Google prohibits URLs, HTML, prices, and promotional language in the business description. Save promotions for posts.

LinkedIn — Company Page

LinkedIn — personal profile

Note the company About is 2,000 while the personal About is 2,600. Copying one into the other will truncate.

Facebook

The 63,206-character post limit is theoretical. Posts of 40–80 characters consistently outperform long ones.

Instagram

The bio limit counts spaces, emojis, punctuation, and line breaks.

X (Twitter)

Go one character over on the bio and it will not save at all.

YouTube

Channel description and video description are different fields with very different limits.

Apple Business Connect

The Showcase body limit is reported as both 58 and 100 characters depending on source. Write to 58 and you're safe either way.

Not publicly documented

Yelp, Nextdoor, Bing Places, and the BBB do not publish character limits for their description fields. Draft to roughly 750 characters — the Google standard — and check whether the field truncates before saving.

One writing rule that applies everywhere

Front-load. On nearly every platform, the first 100–250 characters are the only ones most people see. Write the description so it still works if everything after the cutoff vanished — because for most readers, it does.

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Build your image kit once

Eleven files cover every platform here. Build them once, name them clearly, keep them in one folder.

Rules for all eleven

Format. JPG for photographs, PNG for anything with text or flat color. Save in sRGB — other color profiles shift once processed.

Never upload below 1080 px wide. Platforms scale large images down cleanly and stretch small ones into a blur.

Keep everything important in the middle. Every platform crops differently on phone versus desktop and overlays buttons on the edges. Stay inside the central 80%.

Your logo must survive being tiny. It will appear as a 40-pixel circle in comment threads. If it includes a tagline in small type, make a simplified version for profile images.

Profile images are cropped to a circle on nearly every platform. Square-cornered logos lose their corners.

How to read these specifications

Platforms change these numbers without announcement, and most guides copy each other rather than checking. Where a specification isn't clean, this guide says so:

• Verified — documented by the platform.
• Directional — consistent across credible sources, not published by the platform.
• Unconfirmed — sources disagree or the platform doesn't document it.

Four caveats worth knowing:

• LinkedIn Company Page cover. LinkedIn now specifies 4200 × 700, though it renders at roughly 1128 × 191. Many guides publish only the smaller number, producing a blurry banner. (Verified)
• Nextdoor cover photo. Published specs disagree. Upload 1200 × 800 landscape and check on your phone. (Unconfirmed)
• Yelp profile photo. Yelp publishes a maximum but no recommended size. Upload 1080 × 1080. (Unconfirmed)
• Houzz. No current published specifications. Upload at 1080 px or wider and verify visually. (Unconfirmed)

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Platform quick reference

Full walkthroughs linked from each heading.

Google Business Profile →

Free. Requires verification — by phone, video, or postcard — which can take days to weeks. Start here because it takes longest.

Your logo appears only once the profile has complete basic information. Google may override your chosen cover photo with a user-submitted image.

Bing Places →

Free, roughly twenty minutes. Feeds Bing Search and Maps, Edge, Windows search, and Microsoft Copilot.

Use import from Google Business Profile — connect the Google account owning your GBP and Bing pulls name, address, phone, hours, categories, photos, and description in one action, with optional ongoing sync. If your Google profile is verified, Bing may auto-verify on import. Review what came across before publishing.

Apple Business Connect →

Free. Controls how you appear in Apple Maps, Siri, Messages, and Wallet. Almost no small business claims it.

Apple is stricter about content than any other platform here: no stock photography, no watermarks, no heavy filters. Showcases are reviewed before going live (up to three days), expire after 30 days, and editing one in review restarts the clock.

LinkedIn →

Requires a personal profile before you can create a Company Page, plus a company email on a verified domain.

Company Page banners crop to roughly the center 900 pixels on mobile.

Facebook Page →

Created from your personal Facebook account. Your personal profile stays private — it's the key, not the storefront.

Link preview images come from your website's Open Graph tag, not from anything you upload to Facebook.

BBB →

Two separate things. Your business profile may already exist and claiming it is free. Accreditation is a separate paid program requiring six months in business, a satisfactory rating, no unresolved complaints, and annual dues that vary by size and local BBB — commonly several hundred to over a thousand dollars.

Your BBB rating is calculated independently of accreditation. You do not need to pay to have a good rating.

Yelp →

Free to claim; most pages approve within 24 hours. Then read carefully, because Yelp has more traps than anything else here.

• Do not ask customers for Yelp reviews. Yelp prohibits solicitation and filters reviews it believes were solicited.
• Your responder photo must be a face, not a logo. Moderators reject logos, storefronts, group photos, and stock images — the opposite of every other platform.
• Adding your logo to the page requires a paid upgrade.
• A claimed page can quietly revert to unclaimed if nobody logs in for 90 days. Set a quarterly reminder.

Photos must be under 8000 × 8000, JPG or PNG.

Instagram →

Set up as a Business account and connect it to your Facebook Page.

The 2026 change most guides miss: Instagram moved the profile grid from square to a 3:4 crop in January 2026. A 4:5 post looks right in the feed then loses its top and bottom on your grid. Design at 4:5 but keep essentials inside the central 3:4 area — or upload at 3:4 for zero cropping. On Stories and Reels, the top ~14% and bottom ~20–35% are covered by interface elements.

YouTube →

Create a Brand Account, not a personal channel, so ownership can transfer.

Only the central band of the banner is guaranteed to show on a phone. Everything outside it is bleed.

Nextdoor →

Free to claim; requires identity verification. New pages are limited to two free posts per month until the account establishes standing.

Nextdoor recommends a real photo over a graphic. Text-heavy images and business cards render poorly.

X →

Your profile photo overlaps the lower-left of the header. Keep that corner clear.

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Data aggregators →

Wholesale suppliers of business data, licensing to hundreds of directories, apps, and navigation systems. You will rarely see one; you will absolutely see the consequences of one having your information wrong.

The honest position, which differs from what most citation services sell: correcting wrong aggregator data is worth doing. Creating new aggregator listings mostly is not.

Google, Apple, Bing, and Yelp now build and verify their own place databases, treating aggregator data as corroboration rather than source. But if an aggregator has your old phone number, every small directory it feeds will keep reverting to that number no matter how many times you fix them individually. Fixing the source is the only durable repair.

Foursquare. The consumer City Guide app shut down in December 2024; Foursquare survives as a location-data engine feeding Uber, X, Pinterest, and Samsung. Self-serve claiming exists. Verification is by phone or credit card — postcard is no longer supported — and their documentation describes a one-time $20 charge for immediate management access. (Directional — verify at claim time.)

Data Axle (formerly Infogroup). A B2B data company with no clean self-serve portal. Corrections route through their listing-update path or a reseller. Uses USPS address formatting.

TransUnion Digital Business Profile — formerly Neustar Localeze. The name change matters: guides still saying "Neustar Localeze" are working from stale information. Direct submission isn't a reliable path; the practical route is through a partner such as Yext or BrightLocal.

Acxiom appears on nearly every aggregator list published before about 2020 and exited this business. If a vendor pitches Acxiom submission, their playbook is years out of date — a useful test of any citation advice you're handed.

Expect weeks to months for propagation. Aggregators run on batch cycles, not real-time syncs.

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If your profession is regulated

This applies to attorneys, financial advisors, medical and dental practices, insurance agents, and real estate professionals.

Attorneys are subject to state bar advertising rules governing testimonials, claims of expertise, results, and required disclaimers. Rules vary by state and some require submission of advertising materials.

Investment advisers are subject to the SEC Marketing Rule and to books-and-records requirements covering social media communications. Testimonials and endorsements carry specific disclosure conditions.

Medical and dental practices must consider HIPAA before responding to any review that acknowledges someone is a patient — including a thank-you.

Real estate professionals must include brokerage attribution in advertising under most state rules. Every profile must name the same current brokerage.

Nothing here is legal or compliance advice. Confirm requirements with your licensing body or compliance counsel before publishing.

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After setup: the verification pass

Run this from a phone, in a browser where you are not logged in.

1. Search your business name. Does everything that appears belong to you? Duplicate listings and pages created by former staff are common.
2. Search each owner and key employee by name. Directory profiles are generated per person, not per business.
3. Compare NAP across every profile — identical, including suite numbers and abbreviations.
4. Confirm every website link works and points to your live domain, not an old one.
5. Check for outdated affiliations. Any profile naming a company or brokerage you left needs fixing first.
6. Check every image on a phone. This is where cropping problems appear.
7. Confirm hours on Google, Apple, Bing, and Facebook, including holidays.
8. Verify admin access — at least two people you control, on every account.
9. Confirm 2FA everywhere.
10. Test the contact buttons. Call the number. Send the message.
11. Search small directories you've never heard of. If several show an old address, an aggregator is feeding them.
12. Set a quarterly reminder to log into Yelp and review every listing for drift.

If steps 1, 2, or 5 turn up profiles you didn't create, resolve those before anything else. Duplicate and stale listings split your visibility and are the most common reason a business is invisible in local search despite doing everything else right.

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Common questions

How long does all of this take? Four to six hours of focused work for Tier 1, across two sessions. Google verification adds days or weeks of waiting, which is why you start it first. Bing takes twenty minutes if you import from Google.

If I only have one afternoon? Google Business Profile, Bing Places, Apple Business Connect, LinkedIn, Facebook, BBB, Yelp — in that order. All free.

Why do profiles exist that I never created? Google, Apple, Yelp, and the BBB build records from public data and third-party providers. Professional directories pull from licensing records. These are live and visible whether or not you have ever logged in.

Do I have to pay for any of this? No. Everything above has a free tier covering setup. Paid upgrades exist on Yelp, Foursquare, the BBB, and most industry directories. Claim everything free first, run it a quarter, then evaluate whether any paid tier earns its cost against your actual lead sources.

Can I ask customers for reviews? Google, yes. Yelp, no. And if you are in a regulated profession, your professional rules govern testimonials regardless of what a platform allows.

Do I need to post regularly on all of them? No, and this is where most businesses go wrong. Far better to maintain two platforms well than six badly. Claim everything; post on the one or two where your customers actually are.

Can I use the same image everywhere? Your square logo, yes. Cover images, no — the aspect ratios differ too much, and a stretched banner looks worse than a plain background.

Do these specifications change? Several times a year. Instagram changed its grid format in January 2026 and LinkedIn revised its Page cover spec. Check the date at the top of this page before relying on a number for a launch.

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Specifications verified August 2026 against platform documentation and current published sources. Platforms change requirements without notice — confirm against the platform's own help center when a specification is business-critical.