A Google Business Profile is a MUST for Tattoo Artists

Sarah Micheletti

Aug. 14, 2025

Small Business Tips

Tech Tips

Artist Resources

Why Collecting Reviews Elsewhere Isn't Enough

For better or worse, the primary default spot for folks to leave brick and mortar business reviews nowadays is through Google. If you're a tattoo artist, that usually means it's on the shop's Google Business Profile, mentioning your name, but connected to the shop.

When you move to a new shop, city, or open up your own spot, that becomes a problem. You essentially lose all the good internet SEO (search engine optimization aka making content come higher up in the google search results) juice that comes with your name + "tattoo" keywords that inevitably pull up shops as businesses in Google searches.

Collecting reviews yourself via a form to host them as posts or stories on Instagram or on your Wix or Squarespace website is an option. But unless you're an SEO wizard, those likely won't ever have the same oomph that Google would give to something written via the review feature for Google Business Profiles. They're going to prioritize their own stuff, y'know?

How to Set Up a Google Business Profile

You can find the official how-to via Google's documentation, but we want to point out a few tattoo-artist-specific tips when it comes to setting up your profile.

Location

At a bare minimum, you're going to want to set your location to your City and State (for the U.S.). This is imperative for SEO when someone is searching for a tattoo artist in your general location. The more specific you can get, the better. Here's some tips depending on your scenario:

Working at a Shop

This gets a tad tricky, because Google is trying to auto flag duplicates or fakes to avoid customer confusion. Multiple businesses can share the same address if each business has its own distinct name, phone number, and category.

Your "business" name should be your name or tattoo handle to easily solve as a differentiator from the shop name. When registering, you can enter your personal cell number or set up a free Google Voice number to hide your personal; either way, you can choose to hide this from the public but share it with Google as a differentiator.

Consider if you can add something to the "address 2" line like a room number or suite number for further differentiation when Google is auto checking for duplicates.

If you have a website, add it to your profile not only for clients, but to help prove to Google that you're differentiated from the shop.

Working at a Shop You Own/Manage

We wish your shop the best, but to prepare for the worst, let's create two Google business profiles: one for your shop, one for you.

Over the years here in Austin, we've seen people move in and out of shop ownership with the turmoil of the pandemic, economy, moving for personal reasons, etc. Unfortunately, you're going to do double the work here to make sure both your shop business and your personal tattoo career are protected and set up for SEO success.

For your physical shop, fill out literally as much information as possible. For yourself, find what balance works for you in terms of setting up personal systems like a phone number, website, etc for your tattooer-self, referencing the section above for what's the bare minimum for an individual.

Working in a Private Studio

Depending on your level of comfort exposing the address of your private studio (we get discretion, this is why we hide the full street address from clients until they pay a deposit), you can choose to add the full address or the bare minimum city/state.

We'd recommend using the name of your private studio (or your name if you don't have a studio name) as the Google business name, but make sure at least your preferred first name is mentioned in the business description for client clarity and better SEO.

If you ever turn your private studio into a shop or move to work at someone else's shop, keep your Google business profile that you've created, and follow the tips for "working at a shop" above to avoid any duplicate address issues.

Website and Links

Not all tattooers have a personal website, and that's ok! That's a time, cost, and energy commitment, so we aren't going to say everyone needs to do it. But, for a Google business profile, you should put something to help differentiate from the shop's address (if applicable) and send clients somewhere when they find you via Google. You want them to book a tattoo, right?

Order of recommendation for website url (you can only put one):

1. Your personal website
2. LinkTree or similar service (for Mind Your Ink users: https://mindyourink.com/book/[artistslug] which acts as an artist booking landing page with links to book, socials, site, etc)
3. Direct booking link
4. A social media account url

This is the number one way a client is going to engage with you when finding your Google business profile - make it count!

Google also has dedicated space for links for:

• Social media (Instagram, YouTube, etc)
• Booking links (like your Mind Your Ink booking page, it will display as a "book" button)

Photos

Think of the photos that come up when you're checking out a restaurant, some are uploaded via the business itself and some via reviews. As a service that's so intimate, physical, and visual, you 100% need some photos of the following:

• Tattoos that you've done, both fresh and healed
• The space that you work in
• At least one of yourself, clients connect with real humans
• Flash sheets (optional)

Now You're Set Up, Ask for Reviews!

Once your Google Business Profile is set up, now's the time to actually ask clients for reviews. Remember, not every client will leave a review and most people are compelled if they have something really positive or negative to say. So unless you're a shitty artist (prob wouldn't be reading this right now), don't be too worried about receiving negative feedback. Most clients won't take the time to do it, but those that do really care about helping your business.

Some ideas on how to get started asking for reviews:

• Post on your Instagram stories with a request for reviews + a direct link to leave a review (there's a "Ask for a review" button when managing your business profile for easy sharing)
• Include a call to action to leave a review as part of parting at the end of a tattoo session, your aftercare instructions, and/or your follow up on healing
• Give clients a 10-20% discount on a future tattoo for a review
• Include a link in your newsletters
• Directly DM or email frequent return clients asking for their support. "Hey Sarah! I'm so honored that you have multiple pieces from me. If you have a couple of minutes, I just got a Google business profile setup and could use your help in filling out an official review of your experience getting tattooed by me. [include link]"

Don't get caught with your reviews stuck on a shop's business profile. Start expanding your internet search presence in less than 15 minutes.

Questions? Comments? We don’t have the fancy ability to do that on the blog yet, but feel free to email us or DM on insta @mindyourink 👋