How to optimise your Google Business Profile

For a local business, your Google Business Profile is often the first thing a customer sees and the last thing they need. It shows your name, rating, opening hours, photos and a button to call you. Plenty of people never reach your website at all. They tap the number from the map and that is the whole journey.

Which makes it strange how many profiles sit half finished. A category chosen in a hurry three years ago, no photos since launch, a description written for nobody. This is a free listing that can outperform your homepage, so it is worth an afternoon of attention. Here is what to do, in order.

Fix the basics first

Claim and verify the profile if you have not already. An unverified listing can still show up, but you cannot control what it says, and anyone can suggest an edit.

Then check the details that Google uses to decide whether you are a real, current business:

• Name. Your actual trading name. Not "Smith Plumbing | Emergency Plumber Bath 24/7". Keyword stuffing the name breaks Google's rules and gets listings suspended.
• Address. Exactly as it appears on your website and in your other listings, down to the punctuation. If you work from home or visit customers, hide the address and set a service area instead.
• Phone number. A local number where possible. Match it to your site.
• Opening hours. Real ones, including bank holidays. Nothing loses a customer faster than a closed door the map said was open.
• Website link. Point it at the most relevant page, not always the homepage. A dental practice can point at the treatment page people want.

Get the categories right, because they do most of the work

Your primary category is the single biggest lever on this listing. It tells Google which searches you are eligible to appear in. Choose the one that describes what you mainly do, not the one that sounds most impressive.

A useful exercise: search your main service in your town on a phone and look at who is in the map pack. Their categories are visible in the listing. If they all use one you have not picked, that is your answer.

Add secondary categories for genuine additional services, but do not collect them. Three accurate ones beat ten hopeful ones. Then fill in the services list with the actual jobs you do, each with a short description. Most businesses skip this, and it is one of the few places you can add detail in your own words.

Photos matter more than the description

The description is a small ranking factor at best. Photos are what people look at. Profiles with recent, real photographs get more clicks than profiles with a logo and a stock shot of a handshake.

What to upload:

• The outside of the premises from the street, so people can find the door.
• The inside, so they know what they are walking into.
• Your team, faces visible.
• The work itself. Finished jobs, the product, the room, the van.

Shoot them on a decent phone in daylight and skip the heavy filters. Add a few every month rather than forty in one go. Recency is a signal that the business is alive, and a listing that has not been touched since 2023 looks abandoned even when it is not.

Reviews: get them, and reply to all of them

Reviews influence both your ranking and the decision a customer makes in the two seconds they spend comparing you to the business above you. Volume matters, recency matters, and the words inside the reviews matter, because they mention the services and places you want to be found for.

The reliable way to get them is to ask, at the moment the customer is happiest, with a direct link that takes one tap. Not "please leave us a review on Google" in a footer. A link, sent by text or email, on the day the job finished.

Reply to every review, good and bad. Two or three sentences is plenty. A calm, specific reply under a critical review reassures the next reader far more than the review worries them.

Use the parts of the profile most people ignore

There are several sections that sit empty on the average listing, and each one is a free chance to answer a question or occupy more of the screen:

• Questions and answers. You can post your own questions and answer them. Put the things you get asked on the phone every week here.
• Posts. Short updates with an image and a link. They appear on the listing and keep it looking active. One a fortnight is enough.
• Attributes. Wheelchair access, free parking, appointment required, LGBTQ+ friendly, women-owned. Some of these are filters people search with.
• Booking or enquiry links. If you take appointments, connect them so the button appears.

Connect the profile to your website

Google cross-checks the listing against your website and the rest of the web. Three things help:

1. Consistent details everywhere. Same name, address and phone number on your site, your social profiles and any directories. Inconsistency creates doubt, and doubt costs visibility.
2. A real contact page. Full address in text (not only inside an image), phone number, opening hours and a map.
3. LocalBusiness structured data on your site, matching the profile. It states your details in a format machines read without guessing.

If you serve several towns, resist the urge to create separate listings for each. That is against the rules and gets listings removed. Build proper pages on your website for each area instead.

What to check every month

Set a recurring half hour. Look at the insights to see which searches brought people to the listing. Upload a few photos. Answer new reviews. Check nobody has suggested an edit to your hours or address, because Google sometimes accepts user edits quietly. Not glamorous, but this is a channel where consistency beats cleverness, and most of your competitors will not keep it up.

Common questions

How long does it take to see results?

Corrections to categories and details can shift things within a couple of weeks. Reviews and photos build more slowly, over a few months. It is a compounding channel rather than a switch.

Do I need a physical address to rank locally?

No. Service area businesses can hide the address and set the areas they cover. You still need a real address to verify with, but it does not have to be shown publicly.

Can I remove a bad review?

Only if it breaks Google's policies, for example if it is spam, off-topic or from someone who was never a customer. You can report it, but there is no guarantee. The stronger play is a steady flow of recent genuine reviews, which pushes any single bad one down and dilutes its effect on the average.

If you would rather not do it yourself

Local visibility is one of the pieces we manage as part of SEO and GEO, alongside the website itself, so the listing and the site tell the same story. If your profile has been sitting untouched, send us the link and we will tell you what is missing.