For a plumber, a clinic, a salon or a solicitor, the Google Business Profile is the page most customers see first — before the website, sometimes instead of it. It decides whether you appear in the three-listing Maps pack, and it puts a call button next to your name. Most profiles are half-finished: claimed, a phone number, three photos from 2021. Google Business Profile optimization — finishing one properly — is the highest-return local marketing job I know, and it costs nothing but an afternoon and a routine.
This is the checklist I run for clients, in the order that matters. It sits alongside the social media system — the profile is, in effect, your most important social channel — and it ends with tracking, so you know what it produces.
How Google ranks local results
Google is unusually explicit here. Local ranking is relevance (does your profile match what was searched), distance (how far you are from the searcher or the place in the query) and prominence (how well known you are — reviews, mentions, links, your wider web presence). Distance is fixed. Everything below is relevance and prominence.
The checklist
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Name: your real name, nothing added.
“Northside Plumbing”, not “Northside Plumbing — Emergency Plumber Manchester”. Keyword-stuffed names do rank for a while, until a competitor reports them and the profile is suspended. Match the name on your signage, website and invoices.
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Primary category: the single most important field.
Choose the category that describes the core of the business as precisely as possible (“Plumber”, “Dental Clinic”, “Hair Salon”), then add secondary categories for real additional services (“Heating Contractor”, “Emergency Plumber”). Check what the businesses ranking above you use; it is visible on their profiles. Wrong or too-general primary categories are the commonest reason a good business is invisible.
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Address or service area.
Storefront customers visit: show the address. You travel to customers: hide the address and set service areas (up to twenty towns or postcodes). Hybrid: address plus service areas. A hidden address for a business that clearly has premises is another suspension trigger.
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Phone, website, booking link.
A phone number that is answered (or that triggers missed-call automation when it is not). The website link with UTM parameters so profile traffic is visible in analytics. An appointment link if you take bookings — it appears as a prominent button.
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Hours, including holidays and special hours.
“Closed” on a day you are open costs calls; “open” on a bank holiday costs reviews. Set holiday hours a month ahead; Google prompts you, and unanswered prompts can lead to hours being marked unconfirmed.
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Description: 750 characters, first sentence counts.
What you do, where, for whom, and what is different — in plain sentences with your main services named naturally. No links, no offers, no keyword lists. It is not a ranking lever on its own, but it converts readers who compare three profiles.
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Services, each with a description.
Add every service you offer under the relevant category, with a short description and price or price range where sensible. This is where the relevance signal for “boiler repair near me” comes from when your category is “Plumber”. Most profiles leave it empty.
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Products, if you sell or package anything.
Service packages count (“Annual boiler service — £95”). Products appear as a visual carousel and give another place for specifics.
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Attributes.
Tick everything true: accessibility, payment types, “women-owned”, “online estimates”, “on-site services”, language options. They appear in filters and in the profile and cost nothing.
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Photos: real, recent, and many.
Logo and cover set correctly. Then exterior (so people recognise the building), interior, the team, the vans, the work — before-and-after is the best-performing content in trades. Aim for thirty to start and add a few every week. Geotagging is irrelevant; recency and realness are not. Stock photos are removed and look wrong to locals.
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Reviews: the prominence engine.
Three parts. Ask, every time, with the short review link, ideally by text within a day of the job — automate it from the CRM. Respond to every review within a day or two, including the bad ones, briefly and without arguing. Steady flow beats bursts: fifty reviews in a week after none for a year is a fraud signal. Reviews that mention the service and the town (“great boiler repair in Salford”) contribute to relevance, so it is fine to ask customers to say what you did for them.
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Posts, weekly.
Updates, offers and events show on the profile for a limited time. A weekly post — a job done, a seasonal offer, a new service — keeps the profile visibly alive. Reuse the same proof and offer posts from social media.
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Q&A: seed it yourself.
Anyone can ask and anyone can answer, including competitors. Add the eight to ten questions customers actually ask (do you do emergencies, do you charge for quotes, parking, which areas) and answer them from the business account. Check monthly for new questions.
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Website consistency and local schema.
Name, address and phone identical on the website, the profile and major directories. A
LocalBusinessschema block on the site with the same details, opening hours and service area. A location page (or one per branch) that links to the profile and embeds the map. Google cross-checks; inconsistency dilutes prominence. -
Citations and links, once.
Listings on the main directories and the relevant trade bodies, with matching details. A one-off job, refreshed yearly. More is not better after the first dozen; accuracy is.
Tracking what the profile produces
| Signal | Where to see it | Setup |
|---|---|---|
| Profile views, searches by keyword | Profile performance report | Built in; check monthly |
| Calls from the profile | Performance report; CRM call log | Use a CRM-tracked number as the primary number and list the main line as an additional number, so every call is logged |
| Website clicks and what they did | Analytics | Website link with utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=business-profile |
| Direction requests, bookings | Performance report; booking tool | Booking link with its own UTM |
| Enquiries → customers | CRM source report | Source tag “google-profile” on the tracked number and form (see tracking setup) |
The number that matters is the last row. A profile that produces thirty calls a month is worth more than one that ranks first for a keyword nobody phones from.
The weekly routine (20 minutes)
- One post (proof or offer), three to five new photos.
- Answer every new review; send review requests for last week’s jobs if not automated.
- Check Q&A and the “suggested edits” notifications — Google and the public can change your details.
- Monthly: hours, services, holiday hours, a look at the performance report and the CRM source numbers.
Calls and messages from the profile deserve the same speed-to-lead treatment as a website form: answer in minutes, text back if missed, follow up automatically.
What gets profiles suspended
Keywords in the name; a hidden address for a business with premises (or a fake address — virtual offices and PO boxes are not eligible); multiple profiles for one location; review bursts or incentivised reviews; and unresponded “is this business still open?” prompts. Reinstatement takes weeks and is not guaranteed. Play it straight; the straight version wins anyway.
Dealing with spam competitors
If the listings above you have stuffed names, fake addresses or duplicate profiles, use “Suggest an edit” on the offending profile and, for persistent cases, Google’s business redressal form. It works more often than people expect, and it is the fastest ranking gain available in some markets.
Further reading: Google: how to improve your local ranking · Google Business Profile guidelines.
FAQ
What matters most for ranking in the Google Maps pack?
Google names three factors: relevance (categories, services, keywords in your profile and reviews), distance from the searcher, and prominence (reviews, links, citations, general web presence). You cannot change distance, so the work is relevance and prominence — categories, a complete profile, and a steady flow of reviews.
Can I add keywords to my business name on Google?
No. The name must be your real-world business name; adding services or towns to it violates the guidelines and is a common reason for suspension. Put keywords in the categories, services, description and posts instead.
How many reviews do I need?
More than the businesses ranking around you, arriving steadily rather than in bursts, with responses to every one. A profile gaining four or five genuine reviews a month usually overtakes a static one with a bigger total within a year.
How often should I update my Google Business Profile?
A post and a few photos every week, reviews answered within a day or two, and a monthly check of hours, services and Q&A. Twenty minutes a week keeps a profile visibly active, which Google and customers both notice.
Want the profile, the website’s local pages and schema, review automation and call tracking set up together? See the local SEO and automation services — it is a one-week job that keeps paying for years.
