Creating a Google Business Profile is only the beginning.

Once your business has been added, claimed and verified, the next job is making sure the profile gives Google — and potential customers — the clearest possible picture of who you are, what you do and where you operate.

If you haven’t reached that stage yet, start with my guide to getting your local business seen on Google, which covers creating, claiming and completing your profile.

If your profile is already up and running, this guide is about what comes next: how to optimise your Google Business Profile and make better use of its categories, services, description, photographs, reviews, updates and performance information.

A well-maintained profile can improve how your business is presented in Google Search and Maps, support your wider local SEO and, most importantly, give potential customers more reasons to choose your business when they find it.

Start with an optimisation audit

Before changing anything, take a proper look at the profile you already have.

Check whether the information is still accurate, whether you’ve completed all the relevant sections and whether the profile genuinely represents the business as it operates today.

Pay particular attention to:

• Your primary and secondary business categories
• Business description
• Services
• Address or service area
• Telephone number and website
• Opening and special hours
• Photographs and videos
• Reviews and responses
• Business updates

Google recommends keeping Business Profile information complete and accurate because this helps it understand what your business does and when it may be relevant to a local search.

You can find Google’s current recommendations in its guide to improving your local ranking on Google.

Once the basics are correct, you can start improving the individual elements of the profile.

Choose the right business category

Your primary category is particularly important because it helps Google understand what your business actually does.

Choose the category that most accurately represents your main business rather than selecting something simply because it sounds broader or potentially more lucrative.

You can then add appropriate secondary categories where they genuinely describe additional parts of the business.

For example, a company may provide several related services, but there is usually one that best represents its primary activity.

Don’t turn categories into a game of keyword bingo. Relevance is considerably more useful than trying to squeeze yourself into every vaguely related category Google provides.

It’s also worth checking your categories occasionally. Businesses evolve and Google changes the categories available, so something that was the best fit when you created the profile may not necessarily remain the best choice forever.

Write a useful business description

Your business description gives you an opportunity to explain what the company does in normal, readable language.

Use it.

Include your main services, who you work with and the geographic area you serve where appropriate. Relevant search terms can naturally appear within that description, but it shouldn’t read like a list of keywords separated by commas.

For example:

Influense Design is an independent web and graphic design studio providing website design, WordPress development, logo design and graphic design for businesses across Sussex and the wider South East.

That tells both people and search engines considerably more than:

Professional creative solutions providing quality services to meet all your business needs.

The latter could describe anything from an accountant to a bloke fitting conservatories.

Your description should actually describe your business.

Add your services

If Google gives you the option to add individual services, use it.

Rather than only describing yourself as a web designer, for example, a profile could contain individual services for website design, WordPress development, website maintenance, logo design and graphic design.

Think about the individual things a potential customer might actually be looking for rather than treating your business as one broad service.

A plumber might offer boiler repairs, bathroom installation, emergency plumbing and boiler servicing. A solicitor may have separate services for conveyancing, wills, probate and family law.

Breaking these out gives potential customers a much clearer picture of what you actually provide.

It also creates consistency between your Google Business Profile and the individual service pages on your website.

Keep your business information consistent

Your basic business information should be consistent between your Google Business Profile, website and other reputable online listings.

This is often referred to as NAP consistency:

Name, Address and Phone number.

If Google finds one telephone number on your website, another on your Business Profile and an old address on several directories, you’re creating unnecessary ambiguity.

That doesn’t mean every mention of your business across the internet has to be obsessively identical down to the last comma, but the important information should certainly agree.

Google gathers business information from numerous sources, including information supplied directly by businesses, their websites, users and other sources.

You can read more about how Google sources and uses Business Profile information.

Make sure your website supports your profile

A Google Business Profile doesn’t replace your website.

The two should work together.

Your profile can introduce the business and help you appear in local searches, while your website provides the space to properly demonstrate your expertise, explain individual services, show previous work and convert visitors into enquiries.

That means your website should clearly communicate:

• What you do
• Where you operate
• Who you work with
• How individual services work
• Why someone should choose you
• How customers can contact you

If you provide several distinct services, dedicated pages for those services also give you somewhere relevant to send visitors rather than trying to explain your entire business on the homepage.

The clearer and more consistent the relationship between your website and your Business Profile, the easier it is for both potential customers and search engines to understand your business.

Add good-quality photographs

Photographs make a Business Profile considerably more useful.

Depending on your business, these might include:

• Your premises
• Your team
• Products
• Completed projects
• Your working environment
• Vehicles
• Before-and-after examples
• Examples of your work

Use genuine photographs wherever possible.

For some businesses, photographs are particularly powerful. Restaurants, shops, trades, hotels, salons and other visually driven businesses can show potential customers exactly what to expect before they’ve even visited the website.

For a service business, photographs of completed projects, your team at work or examples of what you produce can provide useful evidence that there is a real business behind the listing.

And don’t forget your logo and branding. Using a consistent identity helps customers recognise the same business as they move between Google, your website, social media and printed material.

Ask customers for Google reviews

Reviews are one of the most visible parts of a Google Business Profile.

They provide reassurance to potential customers and can also contribute to local search prominence. Google states that more reviews and positive ratings can help a business’s local ranking.

Don’t be afraid to ask satisfied customers for a review.

Google allows businesses to create a direct review link or QR code, which can be included in thank-you emails, receipts and other customer communications.

Google provides instructions for creating a review link or QR code.

There is, however, an important distinction between asking for a review and buying one.

Don’t offer discounts, freebies or other incentives in exchange for reviews. Google explicitly prohibits incentives in return for customers posting reviews, changing reviews or removing negative ones.

A steady flow of genuine reviews from real customers is far more valuable than suddenly acquiring twenty suspiciously enthusiastic five-star reviews on Tuesday afternoon.

Reply to your reviews

Getting reviews is only half the job.

Reply to them.

A short, genuine response demonstrates that someone is actively looking after the business and paying attention to customers.

You don’t need to write an acceptance speech every time somebody gives you five stars. A friendly, individual response is enough.

Negative reviews deserve a response too.

Stay professional, acknowledge legitimate criticism where appropriate and avoid turning the review section into a public argument. Your response isn’t only for the person who wrote the review – future customers may read it when deciding whether to contact you.

Sometimes the way a business handles a complaint says more about it than another perfect five-star review.

Google specifically recommends reading and responding to reviews as part of maintaining your Business Profile.

Add posts and updates

Google Business Profile allows businesses to publish updates, offers and events.

These can be used for things such as:

• New services
• Recent projects
• Company news
• Special offers
• Events
• Seasonal information
• Useful articles from your website

You don’t need to turn your Business Profile into another social network demanding three posts before breakfast.

Use it when you have something worthwhile to say.

For example, if you’ve published a genuinely useful article answering a common customer question, a Business Profile update can provide another route to that information.

Google’s guide to Business Profile posts explains the available types of updates and how they can appear within Search and Maps.

Keep your opening hours accurate

Few things annoy potential customers quite as efficiently as driving to a business that Google says is open only to discover that everybody went home two hours ago.

Keep your normal opening hours accurate and update special hours for bank holidays, Christmas, Easter or other periods when your normal schedule changes.

If your hours change permanently, update the profile promptly.

It is a small piece of maintenance, but an important one.

For businesses without conventional opening hours, make sure the information you provide still accurately reflects when and how customers can contact or visit you.

Use your real business name

Your Business Profile name should represent the genuine name of your business.

Don’t be tempted to turn:

Smith & Co

into:

Smith & Co Plumbers | Best Emergency Plumbing | Boiler Repairs Brighton Sussex

just because those are the searches you’d quite like to appear for.

Adding keywords, locations or services that aren’t genuinely part of the business name may look like an easy optimisation trick, but it puts the profile at odds with Google’s guidelines.

Optimisation should make your business information clearer and more useful — not artificially manipulate it.

Don’t create unnecessary duplicate profiles

One business doesn’t normally need a separate Google Business Profile for every town it serves.

If you’re a service-area business covering Eastbourne, Bexhill, Hastings, Brighton and the surrounding area, creating a fictional office in each town isn’t a local SEO strategy.

It’s just creating fictional offices.

Your website is the better place to develop genuinely useful content around the different services and locations you cover.

Location pages can explain your relationship with a particular area, the services you provide there and why your business is relevant to customers in that location without pretending you’ve suddenly acquired an impressive portfolio of imaginary branch offices.

Check your profile regularly

Google Business Profile isn’t something you optimise once and never look at again.

Businesses change.

Opening hours change. Services change. Photographs become dated. New reviews arrive. Google introduces, changes and removes features.

Make checking your profile part of your normal website and marketing maintenance.

You don’t necessarily need to fiddle with something every week for the sake of looking busy. If the information is correct, leave it correct. The important thing is that somebody is periodically checking it.

The same principle applies to your website. Keeping WordPress updated, checking content and making regular improvements is far better than ignoring everything for several years and eventually discovering half of it belongs in a museum.

My WordPress website care plans are built around exactly that principle: regular maintenance rather than waiting for something to go wrong.

Measure whether it’s working

Google provides performance information for verified Business Profiles.

This can show how people discover your profile and what they do afterwards, including views, clicks and other customer interactions through Google Search and Maps.

You can read Google’s explanation of Business Profile performance.

Rather than obsessing over where you appear for one search performed from your own desk, look at performance over time.

Are more people finding the profile?

Which searches are triggering it?

Are people clicking through to the website?

Are they calling or requesting directions?

Has visibility improved after you’ve added services, improved the profile or collected more reviews?

The objective isn’t simply to make all the little boxes in Google look complete. It’s to generate useful visibility that eventually turns into real enquiries and customers.

Google Business Profile is only one part of local SEO

A well-optimised Google Business Profile can be extremely valuable, but it works best as part of a wider local search strategy.

Your website, service pages, location relevance, reviews, business information, links, content and Business Profile all contribute towards helping Google understand what your business does and where it operates.

Google says that local results are primarily determined by relevance, distance and prominence.

You can’t optimise away physical distance. If somebody is standing in Manchester looking for a nearby web designer, my Eastbourne address isn’t going to magically teleport 250 miles north because I’ve mentioned Manchester twelve times.

What you can do is improve the relevance, completeness and credibility of the information Google has about your business.

Complete your profile. Choose the right categories. Describe your services properly. Add useful photographs. Collect genuine reviews. Respond to customers. Keep your information accurate and support it with a well-structured website.

Your Google Business Profile is one part of that bigger picture. For the wider strategy, read my Complete Guide to Local SEO for Small Businesses, which looks at how your website, Google Business Profile, local content, reviews and other signals can work together to improve your visibility in local searches.

None of it is particularly glamorous.

But, rather like most good SEO, doing the sensible things consistently tends to beat hunting for the latest clever trick.