Most business owners spend weeks agonizing over their website and about eleven minutes on their Google Business Profile. That's backwards. For a local search, the profile is what shows up first, and for a lot of customers it's the only thing they ever look at.
Someone searching for a plumber on their phone sees a map with three listings, taps one, reads the reviews, and calls. The website never enters the picture. Here's how to make that profile actually work.
Why the Profile Outranks Your Homepage
When Google decides someone is looking for a local business, it shows the map pack before organic results. On a phone, that map pack plus a couple of ads fills the entire first screen.
Your website still matters. It's what convinces someone who's comparing three options, and it's covered in detail in my post on why your website isn't showing up on Google. But the profile is the thing standing between a searcher and your phone number, and it's free.
The Fields Almost Everyone Leaves Empty
Most profiles I look at are maybe 40% complete. These are the ones that get skipped:
- Primary category. This is the single biggest ranking factor you control. "Plumber" and "Plumbing supply store" are different businesses to Google. Pick the one that describes what you mostly do, not the broadest one available.
- Secondary categories. Add the ones that genuinely apply. Do not add nine categories hoping something sticks. Google dilutes profiles that look unfocused.
- Services or products. Each one is a separate entry with its own description. An empty services list is a wasted section on a page that already ranks.
- Hours, including holidays. Wrong hours generate one-star reviews from people who drove to a closed shop. Google also prompts users to report closures, which can suppress your listing.
- Attributes. Wheelchair accessible, women owned, free parking, appointment required. These show up as filters in Maps.
- Service areas. If you travel to customers, list the cities. A Lodi business that also works Stockton and Galt should say so.
Photos Do More Than You Think
Profiles with photos get meaningfully more clicks than profiles without, and a profile whose newest photo is three years old reads as a business that might not exist anymore.
You don't need a photographer. You need a phone and a habit:
| Photo type | What to shoot | How often |
|---|---|---|
| Exterior | The storefront from the street, so people recognize it while driving | Once, reshoot if you resign |
| Interior | Where customers actually stand or sit | Twice a year |
| Team | Real staff, not stock | When staff changes |
| Work | Finished jobs, products, before and after | Monthly |
Monthly is the part that matters. Two photos a month beats forty photos uploaded once.
Reviews: Recency Beats Volume
A business with 40 reviews and one from last week usually outperforms a business with 200 reviews where the newest is from 2024. Google treats review recency as a freshness signal, and customers read it the same way.
Respond to all of them, including the good ones, in a sentence or two. Respond to the bad ones without arguing. A calm, specific reply to a one-star review does more for the next reader than the review itself does against you.
Posts and Q&A Are Free Real Estate
Google Posts are short updates that appear on your profile. Seasonal offers, a new service, holiday hours. They expire after about a week, so this is a small recurring task, not a project.
Q&A is the part nobody uses correctly: anyone can ask a question on your profile, and anyone can answer, including a competitor or a confused stranger. You are allowed to post your own questions and answer them. Seed it with the five things customers actually ask you on the phone. Do this before someone else fills the space with a wrong answer.
What Does Not Work
- Keyword stuffing your business name. "Joe's Plumbing Lodi Emergency 24 Hour Drain" is a guideline violation and a competitor can report it. Suspensions are a real and annoying thing to undo.
- A fake address. Virtual offices and a relative's house get profiles suspended. If you work from home and travel to customers, hide the address and set service areas instead.
- Buying reviews. Google is better at spotting these than the people selling them claim, and a filtered review purge takes your legitimate ones with it sometimes.
Start With the Profile
Your Google Business Profile is the highest return per hour of any marketing task available to a local business, and it costs nothing but attention. Complete every field, add two photos a month, ask for reviews, and answer the questions people actually ask.
If your profile is already in decent shape and you're still not showing up, the problem is usually somewhere else in the local SEO checklist, most often citations or the website itself. Fix the profile first anyway. It's the cheapest thing on the list.
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