Google Business Profile: the free tool most small businesses set up badly
- SEO
- Local
For anything local, a dentist, a hotel, a restaurant, a plumber, the box with the map on Google is often more important than your website. It is free, and a surprising number of businesses fill in half of it and forget it exists.
Choose your categories carefully
The main category is the strongest signal you send. Pick the one that most exactly describes what you do, not the broadest one. Then add secondary categories for the other things you really offer. Dentist, with orthodontist as a secondary, is a different message from generic health service.
Fill in everything, then keep it true
Address, phone, website, opening hours including holidays, services, a clear description and attributes such as wheelchair access or languages spoken. When your hours change for Christmas, change them on the profile too. Nothing annoys a customer like arriving at a closed door that Google said was open.
Photos that look like you
Upload real photographs: the entrance so people can find you, the inside, the team, the work. Add a few new ones regularly. Skip the stock images; profiles with genuine photos feel safe to choose.
Reviews, replies and posts
Ask for reviews steadily and reply to all of them. A reply is for the next person reading, not only the reviewer. You can also publish short posts about offers or news, which keep the profile looking alive.
Mistakes we see often
Putting a keyword into the business name, using a virtual address, leaving an old duplicate profile for a previous location, and linking to the home page when a more relevant page exists. Any of these can get a profile suspended or simply ignored.
Check the profile once a month, the same way you would check the post.