Google Business Profile Optimisation Guide

Google Business Profile optimisation is the single most valuable piece of free SEO a local business can do. The profile is what appears in the map results and on the right-hand panel when someone searches your name, and for a lot of trades and local services it generates more calls than the website does.

Optimising it is not complicated. It is mostly a matter of filling every field accurately, picking the right category, avoiding the handful of guideline breaches that get profiles suspended, and then earning reviews steadily. This guide covers the profile itself. The wider picture of ranking in your area is in local SEO: how to rank in your area, and where the profile sits in your overall priorities is covered in SEO for small businesses.

How Google ranks Business Profiles

Google says local results are based on three things: relevance, distance and prominence. Their own explanation is on the how Google determines local ranking help page.

Distance is the one people find frustrating. If someone in Rochester searches "electrician", a competent electrician based in Rochester will usually outrank a better one based in Maidstone, and no amount of optimisation changes that. What you can do is make sure that for searchers near you, and for searches that name your town, your profile is the most relevant and the most trusted.

Google Business Profile optimisation, field by field

Work through these in order. The early ones carry the most weight.

1. Business name

Use your real-world name, exactly as it appears on your signage, invoices and website. Google's guidelines for representing your business are explicit that marketing taglines, locations and keywords do not belong in the name.

"Smith Plumbing" is correct. "Smith Plumbing - Emergency Plumber Chatham 24/7" is a breach. It may rank better for a while, and then it gets suspended, often after a competitor reports it. It is not worth the risk.

2. Primary category

This is the most important ranking field you control. The guidelines ask you to choose categories that describe what your business is, not what it has, and to use as few as possible.

Choose the most specific accurate option. "Kitchen remodeler" beats "Contractor" if that is what you do. To check what your competitors chose, look at the categories shown on their profiles in Maps, or use a free browser extension that reveals them.

3. Secondary categories

Add one or two more only if they describe a distinct part of the business. A garage that does MOTs and repairs might use "Auto repair shop" as primary and "MOT testing centre" as a secondary. Ten loosely related categories dilute relevance rather than adding to it.

4. Address or service area

If customers visit you, show the address. If you travel to customers and they never come to you, you are a service-area business: remove the address and set service areas instead. The rules for that, including the limit of 20 service areas, are covered in local SEO for service-area businesses.

Never use a virtual office, a PO box or a co-working desk you do not actually staff. These are listed as ineligible and they are a common cause of suspension.

5. Phone number and website

Use a local number that reaches the business directly. Link the website field to the most relevant page: usually the homepage for a single-location business, or the location page if you have several branches.

6. Services and products

Fill the services list properly. Each service you add is another relevance signal, and the list shows to people comparing you with competitors. Write short, plain descriptions of what each service involves. Do not pad it with town names.

7. Description

You have roughly 750 characters. Say what you do, who for, where, and what makes you different, in plain language. It is read by people far more than it is weighed by the ranking system, so write it as a sales sentence, not a keyword list.

8. Hours

Accurate hours matter because Google may show you as closed. Add special hours for bank holidays and Christmas. A customer who drives to a locked door leaves a review about it.

9. Photos

Upload real photos of your work, your premises if you have them, your vehicles, and you or your team. Stock images add nothing. A useful rhythm is a few new photos a month, taken on jobs you have finished.

10. Attributes

Attributes such as wheelchair access, women-led or online appointments appear as small labels. Tick the ones that are true.

Reviews: the prominence lever you can actually pull

Reviews are the part of prominence most within your reach. Quantity, recency and the content of reviews all matter, and so does whether you reply.

The rules here are strict and they changed in the UK in 2025, so they get their own article: how to get more Google reviews within the rules. Short version: ask every genuine customer, never pay or reward people for reviews, and never filter who you ask based on whether they were happy.

Reply to every review, good and bad. A calm, specific reply to a one-star review often persuades the next reader more than ten five-star reviews do.

Posts and updates

Posts are short updates with an image and a button. They expire from prominence quickly, so they work best as a light habit: a finished project, a seasonal offer, a new service. Treat them as conversion content rather than a ranking tactic.

The website behind the profile

The profile and the website reinforce each other. Google reads your site to judge relevance, so the page you link to should clearly state what you do and where. Your name, address and phone number on the site should match the profile character for character. That consistency across the web is covered in local citations and NAP consistency.

If enquiries arrive but do not convert, the profile is doing its job and the website is not. Website trust signals covers what persuades a visitor once they click through.

How to measure whether it is working

Business Profile has its own performance view showing searches, views, calls, direction requests and website clicks. Check it monthly, not daily. Two things to bear in mind:

• Website clicks from the profile should be tagged so they appear separately in analytics. Add UTM parameters to the website link (for example utm_source=google and utm_medium=organic and utm_campaign=gbp) so you can see what those visitors do. How to track website conversions in GA4 covers the conversion side.
• Calls are the metric most local businesses care about and the one most often ignored. If you can, use a phone system that tells you which calls came from the profile.

Verification: getting the profile live

A profile does nothing until it is verified. Google chooses the verification methods offered for each business, and at the time of writing (October 2026) they can include a video recording or live video call, a phone call or text, email, or a postcard, depending on the business type, location and history. Recorded video verification is now common: a short, continuous, unedited recording showing the location or your vehicle and tools, signage, and proof that you manage the business, such as opening up the premises or logging in to the business's own software. Google's verification help page lists the current options, and the video recording guidance sets out what the recording needs to show.

Three practical points:

• Prepare before recording. Have signage, branded vehicles, tools of the trade and a utility bill or business document ready. A video that wanders around looking for evidence is more likely to be rejected.
• Do not edit details during verification. Changing the name, category or address while a review is pending can restart it.
• Expect to re-verify after big changes. A move, a name change or a burst of edits can trigger another check.

A worked example: setting up a profile from scratch

Say a newly self-employed electrician in Gillingham wants a profile. A sensible sequence:

1. Create the profile with the registered trading name only, for example "Jones Electrical Services", not "Jones Electrician Gillingham Medway"
2. Choose "Electrician" as the primary category; add nothing else unless there is a genuinely separate line of business
3. Set it up as a service-area business, hide the home address, and list the towns actually served
4. Add services one by one: consumer unit replacement, EV charger installation, EICRs, rewiring, fault finding
5. Write a plain 600 to 700 character description of who they work for and where
6. Upload ten real photos from recent jobs and the van
7. Verify, then ask the first ten customers for reviews over the following weeks
8. Link the website field with a UTM-tagged URL so profile visits can be measured

Nothing in that list costs money. Most of it takes an afternoon. The step people skip is the last one, and it is the one that tells you whether the profile is producing work.

Profile vs website: who does which job

The two are not alternatives. The profile wins the first glance; the website wins the comparison that follows.

Common Google Business Profile mistakes

1. Keywords or town names added to the business name
2. A generic primary category chosen because it sounded broader
3. A service-area business showing a home address
4. Duplicate profiles left over from an old address or an old agency
5. Reviews requested only from customers who said they were happy
6. Making lots of edits in one sitting, which can trigger re-verification
7. Letting an agency create the profile under their own Google account, so you do not own it

That last one matters more than it sounds. Make sure the profile is owned by a Google account you control and that anyone helping you is added as a manager, not as the owner.

Where to go next

If you want this done for you, or checked by someone who does it regularly, the SEO service covers Business Profile set-up and clean-up alongside the website work. I am based in Chatham and do a lot of this for businesses across Kent and Medway, but the guidelines are the same wherever you trade in the UK. The local business website SEO showcase sets out how the profile and the site are worked on together.