Google Business Profile Optimisation Checklist

Get the primary category right

This is the highest-leverage field in the entire profile. Look at what the businesses currently ranking in your map pack use, and be specific: "Emergency plumber" and "Plumber" compete for different searches. Add secondary categories for genuine services, not aspirational ones.

List services individually

Not one entry called "Plumbing". Each service gets its own entry with a description. These are matched against search queries directly, and it's one of the most under-used fields in the profile.

Set the service area honestly

Listing forty suburbs does not extend your reach; proximity to the searcher still dominates. Set the area you genuinely serve. Reaching further is a job for suburb landing pages, not the profile.

Complete every attribute

Wheelchair accessible, appointment required, women-led, on-site services, payment methods. These appear as filters in Google Maps, so a missing attribute can remove you from a filtered result entirely.

Fix your opening hours, including holidays

Special hours for public holidays matter more than they seem. Google surfaces "temporarily closed" and "hours might differ" labels that visibly reduce clicks.

Add photos on a schedule, not once

Recency is a signal. A profile with photos added monthly outperforms one with forty photos uploaded on setup day. Geotagging does nothing; consistency does.

Build a review habit

Recency and volume both count, and recency is where most businesses lose. Twenty-five reviews across the last year beats forty from three years ago. See how to get more Google reviews for a system that doesn't breach the guidelines.

Match your website to your profile

If the profile lists a service, there should be a page on your site about it. This alignment is a reliable relevance signal and it's missing on most sites we audit. Our local SEO service treats the two as one job for that reason.