A Google Business Profile is free, it shows up on Google Maps and in local search results before many websites do, and most businesses have either never claimed theirs or filled it out halfway and forgotten about it.
When someone searches for your service near them, Google shows a Maps Pack at the top of the page with three businesses, a star rating, a phone number, and a directions button. The people searching those terms are ready to call someone. If your profile isn’t optimised, you won't appear in those results, and a competitor who did the work is getting the call instead.
Most of it comes down to doing the basics properly and keeping everything consistent. The steps below cover exactly what that looks like.
What Does Optimising Your Google Business Profile Actually Mean?
Optimising your Google Business Profile (formerly known as Google My Business) means claiming your listing, completing every section, keeping your business information accurate across the internet, and staying active with relevant posts and images.
A fully optimised profile helps you show up in local search results when people nearby search for what you do. It is one of the most effective local SEO strategies available, and it’s completely free.
Google uses your profile to understand who you are, where you operate, and what services you provide. The more clearly your profile communicates that, and the more Google can verify it across other websites, the higher your local ranking. Businesses that do this properly start showing up within weeks. Some rank in the Maps Pack within days.
Where Your Profile Actually Shows Up
Your Google Business Profile isn't limited to one spot. A fully optimised profile can appear in:
Google Maps
when someone searches for a business near them
The Maps Pack
the block of three businesses that sits above the regular search results
The Knowledge Panel
when someone searches your business name directly
Mobile search results
where most local searches happen now
Each of those is a different moment someone might find you, which is exactly why every section of the profile is worth filling in properly.
Google scrapes the internet constantly. If your business has been mentioned anywhere online, there’s a good chance Google has already created a profile for you. That profile can show up in search results even if you haven’t touched it. But without claiming it, you have no control over what it says, and in a competitive market, an unclaimed and unoptimised business listing almost certainly won’t rank where it counts.
Claiming your GBP listing is the first step, and until you have done that, everything else in this guide is pretty much irrelevant.
To claim it, search for your business name on Google Maps. If a profile exists, you’ll see an “Own this business?” link. Click it and follow the verification steps. If no profile exists, create one through the Google Business Profile homepage.
Verification has become more rigorous over the years. Google now routinely asks for utility bills, a video recording of the outside of your building, and proof of signage. You need to ensure you do this properly to protect your listing.
It may still show up in local search results. But without optimisation, especially in a competitive industry, you’re unlikely to rank where it counts. An unclaimed profile is the starting point, not the finish line.
Name
Use your actual registered name. Check the ABN lookup to confirm how the business is legally registered, then search for how it already appears on other websites. If there’s an established version across multiple platforms, keep it consistent.
Do not stuff keywords or locations into your name. Keyword stuffing is the number one cause of profile suspension. Use the legal name, keep it clean, and always check with the client before making any changes.
Primary and Secondary Categories
Your primary category is one of the strongest local ranking signals in your Google Business Profile, and it's worth getting exactly right. Look up the main keyword you want to rank for and check what category the top-ranking profiles in the Maps Pack are using. Match that.
You can add secondary categories on top of your primary one, up to ten in total. But add them only if they're genuinely relevant to what the business does. Half-relevant secondary categories dilute your profile's focus, so when in doubt, leave them out.
Most business descriptions are a waste of the space Google gives you.
You get 750 characters, and that's the limit, so every sentence needs to be doing something. The business description is one of the few places where you can tell Google, in plain language, what your business does and where it does it. Use it properly.
Lead with your main keyword and service area in the first sentence. Something like "We're a licensed electrician on the Sunshine Coast" or "We're a skin cancer clinic in Morningside" tells Google exactly what you do and where you do it before anything else. From there, cover your services, the areas you work in, and anything that makes the business worth choosing.
You don’t need to open with your brand name. Google already knows it, and that space is better used communicating relevance. If the business operates multiple locations, keep each profile focused on its own suburbs rather than trying to cover everything in a single description.
Don’t load the description with relevant keywords in a way that reads awkwardly. Write it the way you’d explain the business to a potential customer, then work the keywords in naturally. The goal is a description that’s useful to a reader and clear to Google at the same time.
Google rewards complete profiles. Businesses with complete information rank higher in local search results. Go through every available field and fill it in.
| Field | What to do |
|---|---|
| Opening date | Check your ABN lookup to find your registration date. Getting it right means Google displays "X years in business" on the front end, which builds trust with potential customers. |
| Phone number | Use the correct number. If a tracking number is in place, use it to measure how many calls your Google business listing is actually driving. |
| Website URL | Link to the correct landing page, not just the homepage. Add a UTM string to track exactly which traffic the profile is driving. |
| Social media accounts | Add every branded social media account you have. Google uses these to verify consistency across platforms and build trust in your business information. |
| Service areas | Add your head office address as the primary location, then list every surrounding suburb you want to rank for. |
| Business hours | Make sure these are correct and keep them up to date. Inaccurate business hours generate negative reviews, lose customer trust, and cause you to miss time-sensitive local searches. |
| Booking or appointment link | If you take bookings or appointments online, add a direct link to that page rather than your general contact page. A profile that lets someone book in two clicks converts more of the people who find you. |
| More | Fill in everything relevant for your category, including attributes, accessibility features, and payment types. The more complete your profile, the more Google can do with it. |
Google will automatically pull in your primary and secondary categories. But you need to manually add the specific services your business offers underneath those categories.
Go through all your services and add each one. Ideally, every service listed in your Google business profile should have a corresponding page on your website. If those pages don’t exist yet, add the services to the profile now and build the pages as soon as possible.
Write a description for each service by saying what the service is, what it includes, and where it’s available. If the business sells products, add those too. Every completed section gives Google more to work with and gives potential customers more reason to choose you over a competitor.
Businesses with photos on their Google Business Profile receive 42% more direction requests than those without, according to Google's own data. That gap exists because photos do two things at once: they show potential customers what to expect, and they signal to Google that the profile is active and worth ranking. A profile with no images looks abandoned, and most people will scroll straight past it.
What to Upload
Start with the essentials:
Cover photo (a professional exterior shot or team photo)
Logo
Interior photos
Team photos
Photos of your services or completed work
Images that connect your business to the suburbs you serve
Don't use stock photos. Ensure the images you upload are real images of your actual business, team, and work; they perform better and build more trust. You also need to name every image file properly before uploading, and include the business name, service, and suburb in the filename.
How to Optimise Them
Before you upload anything, rename your image files to include your service and location, rather than leaving them as whatever your phone or camera assigned them. Google reads image metadata, so a file named "emergency-plumber-sunshine-coast.jpg" tells a clearer story than "IMG_4823.jpg." Beyond that, keep adding new photos over time. A profile that regularly gets fresh images appears active to Google, and active profiles tend to rank better.
Citations and NAP Consistency
A citation is any mention of your business name, address, and phone number (NAP) on another website. Directory listings, review sites, social profiles, industry sites, all of them count.
Google fact-checks your Google Business Profile against these other sources. It checks True Local, Hot Frog, Yellow Pages, and dozens of other online directories. When your NAP is identical across all of those and consistent with your website, Google starts to build what’s called an entity in its database. Your business becomes a recognised, trusted source of information in your area, and that trust flows through to your search rankings.
According to BrightLocal, 80% of consumers lose trust in a local business when they find incorrect or inconsistent contact details online. Small inconsistencies cost you more than just rankings. Audit your existing listings, make them consistent, and set up at least 5 business profiles and directory listings to start.
Mirror on Your Website
Your website is a confirmed ranking factor for your Google Business Profile.
Every service listed in your GBP should have a matching page on your website. Every suburb listed as a service area should have a matching geo page. When Google sees the same information in two places, it gets a stronger confidence signal about what you do and where you do it.
Adding schema markup to your website tells Google the same information in a structured format that it can read directly. It’s another layer of verification that compounds over time, helping your profile rank higher in relevant searches.
The goal is consistency across three places: your Google Business Profile, your website, and every other business listing online. When all three say the same thing, your local SEO gets meaningfully stronger.
Google Posts work differently from social media posts. On Instagram or Facebook, you're building an audience, whereas on Google, you're showing Google what you do and where you do it.
Posting for its own sake won’t do much. But if you post regularly around your services and locations, you build relevance over time and start showing up for more relevant searches.
What to Post
The most effective posts talk about what you do and where you do it, and the more specific, the better. A plumber on the Sunshine Coast deals with completely different problems in Buderim, where you’ve got heavy tree coverage and damp, than they do down at Kings Beach in Caloundra.
A builder working out in the Hinterland is dealing with steep blocks and boulders. The same builder working in a high-density suburb has an entirely different set of challenges. Each of those differences is worth a post because each one builds relevance for a specific area and search.
If you know your business well, the content is already there. Work through your services one by one, then consider how each applies differently across the areas you serve. You’ll find you never really run out of things to write about.
How Often
Posting weekly is the safest default, and it's what most active, well-ranked profiles tend to do. That said, for businesses in low-competition areas, a complete and well-optimised profile will often hold its position with less frequent posting. Posting becomes more important the moment you're in a competitive industry or trying to rank in a larger city, where staying visibly active is part of how you keep your edge over everyone else doing the basics.
One well-written post about a specific service in a specific suburb, done consistently, is worth more than a flurry of generic updates.
Getting More Reviews
The reviews you get on your Google profile are important to how your profile performs, but not necessarily in the way most people expect. We have not seen a direct correlation between the number of Google reviews and search rankings. But we have seen the content of reviews make a difference. When customers mention specific services or locations in their reviews, your profile starts triggering for those relevant searches.
The easiest way to get more reviews is to ask for them, ideally straight after you've delivered a good experience. Make it as easy as possible for the customer:
Send a direct review link by email or SMS rather than asking someone to go find your profile themselves
Ask in person at the end of a job or appointment, then follow up with the link
Encourage customers to mention the specific service they received and where they're located, since that kind of detail is worth more than a five-star rating with no text
Responding to Reviews
Positive reviews build trust with potential customers. Negative reviews, if left unaddressed, can damage your reputation and reduce the number of clicks and calls your profile receives. Responding to reviews consistently is good reputation management practice and signals to Google that your business is active and engaged.
Positive Reviews
When responding to positive reviews, thank the customer personally and reference what they mentioned specifically. If they praised how fast you turned up, mention that in your reply rather than sending a generic thank you.
Negative Reviews
When responding to negative reviews, stay calm and professional. Acknowledge their experience, apologise if it's warranted, and offer to resolve the issue offline rather than getting into the details publicly. A thoughtful response can soften a bad review and shows everyone else reading it that you take complaints seriously.
A Note on Q&A
Some older guides to Google Business Profile optimisation will tell you to proactively populate your own Q&A section with common questions. Google has since removed the public Q&A feature from profiles, so that advice no longer applies. If you come across it elsewhere, you can skip it.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
- Leaving the profile half-finished after claiming it
- Choosing a category that's close enough rather than exact
- Inconsistent NAP details across your website and other directories
- Ignoring reviews, especially negative ones
- Letting business hours go out of date, particularly around holidays
- Using stock photos instead of real images of the business
- Setting it up once and never posting or updating it again
Fixing these is usually quick, and the impact tends to show up faster than people expect.
Why It All Works Better When Everything Lines Up
The core of what makes a Google Business Profile work hasn't changed much in nearly 20 years. Tell Google what you do and where you do it, then back that up consistently across your website and every other listing online. When all three say the same thing, Google starts to recognise your business as a legitimate entity in its database, and that recognition is what drives better local search visibility over time.
The basics in this guide are genuinely doable on your own. Where it gets more involved is the advanced stuff, property stacks, geo networks, schema markup, and ongoing content. That's where having someone who's done it hundreds of times can make all the difference.
Get Your Google Business Profile Optimised
Setting up and optimising a Google Business Profile properly takes time, and keeping it active takes consistency. We do this for local businesses across the Sunshine Coast, Brisbane, and Gold Coast every day, both as a one-time setup for businesses that just need it done right and as an ongoing service for those who want someone managing it long term.
If your profile is sitting there half-finished, unclaimed, or just not showing up the way it should, that’s exactly the kind of thing we fix. Reach out to the team, and we’ll take a look at where things are and what it’ll take to get you ranking.
Reach Out To The Team