Optimise Your Google Business Profile and Get More Enquiries

Open Google and type in a service followed by your nearest town. A plumber, a dentist, a solicitor, a cleaning company. Before the regular search results even appear, three businesses show up in a highlighted map section at the top of the page. Someone searching for what you offer is seeing that map pack before they see anything else. If your business isn’t in it, or if your listing looks noticeably thinner than the ones that are, you’re effectively invisible for that search, regardless of how long you’ve been trading or how good the actual service is.

Most businesses have a Google Business Profile at this point. The problem is that most of them are sitting at somewhere between half-finished and barely-touched, set up years ago, never looked at since, doing a fraction of the work they could be doing. The gap between a profile that’s passively present and one that’s actively generating enquiries is surprisingly wide, and most of what determines which side a business falls on comes down to a small number of specific things that are worth spending a few hours sorting properly.

This guide goes through those things step by step, with enough specificity to be actually actionable rather than a list of vague suggestions.

Why the Map Pack Is Where Most Local Business Gets Decided

What Happens When Someone Searches for Your Service

The map pack that appears at the top of local search results isn’t just one option among many. For most location-based searches, it’s where attention goes first. The three businesses in that pack are prominently displayed with star ratings, distance, opening hours, and a direct click-to-call option. Below them are the organic website results. Below those might be more websites, more paid ads, more results. But the decision-making for a lot of local searches is happening in that top section, before the visitor has scrolled at all.

Getting into those three positions, and staying there, is what Google Business Profile optimisation is fundamentally about. The factors Google weighs aren’t mysterious, though a lot of businesses haven’t engaged with them seriously. How complete the profile is. How active it appears. How many recent reviews it has. How well the profile’s information matches what the business website says. How closely the business category matches what someone searched for. Each of these can be worked on, and the cumulative effect of working on all of them tends to be meaningfully better map pack performance over weeks and months.

What Makes One Profile Rank Above Another

Google’s local algorithm weighs three broad things: relevance to what someone searched, how close the business is to where they’re searching from, and how prominent or well-established it looks to Google. Proximity is genuinely out of a business’s control. Relevance and prominence, though, are shaped almost entirely by how much attention has been paid to the profile. Two similar businesses sitting a similar distance from a searcher will rank quite differently if one has a complete, active profile and the other has barely been touched since setup day.

Step 1: Get Your Business Categories Right

Why the Primary Category Is the Most Important Field on the Profile

Of everything in a Google Business Profile, the primary category is probably the single field that has the largest individual impact on which searches the profile gets matched to. Google uses it to determine relevance, and choosing a category that’s too broad or only loosely accurate quietly limits which searches the profile shows up for.

Think of it this way: a plumber categorised under Contractor rather than Plumber is quietly missing most of the searches their actual customers are making. Google’s category taxonomy is longer and more specific than most business owners expect, and there’s almost always a better option than whatever was chosen at first setup. Taking ten minutes to search through the available options and find the closest match is worth doing properly, because the category is one of the primary signals Google uses to decide which searches a profile is relevant to.

Secondary Categories and Why They’re Worth Adding

Beyond the primary, secondary categories can cover the other things the business offers. A dental practice with General Dentist as its primary might add Cosmetic Dentist and Teeth Whitening Service. A solicitor’s firm might add specific practice area categories alongside the main Solicitor listing. The idea is that each relevant secondary category widens the range of searches the profile appears for, and adding them well rarely causes problems for the primary category signal, as long as the secondaries are genuinely accurate rather than aspirational.

How to Update Your Categories in the GBP Dashboard

Log into your Google Business Profile, go to Edit Profile, and look for the Business Category field. The primary category is set there and you can add secondaries in the same section. Type a few letters of the service and Google will suggest matching options from its own list. You can’t create custom categories; you have to choose from the existing taxonomy, which is why the searching step matters. Some categories are more specific than you might expect, and finding them makes a real difference.

Step 2: Fill In Everything the Profile Allows

What a Completeness Score Actually Reflects

Google doesn’t publish a completeness percentage for profiles the way some platforms do, but how the algorithm behaves makes it fairly clear that a more complete profile tends to show up more often than a sparse one. When fields are left empty, Google has less to evaluate when deciding which searches the profile is relevant to. The person viewing the profile also has less to work with when deciding whether to call. Either way, the profile ends up doing less work than it should be.

The sections that are most commonly left blank are the ones that require a bit more thought: the business description, the services section, the products section if applicable, and the attributes section that covers things like whether the premises are accessible or whether free parking is available. Opening hours get done usually. The booking link, which lets people request an appointment directly from the profile, often doesn’t.

The Sections Worth Prioritising

The business description field allows up to 750 characters, and most businesses either leave it blank or fill it with something generic that doesn’t include any of the specific services or the location. The description isn’t prominently displayed to all searchers but it does contribute to the relevance signals Google uses for matching. Writing a description that naturally mentions the main services offered and the areas served is a small thing that takes twenty minutes and pays off over time.

The services section can list individual services with names and optional descriptions. For a business like a physiotherapy clinic or a plumber, listing specific services by name, rather than just one broad category, helps the profile match more granular searches. Someone searching for knee pain physiotherapy is a more qualified searcher than someone searching for physiotherapy in general, and a profile that lists knee physiotherapy as a service is more likely to be shown for that specific search.

Writing a Description That Contributes to Relevance

Keep it specific rather than generic. The opening sentence should say what the business does and where. Include the main services or specialisations. Mention the type of client if that’s relevant. Something like: “Independent family dental practice in [town], offering general dentistry, cosmetic treatments including teeth whitening and veneers, and Invisalign clear aligners. Accepting new patients.” That tells Google something specific and tells the viewer something useful. A sentence like “We are a friendly and professional dental practice committed to patient care” does neither.

Step 3: Add Photos Regularly, Not Just Once

Why Photos Matter Beyond Just Looking Good

There’s a consistent pattern across local business profiles: the ones with more photos, and more recent ones, tend to get clicked more and appear more prominently in results. Google has published data on this and it tracks with what you’d expect from experience. A profile with fifteen photos, all uploaded a couple of years ago and nothing added since, is sending a signal about how much attention the business gives its online presence. That signal reaches Google, and it reaches the person viewing the profile, and neither reads it particularly favourably.

The photos that do the most work on a local business profile are the ones that answer the questions a first-time visitor would have before booking or turning up. What does the entrance or front of the building look like so I can find it? What does it look like inside? Who are the people I’ll actually be dealing with? For a trades business, photos of completed jobs answer a different but equally important question about the quality of work. None of these require a professional photographer; they just need to be clear, reasonably well-lit, and actually representative of the business.

Frequency Matters as Much as Quality

Uploading one professional photoshoot’s worth of images when the profile is set up and then never adding another is a common pattern, and a limiting one. Google notices activity, or the lack of it. Adding two or three new photos each week, not professionally shot necessarily, just genuine images from the business, signals consistent activity in a way that a one-time upload of fifty photos doesn’t. A plumber documenting completed jobs. A restaurant photographing the weekly specials. A salon posting before-and-after shots with client consent. These don’t require equipment or editing; they require the habit.

A Practical Note on Photo Formats and Sizes

On the technical side: Google wants images at least 720 by 720 pixels in JPG or PNG format, under 5MB. Any photo taken on a modern phone meets those specs without editing, so the format question is rarely the issue. The quality problems that make GBP photos look unprofessional almost always come from low light, which flattens everything and makes spaces look uninviting, or from camera shake, usually just a matter of steadying the phone and taking a breath rather than firing off a quick shot mid-stride. Neither problem requires new equipment. Just a bit more deliberateness before pressing the button.

Step 4: Build a Review Process That Runs Without Thinking About It

Why Recency Matters as Much as Volume

Something that surprises a lot of business owners: review recency matters as much as total count in terms of local ranking impact. A profile sitting on 80 reviews that all came in between one and three years ago, with nothing since, tends to rank less well than a similar profile with 40 reviews where a handful arrived in the last couple of months. The logic isn’t hard to follow; Google is treating recent reviews as evidence that the business is currently operating and currently satisfying customers, not just that it did so at some point in the past.

The businesses that hold strong map pack positions almost always have some version of a review process running consistently. It doesn’t need to involve software or automations. The most basic version that actually works: a text to the customer within a day of the interaction, with a direct link to the review page rather than asking them to find it themselves. Within 24 hours matters because the experience is still fresh and they haven’t moved on to whatever fills the next day. Leave it a week and even a genuinely happy customer who fully intended to leave a review quietly doesn’t get round to it.

How to Ask Without Making It Awkward

The ask works best when it’s direct and low-pressure. Something like: “Thanks for today, really glad it went well. If you have a minute, an honest Google review would genuinely help us out. Here’s the link: [link].” That’s it. No instructions, no script, no obligation language. The word “honest” tends to produce slightly more authentic reviews than asking for a “positive” one, and it reads less transactional. A QR code printed on a receipt or displayed on the counter serves the same purpose without any verbal ask at all, and for businesses that do a high volume of transactions it can quietly generate a steady drip of reviews with almost no ongoing effort.

Responding to Reviews: The Part Most Businesses Skip

Responding to reviews, including the positive ones that don’t obviously demand a reply, feeds into the profile’s activity signals. For good reviews, something brief and genuine works fine; mentioning a detail from the actual review rather than a generic thank-you tends to feel less automated and doesn’t take longer to write. Negative reviews are where most businesses either overreact or go quiet, and honestly both cause problems. Someone reading the profile isn’t just reading the complaint; they’re watching how the business handles it. A reply that acknowledges what happened without getting defensive, and offers to sort things out, often lands better on a prospective customer than the original negative review lands badly.

Step 5: Populate the Q&A Section Before Someone Else Does

How the Q&A Section Works and Why Most Businesses Ignore It

The Questions and Answers section on a Google Business Profile can be answered by anyone, not just the business owner. That means if a question appears on a profile and the business hasn’t answered it, the answer that shows up might come from a member of the public whose information is incomplete, outdated, or simply wrong. For questions about parking, pricing, services offered, or whether appointments are necessary, a wrong answer appearing on the profile can mean lost enquiries before a prospective customer has even made contact.

The fix is straightforward: ask the most common questions yourself and answer them yourself, before anyone else does. Log into the profile as the business, navigate to the Q&A section, and add questions using the Ask a Question option as if you were a customer. Then answer them from the business account. This pre-populates the section with accurate, useful information and reduces the chance of unhelpful community answers appearing.

What Questions to Include

Five or six well-chosen questions is about all it takes to make the section genuinely useful. Think through what comes up in real conversations before someone commits to booking: parking, rough pricing range, whether walk-ins work or booking is needed, what to expect at a first appointment, accepted payment methods. For healthcare or legal businesses specifically, questions about qualifications or professional registration tend to surface because people want reassurance. Getting in early with an accurate answer is far better than hoping a well-meaning but wrong community member doesn’t get there first.

Monitoring the Section Regularly

Once the section is populated, check it every couple of weeks. New questions can appear from real customers at any time, and if they go unanswered for more than a day or two the chances of a community member providing an unhelpful answer increase. Setting up notifications in the Google Business Profile app means new questions come through to a phone rather than requiring a separate check. It takes thirty seconds to answer a question when a notification arrives; it takes considerably more effort to manage the aftermath of a wrong answer sitting publicly on the profile for weeks.

Step 6: Use Google Posts to Show the Profile Is Alive

What Posts Do for the Profile

Google Posts appear on the business profile and in some search results, and they signal to Google’s algorithm that the profile is being actively managed. A profile with no posts from the last month or two looks dormant compared to one that’s been publishing regularly. The direct ranking impact of individual posts is modest, but the cumulative signal of consistent posting activity over time contributes to how prominently the profile is shown.

Posts also provide something useful to someone viewing the profile: current information about what the business is doing, offering, or has available. A restaurant posting weekly specials. A solicitor posting about a recent change in legislation that affects their clients. A trades business posting completed project photos. These give a reason to engage with the profile beyond just checking the address and opening hours.

What to Post and How Often

The three post types worth using regularly are Updates for general content and news, Offers for anything time-limited or promotional, and Events for specific things happening at a particular time. Updates is the most flexible and works for almost any business. Offers posts have a visible expiry and display prominently when someone views the profile. Events are useful for launches, workshops, open days, or anything with a defined date.

Posting once or twice a week is a manageable rhythm that keeps the profile active without becoming a significant ongoing commitment. Each post should include at least one image and a call to action. The call to action can be as simple as “call us today” or “book online” with the relevant link. Posts that have no prompt for the viewer to do anything tend to generate less action than posts that make the next step explicit.

Putting the Checklist Together

What a Fully Optimised Profile Looks Like in Practice

A profile that’s doing everything in this guide has a specific primary category that matches the main service accurately, secondary categories covering the other things the business offers, a description that names the services and location, all hours including special dates, a booking link that actually works, photos added in the past week or two, a review from the past few weeks, Q&A populated with the most common questions, and at least one post from the past seven days. That’s it. Not a huge undertaking, but considerably more than most profiles have.

The time investment for getting to that state from a half-finished profile is probably three or four hours spread across a week or two. The maintenance after that, keeping photos and posts coming, responding to reviews, checking Q&A occasionally, is maybe 30 to 45 minutes a week. For most local businesses, the number of additional enquiries that come from a profile doing all of this properly versus one doing the bare minimum is meaningful enough that the time is well spent.

How Long Before the Improvements Show Up

Category changes and profile completeness improvements tend to affect rankings within a few weeks rather than months. Google re-evaluates profiles fairly regularly, and a meaningful change to the primary category or a batch of new photos and services added can shift map pack position noticeably within three to four weeks. Review recency improvements take a bit longer to compound, because building a steady stream of recent reviews requires the review process to be running consistently for a couple of months before the signal really builds up.

The profiles that see the sharpest improvements tend to be the ones that were visibly incomplete before, where the gap between current state and a properly optimised state is large. A profile that was missing categories, had no photos, no recent reviews, no posts, and a blank description can see significant ranking changes relatively quickly once all of those are addressed. A profile that was already doing most things adequately might see more modest movement from the same effort.

Want help getting your Google Business Profile properly optimised? Creative Sweet provides local SEO and GBP management for businesses that want more visibility and more enquiries from local search.