In short: Own your profile, use your real name, pick the right category, keep hours and photos fresh, post weekly, collect real reviews and keep your details the same everywhere.
Profiles with complete, accurate information get far more attention: one study found they get seven times more clicks. Most of the work is not complicated. It just has to be done properly, and then kept up. Go through this list with your own profile open.
1. Make sure you own the profile
You, the business owner, should be the primary owner of your Business Profile. Agencies and staff should be added as managers. If a former employee or an old agency controls it, request ownership through Google before you do anything else. Never hand your Google password to anyone.
2. Use your real business name
Your profile name should match your signage, website and bills exactly. Adding keywords or locations that aren’t part of your real name (“Sharma Sweets Best Bakery Kanpur”) breaks Google’s guidelines and can get the profile suspended.
3. Choose the most specific primary category
The primary category is one of the strongest relevance signals. Pick the most specific one that describes your core business, the way customers search for it: “Dentist” rather than “Medical clinic”, “Jewellery store” rather than “Store”.
4. Add secondary categories, carefully
Add secondary categories only for things you genuinely offer as a main line of business. A bakery that also runs a café should add “Café”. Don’t add categories just to appear in more searches.
5. Get the address and map pin exactly right
Check that the pin sits on your actual entrance, especially if you’re inside a market, mall or complex. If you travel to customers and don’t serve people at your address, set up a service area and hide the address instead.
6. Use a phone number that’s always answered
A local number people can reach during your listed hours. A missed call from Google is often a lost customer, so route it to whoever is on the floor.
7. Link your website and booking page
Add your website link, and a booking or order link if you take appointments or orders online. Add tracking parameters to the website link so you can tell visitors from your profile apart in your analytics.
8. Set hours, and special hours for holidays
Regular hours, plus special hours for festivals, public holidays and seasonal changes. Wrong hours are one of the most common reasons for angry reviews.
9. Write a useful description
You get up to 750 characters. Say what you do, who you serve and what makes you different, in plain language. Put the most important information in the first two lines. No links, no prices that go out of date, no keyword lists.
10. List your services and products
Add each service you offer, with a short description, and your key products with photos and prices or price ranges where it makes sense. This gives Google more to match to specific searches.
11. Fill in the attributes
Attributes such as wheelchair access, parking, payment options, dine-in or takeaway, and whether the business is women-owned where they apply. Customers use them as filters, and they appear on your profile.
12. Upload real photos, and keep adding them
- Your logo and a cover photo.
- The outside of the premises, so people recognise it when they arrive.
- The inside, your team at work, and your products or dishes.
Add new photos regularly. Real, recent photos build more trust than polished stock images, and they show Google the business is active.
13. Post every week
Use posts for offers, new stock, events and updates. Regular posting keeps the profile looking active and gives searchers a reason to choose you today. Our plans post 15 to 45 times a month; even one good post a week is a big improvement for most businesses.
14. Ask for reviews and reply to every one
Ask every customer, make it easy with a QR code, and reply within a day. Never buy or incentivise reviews. Our guide to getting more Google reviews covers this in detail.
15. Make your details consistent everywhere
Your name, address and phone number should be identical on your website, social pages and business directories. Consistent citations are a core local ranking signal. Start with the directories people actually use in your market:
- India: Justdial, IndiaMART, Sulekha, and relevant industry directories.
- UK: Yell, Thomson Local, Bing Places and Apple Business Connect.
- US: Yelp, the Better Business Bureau, Bing Places and Apple Business Connect.
Then check the report every month
Your profile’s performance report shows calls, direction requests, website clicks and the searches that found you. Look at the trend month on month, and at which search terms are growing. That tells you what to post about and which services to add.
Short on time? This checklist is exactly what our account managers do on every new profile in the first weeks, and then keep up every month. Ask for a free audit and we’ll tell you which of these fifteen your profile is missing.