The Google Business Profile checklist almost nobody finishes

The free thing everyone half-finishes

Almost every local business we talk to has a Google Business Profile. Almost none of them have a finished one. The name is in there, the phone number is in there, somebody uploaded four photos in 2021, and that’s where it stopped.

This matters more than it sounds like it should. For a lot of searches — the ones where someone wants a plumber, a lawyer, a salon, a tow truck — the map pack sits above the normal blue links. A person can read your hours, look at your photos, read three reviews and tap the call button without ever visiting your website. The profile isn’t a directory listing that points at your real marketing. For a large share of your prospects, it is the marketing.

So here’s the whole thing, section by section, with what each field actually does. It’s an afternoon of work and then about ten minutes a month.

Your business name is not a place to put keywords

Start here because it’s the one that gets accounts suspended. The name field is for your real-world business name — the one on your sign, your invoices and your door. Not "Smith Law — Fort Lauderdale Divorce Attorney". Not "ABC Plumbing | 24 Hour Emergency Service Broward".

Google’s guidelines are explicit about this, and competitors can and do report it. Stuffing the name can move rankings in the short run, which is exactly why people keep doing it, and it’s also why the enforcement exists. A suspension takes weeks to appeal and you lose your reviews in the meantime.

If your legal name genuinely includes a descriptor — plenty do — that’s fine. Use what’s on the signage.

Categories do more work than any other field

Your primary category is the single strongest signal on the profile. It tells Google which searches you’re even eligible to appear in. Pick the one that describes what you mostly are, not the one that describes what you wish you sold more of. A firm that does mostly family law and occasionally a will is a "Family Law Attorney" first.

You can add secondary categories, and you should add the ones that are genuinely true. But every extra category dilutes a little, and adding categories you don’t actually serve is how you end up ranking for calls you can’t take. Three or four accurate secondaries beats fifteen aspirational ones.

The category list is fixed — you pick from Google’s options, you don’t write your own. It changes over time, so it’s worth re-checking once a year to see whether a closer match appeared.

• One primary category, chosen for what you actually do most.
• Secondary categories only where you’d happily take the call today.
• Re-check the list annually; Google adds and retires categories.

Services and products are two different sections, and both are empty on most profiles

The services section lets you list what you offer, with a short description on each. Some come pre-populated from your category and you can add custom ones. It’s free text space on a page that people actually read, and it’s blank on the majority of profiles we look at.

Write them the way a customer would say them. "Uncontested divorce" not "dissolution of marriage proceedings, uncontested". Add a description to each rather than leaving a bare label — that’s the difference between a list and something that answers a question.

Products is a separate module and it isn’t only for retail. Plenty of service businesses use it to give a few offerings a photo, a name and a description, which is a lot more visual than the services list. If you sell actual physical things, use it properly, with real photos and honest prices.

Hours, and then the holiday hours nobody sets

Regular hours are easy and most people have them. The one that gets skipped is special hours — the override for holidays and one-off closures. Google will prompt you around the big ones, and if you ignore the prompt it can show your profile with an "hours may differ" note, which is the least confident thing your listing can say on the day someone is deciding whether to drive over.

Set them in advance for the whole year if you can: the federal holidays you close for, the week between Christmas and New Year, and anything specific to you. In South Florida there’s a second category — storm closures. When you shut for a hurricane, updating hours is a two-minute job that stops people showing up to a locked door.

If you have more than one location, each one has its own profile and its own hours. They don’t inherit.

Photos are the part where effort shows immediately

Photos are the most-looked-at thing on the profile and the easiest place to look better than your competitors, because the bar is genuinely low. Most local profiles have stock images, a logo, and a few phone photos taken in bad light.

What to actually shoot: the exterior from the direction people approach it, so they recognize it while driving. The entrance. The parking situation, which in a lot of South Florida strip plazas is the real question. The interior, at the time of day it looks best. The people who work there. The work itself — before and after, the finished install, the room after the clean.

Cover photo and logo are set separately from the general gallery, and Google doesn’t always honor your cover choice in every surface. Upload steadily rather than all at once, and delete anything that shows old branding, old prices, or a room you’ve since renovated.

• Shoot in daylight, hold the phone still, and skip filters.
• No stock photography of buildings that aren’t yours.
• Faces of real staff outperform empty rooms.
• Add a few every month rather than forty once.

You are allowed to ask and answer your own questions

The Q&A section is the one almost nobody knows about. Anyone can post a question on your profile, and anyone can answer it — including people who don’t work for you and don’t know the answer. Left alone, it fills up with wrong information or a question from eight months ago that nobody replied to.

What most owners don’t realize is that you can seed it yourself. Post the questions you get on the phone all day, from your own account, and answer them from the business account. Do you take walk-ins. Where do I park. Do you charge for the first visit. Do you speak Spanish. Are you open during a storm. Those are real questions and putting them there is not a trick — it’s the same thing an FAQ page does.

Then set a reminder to check it. Google’s notifications for new questions are unreliable, and an unanswered question sitting on your listing reads as a business that isn’t paying attention.

Posts expire, which is the point

Posts are short updates that appear on your profile. Most types drop off the main view after about a week, so they’re for things that are actually current: an event, an offer with an end date, a piece you just published, a note that you’re open after a storm.

They aren’t a social feed and they don’t need to be daily. One or two a month, each about something real, is a reasonable rhythm and it’s more than most competitors manage. If you already write a monthly newsletter, every issue gives you at least one post for free — the article you already wrote, a sentence of setup, and a link.

Don’t post announcements with no substance. "Happy Friday" on a business profile helps nobody.

Reviews are part of the profile, not a separate project

Reviews sit on the profile and they’re the thing people read before anything else. Ask for them in person, at the moment someone says they’re happy, and give them the short link Google generates for you rather than instructions to search.

Reply to all of them, including the good ones, in a couple of sentences. Reply to the bad ones without arguing the facts, because the audience is the next reader, not the complainant. Never offer anything of value in exchange for a review — it’s against Google’s policy, and for regulated businesses it can be a bigger problem than that.

Attorneys have an extra layer here: Florida Bar advertising rules constrain how a firm can present client commentary, and a review you solicited and then republished on your own site is advertising. Ask, reply, and get the rest checked before you reuse it.

What to do with it every month

The setup is an afternoon. Keeping it alive is small. Add a few photos. Publish a post. Read and reply to new reviews. Answer any new question. Check that hours are right for anything coming up. Glance at the messages tab if you’ve turned messaging on — and if you’re not going to answer messages within a few hours, turn it off rather than leaving them sitting.

That’s the whole job. It’s free, it’s the highest-leverage hour in local marketing, and the reason it works is simply that most of your competitors stopped after the phone number.