The Google Business Profile checklist most businesses never finish

For a local business, the Google Business Profile produces more enquiries than the website, and it costs nothing. It is also the thing most likely to be half done, because it is not anybody's obvious job.

This is the whole list, in the order worth doing it.

The essentials, which most people have

Claim and verify it. Until it is verified, you cannot control what it says. Verification can take days, so start it before you need it.

The primary category, as specific as possible. This is the single most influential field on the profile. "Electrician" is worse than "Electrical installation service" if the latter describes you. Look at what the businesses ranking above you use.

Additional categories, for the other things you genuinely do. Do not add categories for work you do not want, because they will bring you enquiries for it.

Name, address, phone number. Exactly as they appear on your website and everywhere else, down to the punctuation. Your legal name, not your legal name with three search terms after it, which breaches Google's guidelines and can get the listing suspended.

The parts people skip, which is where the value is

Services. A structured list of every service, with a short description each. Most profiles have none. This is where Google learns what you actually do, in your own words, and it is directly what an assistant reads when someone asks who does a particular job nearby.

Attributes. Wheelchair accessible, free parking, appointment required, women-owned, LGBTQ friendly, on-site services. These look trivial and they are used as filters, so an attribute you have not ticked is a search you never appear in.

Service area, if you travel to customers. Set it honestly. Covering the entire country to appear everywhere does the opposite, because relevance falls.

Opening hours, and special hours. Regular hours plus the special dates: bank holidays, Christmas, your fortnight in August. Wrong holiday hours are the most visible failure a listing can have, because the customer is standing outside a locked door. See who manages your Google hours.

The description. 750 characters. Say what you do, who for, where, and what makes you the sensible choice. Plain sentences beat keyword stuffing, which is both against the guidelines and obvious to a reader.

Products, if you sell anything discrete. Underused, and it renders as a browsable panel.

Booking or appointment link, if you take bookings.

Photographs, which matter more than expected

Aim for twenty and keep adding.

• Exterior, so people recognise the building when they arrive
• Interior, if customers come in
• The work itself, which is the strongest category for a trade
• The team, because faces convert
• The van, if it is branded

Real photographs from a modern phone, in daylight. Not stock, which everybody recognises.

Two details that matter: recency counts, so a listing whose newest photo is three years old reads as a business that might have closed. And your default image, the one shown first, is chosen by Google from what is available, so give it good options.

Reviews, which belong here too

Reviews live on the profile, and they are the other half of it. Volume relative to competitors, recency, specificity, and a reply on every one.

That is a large enough subject on its own, and it is covered in why Google reviews matter and how to get more of them.

The one thing outside the profile

Make your details identical everywhere else.

Your website, your Facebook page, old directories, the trade body listing, the sponsor page of the local football club. Same name, same address format, same phone number.

Where those disagree, search engines have to decide whether these are one business or several, and sometimes they decide wrongly. Fixing it is dull, free, and one of the more reliable local search improvements available. It is the part of our specification called Provenance: hold the facts once, publish everywhere from that one place.

What not to bother with

Posting weekly for the sake of it. Google Posts are fine when you have something real to say. They are not a ranking mechanism.

Keyword stuffing the business name. Against the guidelines, and a suspension risk.

Buying reviews or citations. Both are detectable, and the second is mostly a subscription to listings nobody reads.

The realistic outcome

Completing all of the above takes an afternoon, and the honest expectation is a meaningful improvement in how often you appear for searches near you, plus a noticeable rise in calls straight from the listing.

It will not put you first for a competitive term on its own. Nothing free will. But it is the highest ratio of result to effort available to a local business, and it is the first thing we check in the audit for exactly that reason.