Google Business Profile optimization: the 30-minute checklist

Why this free listing is worth half an hour

Search "dentist near me" and the map results sit above the websites. Those cards are Business Profiles, and yours is free. Google's page on improving your local ranking names three factors behind what appears there — relevance, distance and prominence — and adds that "businesses with complete and accurate info are more likely to show up in local search results." The same page states plainly that there is no way to request or pay for a better local ranking.

So the honest version of profile optimization is this: fill in everything, accurately, because incomplete is the one condition Google explicitly associates with showing up less. Nobody can promise you a position. Everything below is a documented field, not a theory.

Do this before the checklist: verify

An unverified profile is a profile with features switched off. Google's guidance on business-specific photos states it directly: for your photos and videos to show on your profile, the business must be verified. Verification is its own process, sometimes video, sometimes postcard, sometimes instant, and Google walks through the options on verify your business on Google. If you are not verified, stop reading and start there. The rest of this is thirty minutes wasted otherwise.

The nine fields

1. Primary category. This is the single most consequential thing you will type. Google's guidelines for representing your business say to use the fewest categories needed, to pick ones that complete "this business is a" rather than describing what it has, and not to use categories as keywords. "Hair salon" over "Beauty". Then add the secondary categories that are honestly true, and stop.

2. Services, with a line and a price each. Documented under manage your services. Most profiles leave this blank, which is strange, because it is the only place you get to list what you actually sell in your own words. Write a sentence per service. Put a price or a range on it. Owners who resist naming a price here should know that Google's help for service businesses notes the tasks customers can attribute in a review are drawn partly from the merchant's service list — an empty list means the list is built from somewhere else.

3. The description, up to 750 characters. Per Google's page on editing your Business Profile, it appears in the "From the business" section and the field caps at 750 characters. Say what you do, who you do it for, and which neighbourhoods. Read it aloud before saving. If it sounds like a brochure, it is wrong.

4. Hours, and the special ones. Regular hours, then the holiday hours before the long weekend rather than after it. A customer who drives over on a Monday you were closed does not blame Google.

5. Photos, to Google's actual specification. Google publishes the requirements on tips for business-specific photos: JPG or PNG, between 10 KB and 5 MB, 720 by 720 recommended, 250 by 250 minimum, and "the photo should be in focus, well lit, and have no significant alterations or excessive use of filters or AI." The same page asks for at least three exterior shots, taken from each direction a customer might approach from. Read that specification again if you were about to upload something generated. Ten real phone photos of the room, the team and the work will beat one styled shoot from four years ago, because they show what a person will actually walk into.

6. Questions and answers. Anyone can ask a question on your profile and anyone can answer it, including people who have never been inside. So get there first. Write down the five questions your front desk answers daily — parking, insurance, walk-ins, kids, payment — post them, and answer them as the business.

7. Reviews, and replies to them. Google's tips to get more reviews page covers the review link and the QR code you can generate, and its rules about what you may not do are stricter than most owners realise. The full version, including why selective solicitation is a policy violation, is in how to get more Google reviews. Replying is documented separately under read and reply to reviews, and the reviewer is notified when you do.

8. Posts, called updates. Google documents three types on create and manage posts: updates, offers and events. Two published details are worth knowing. Posts older than six months are archived unless you set a date range on them. And you can schedule a post ahead, or set it to repeat weekly or monthly, which is how you stop this from being a thing you remember on a Sunday night. Google does not publish any ranking effect for posts, so treat them as something a customer sees, not a lever.

9. Attributes, service area and the small stuff. Wheelchair access, women-owned, appointment required, languages spoken. If you go to customers instead of the reverse, set the service area and hide a residential address — Google's guidelines require the profile to reflect a real-world location and rule out PO boxes and virtual offices.

Three shortcuts the rules already rule out

Every owner eventually gets told about one of these by someone confident. All three are addressed in documents Google publishes.

• Keywords in the business name. "Bright Smile Dental — Best Dentist Vancouver" is not a name, it is a billboard. Google's guidelines require the name to be the real-world one used on your storefront and signage, without taglines or extra descriptors bolted on. Competitors can and do report these
• An address you do not work from. A mailbox in a busier neighbourhood is the oldest trick in local search and the guidelines rule out PO boxes and virtual offices by name. The downside is not a ranking penalty, it is losing the listing
• Buying or incentivising reviews. Google's prohibited and restricted content policy bars offering payment, discounts or free goods in exchange for a review, and bars discouraging negative reviews or selectively soliciting positive ones. That second half catches a lot of well-meaning businesses, which is why it gets its own post

The flip side is that the boring compliant version of this work has no downside risk, which is not something you can say about most marketing.

How to check your own work

Half an hour of editing is worth nothing if you never look at what it did. Three checks, all free.

• Search yourself, signed out. Open a private window and search your business name, then a service plus your neighbourhood. Look at what a stranger sees, not what the dashboard shows you
• Open the performance report. Google's Business Profile performance tool gives you calls, direction requests, website clicks, bookings and the search terms people used. Screenshot the last 90 days now, before you change anything, so you have something to compare against later
• Watch for Google's own edits. Google can update your profile from other sources, and it documents this under understand Google updates on your Business Profile. Categories and hours get changed under owners who never look. Check monthly

What none of this will tell you is a ranking, because there is no such single number: distance is one of the three published factors, so where you appear depends on where the searcher is standing. The local SEO post covers how to test that properly.

The part that actually defeats people

Filling this in once is easy. It is the coming back that fails. The profile has no deadline attached to it, and everything else in a small business does, so month three arrives with no new photos, three unanswered questions and a review from February sitting there without a reply.

The realistic version is a recurring fifteen minutes, once a month, same day. New photos from the phone. Reply to anything that came in. Check that Google has not quietly changed a category. That is the whole maintenance job, and it is small enough to hold.

If you would rather it just got done

Your profile and your reviews are inside Organic Growth, at $1,000 CAD a month. That line also covers the content, the search work and your website, built and edited when you ask. Review requests and review replies are part of it.

We sell four lines separately and there is no discount for taking more than one. Organic Growth, $1,000 a month. Paid Growth, $1,000 a month, with the ad budget separate in your own account, a minimum of about $1,000 a month in spend before a campaign learns anything, covering up to $10,000 a month. B2B Sales, $2,000 setup then $1,000 a month. Automation, from $1,500 to build then $500 a month. Prices in CAD.

The limit, stated up front: search takes about 90 days to move. Ads are the only one of the four that changes a number inside a month.