For a local business, your Google Business Profile is often more visible than your website: it's the panel on the right of a brand search, the pin on Maps, and increasingly the data AI assistants read when someone asks for a recommendation. It deserves the same care as your site — and almost never gets it.

Here's the checklist we run for every client, in the order that matters.

Get the foundations exact

  • Business name — exactly your real-world name. No stuffed keywords ("Smith Law — Best Divorce Lawyer Miami" invites suspension).
  • Primary category — the single most specific match for what you do. This is the strongest ranking input on the profile; secondary categories come after.
  • Address or service area — storefront businesses show an address; service businesses hide it and set a service area instead. Never fake a location.
  • Phone and website — match them exactly to what's on your site. Consistency across the web (your NAP — name, address, phone) is what convinces both Google and AI models that your business data is trustworthy.

Fill what most owners skip

  • Services — list each real service with a description. These map to searches.
  • Business description — plain language about who you serve and what makes you different. No hype; engines quote this.
  • Hours — and keep holiday hours current. A "closed now" surprise costs real customers.
  • Photos — real ones: your work, your space, your people. Profiles with genuine photos get dramatically more clicks and calls than logo-only profiles.

Reviews: the compounding asset

Reviews are the strongest trust signal a profile has — for humans, for rankings, and for AI recommendations. The rules that matter:

  • Ask every genuine customer, right after a good experience. A short link or a QR card makes it a ten-second favor.
  • Never buy, fake, or ghost-write reviews — including having a friend post from an account you control. Detection is better than people assume, and a filtered or flagged review on a young profile can suppress the whole listing. One honest review outweighs five fake ones that get the profile penalized.
  • Reply to every review — briefly and professionally, including the bad ones. Replies are public proof that a real person runs the business.

Keep it alive

A profile that never changes looks abandoned. A short post every couple of weeks — a project, an offer, a seasonal note — keeps the profile active. Answer questions in the Q&A section before a stranger answers them for you.

The mistakes that get profiles suspended

Keyword-stuffed names, fake addresses, review bursts from one device, and duplicate listings are the big four. And ignore the robocalls claiming to be Google — Google doesn't cold-call businesses about listings; those are scammers selling nothing.

Where this fits

Your profile, your site's schema, and your directory listings should tell one identical story about your business — that agreement is what local rankings and AI citations are built on. Our free visibility review checks the whole chain, profile included, and hands you the ranked fix list.