Google Business Profile: the settings that actually matter
Your profile is a bigger asset than your website for near-me searches. Most owners fill in 40% of it and stop. Here is the rest.
For a service business, the map pack is the front page. A well-kept Google Business Profile can outperform a beautiful website, and it is free. It is also the thing most owners set up once in 2019 and never touch again.
Categories are the biggest lever
Your primary category tells Google which searches you are even eligible for. Being a "House Cleaning Service" and being a "Commercial Cleaning Service" put you in different competitions. Choose the primary category that matches the money you actually want, then add secondaries for everything else you do.
Look at the top three competitors in your map pack. Their primary categories are visible in the page source and in most SEO tools. If all three use a category you did not pick, that is worth knowing.
Service area, not a fake address
If you go to the customer, you are a service area business. Hide the address and list the cities and zip codes you cover. Do not rent a mailbox in the next town over to appear closer to it — that is the most common suspension trigger there is, and a suspension takes weeks to unwind.
Fill the services list completely
Every service you offer should be its own entry with its own description. This is free real estate that many competitors leave blank, and it feeds the "services" panel people scroll on their phone.
Photos: recent, real, and yours
- Exterior and interior shots of work you actually did
- Your truck or van with the logo on it
- The crew, faces visible
- Before and after pairs, same angle
- Upload a few every month rather than fifty once
The Q&A section is yours to write
Anyone can post a question on your profile, including competitors. You can also post your own questions and answer them. Seed it with the five questions you get on every call: pricing, scheduling, what is included, insurance, and cancellation.
Posts, weekly, short
Profile posts do not appear to be a strong direct ranking factor, but they occupy space on your listing and give a shopper something recent to look at. A photo from a job this week and two sentences is enough.
Quiet killers
- Keyword stuffing your business name. It works until it gets you suspended and your reviews get frozen.
- Hours that do not match reality, so people arrive at a closed shop and leave a one-star review.
- Messaging turned on and unanswered — Google measures response time.
- A website link pointing to a dead page or a homepage instead of the relevant service page.
- Duplicate listings from an old address. Find them and request a merge.
Measure the right thing
The profile insights show calls, direction requests, website clicks and the searches that surfaced you. Calls and quote requests are the number that matters. Views are vanity. If views are up and calls are flat, the problem is what people see when they land, not whether they find you.