Google Business Profile setup checklist for local businesses

Your Google Business Profile probably exists already, Google builds listings from public data whether you ask or not. Until you claim it, anyone can suggest edits and you can’t reply to a single review. Head to business.google.com, search your business name, and claim it. Verification is usually a video, a phone call, or a postcard to your address. It’s free, and it’s the front door to everything below.

Google ranks local results on relevance, distance and prominence. You can’t move your address, but the rest of this list is squarely in your control.

• Business name exactly as it is on your van, invoice and sign, no keywords tacked on
• Primary category nailed (’Plumber’, not ’Contractor’), plus two or three secondary categories that genuinely fit
• Service area or storefront address set properly, so you show up for the suburbs you actually cover
• Hours filled in, including public holidays, nothing kills trust like ‘open now’ when you’re shut
• Phone number you actually answer, and your website or booking link
• Every service you offer listed with a plain-English description

Customers compare listings side by side, and a profile with real photos looks alive while a photoless one looks abandoned. You don’t need a photographer, a phone and ten minutes does it.

• Your logo as the profile photo, and a proper cover shot, the van, the shopfront, the team
• Five to ten job photos: before and afters, finished work, your crew on site
• Something for the inside if customers visit you: the dining room, the waiting area, the gym floor
• A fresh photo every month or two, recent photos signal a business that’s still going

Everything above gets you found. Reviews are what get you chosen, and the single most useful asset here is your direct review link, the one that opens your Google review form in one tap. Without it, “leave us a review” means the customer has to search, find the right listing, scroll and hunt for the button. Every extra step loses people.

Google buries the link a few menus deep in your profile. Hunt it down once, save it somewhere handy, and it goes in every review request you ever send. (When you join Review Base, we find it for you.)

A Business Profile isn’t a set-and-forget listing, it’s closer to a garden. Update holiday hours before the long weekend, add new services when you start offering them, and reply to every review, good and bad, within a day or two. Ten minutes a week keeps the whole thing working. Neglect it and it quietly slides back down the results while the competitor who didn’t takes your calls.