Setting up your Google Business Profile properly (the parts that matter)

Setting up a Google Business Profile properly means completing every field, choosing the most accurate primary category, and putting your main service and location where Google reads them - the business name, description and services. That is most of the job. The listing is what decides whether you appear in the map results (the pack of three businesses with a map above the normal blue links), so it is worth doing slowly rather than in five minutes on a phone.

I get asked to "do the SEO" for local businesses that have never finished their profile. Half the fields are blank, the category is vaguely wrong, and there are two photos from 2019. Fixing that alone often lifts them into the pack. So before anything clever, get the basics right.

The primary category is the single most important choice

Your primary category tells Google what you fundamentally are. A physiotherapist should be "Physiotherapist", not "Health consultant". A category that is close-but-not-quite costs you rankings for the exact searches you want, because Google leans heavily on the primary category when it decides who to show for "physio near me".

Pick the most specific category that genuinely describes your core service. Then add secondary categories for the other things you do, but do not stuff them - only add ones you actually offer. If a rival ranks above you and you cannot work out why, check their primary category against yours. It is often the difference.

A close-but-wrong category is one of the quietest ways to lose the map pack - nothing looks broken, you just never show up.

Complete every field, not just the obvious ones

Google rewards complete profiles, and a lot of the fields double as relevance signals. Treat the whole thing as a form you finish, not a name and a phone number.

• Business name - your real trading name, exactly as it appears on your signage and website. Do not bolt keywords onto it ("Smith Dental - Best Auckland Dentist") - that breaks Google's rules and can get you suspended.
• Address and service area - accurate, and matching your website and other listings exactly. Consistent name, address and phone number across the web is what I call NAP consistency, and it matters.
• Phone number - a local number if you have one.
• Hours - including public holidays, which most people forget. Wrong hours quietly annoy customers and Google notices.
• Services and products - list them out with short descriptions. This is prime space for the words people actually search.
• Attributes - things like "wheelchair accessible" or "women-owned" that show up as helpful labels.

Where keywords belong (and where they do not)

There are two safe places to use the words people search: the business description and the services section. In the description, write plainly about what you do and where you do it - "I run a physiotherapy clinic in Takapuna treating sports injuries and back pain" reads naturally and hits the terms that matter. In services, name each service the way a customer would search for it.

The place keywords do not belong is the business name. I know it is tempting because it works in the short term, but it is against the guidelines and a competitor can report you. A suspension costs you far more than the extra ranking ever gave you.

Photos do more than you think

Photos are not decoration. A profile with real, current photos of the premises, the team and the work gets more clicks and calls, and engagement feeds back into how often Google shows you. Add your storefront, the inside, your team, and examples of what you do. Keep adding new ones over time rather than dumping ten on day one and never touching it again - a profile that is clearly maintained reads as a live business.

The bits that actually move ranking

Once the profile is complete, three things drive where you sit in the pack: relevance (does your category and content match the search), distance (how close you are to the searcher), and prominence (how well-known and trusted you look, which reviews feed directly). You cannot move your building, but you can nail relevance through your category and services, and build prominence through reviews.

Reviews are the lever most owners under-use. A steady flow of recent, genuine reviews is one of the strongest prominence signals there is, so it is worth having a proper system - here is how to get more Google reviews without nagging people or breaking any rules.

Get the profile complete, get the category right, keep the photos and reviews fresh, and you have done the groundwork that everything else in local SEO builds on. If you want the full picture of how the map results are decided, I have written it up in winning the Google map pack.

Once it is set up, the field-by-field detail on what actually moves the needle is in the complete Google Business Profile guide.