Optimising your Google Business Profile: a checklist for local businesses

What needs to be in order? The short answer

Optimising your Google Business Profile comes down to three things: filling in the profile completely and correctly, keeping it up to date and making sure it matches your website. The profile is what people see in Google Maps and in the map result when they look for a barber, locksmith or chip shop nearby. The more clearly it says what you do, where and when, the easier it is for a customer to choose you.

Google itself names three factors for local results: relevance, distance and prominence. You cannot change the distance between you and the searcher. You can work on the other two, and that is what this checklist covers. Nobody can guarantee you a place in the map result, and neither can we.

Step 1: claim and verify the profile

Search for your business name in Google. If a profile already exists, claim it. If not, create one with a Google account that belongs to the business, not the private account of an employee who may leave later. Google then asks you to prove the business is yours. Which verification method you get is up to Google. After that you manage the profile directly from Google Search or Maps.

Step 2: name, address and phone number

Use the name that is on your shopfront and your invoices. Do not add keywords or town names to it. A barber who puts "best barber Leuven" after the business name is going against Google's guidelines and risks having the profile suspended.

Step 3: choose the right categories

The primary category tells Google what kind of business you are and helps determine which searches you are considered for. Choose the most specific category from Google's list: "Locksmith" rather than something general. Then add extra categories only for what you really do. A chip shop that also sells sandwiches can add that as an additional category.

Step 4: show your address or set a service area

This is where it often goes wrong. The difference:

• Customers come to you. A barber or chip shop shows the address.
• You go to the customer. A locksmith or taxi firm without a counter hides the address and sets a service area: the towns or regions where you work.
• Both. A business with a showroom that also works at customers' homes shows the address and a service area.

Keep the service area honest. Marking half of Flanders while in practice you drive around Aalst mostly produces phone calls you have to turn down.

Step 5: description and services

Write the description for a customer, not for a search engine. Say in the first sentence what you do and for whom. Then what sets you apart: emergency call-outs, working by appointment, card payments. No list of keywords.

Then fill in the services. For each service you give a name and a short explanation, and a price if you wish. A taxi firm lists airport transfers and business rides separately. A food business can add a menu or link to the menu on its own website.

Step 6: photos that are yours

• Your logo and a cover photo.
• The outside of the premises, so people recognise the shopfront.
• The inside, your team and your work: a finished haircut, a fitted lock, the car you drive.

Use your own photos, not stock images. Customers can add photos too, so look at what is there from time to time.

Step 7: opening hours, including the exceptions

Fill in the regular hours and use the special hours for public holidays and leave. If you change the hours on your door or on Facebook, change them in your profile and on your website as well. Google also lets other people suggest edits, so check regularly that everything is still correct.

Step 8: asking for reviews and replying to them

New customers read your reviews. Make it a habit:

1. Ask at the right moment. Just after a successful job or a satisfied visit.
2. Make it easy. Your profile gives you a link for requesting reviews. Send it by text, WhatsApp or email, or put a QR code at the till.
3. Ask everyone. Not only customers you expect a good score from.
4. Do not reward it. A discount or a gift in exchange for a review is against Google's rules.
5. Reply to every review. A short thank-you for a good one. With a bad one, stay calm and factual, and offer to sort it out by phone. You are writing that reply mainly for the next reader.

You cannot remove a negative review yourself. If a review breaks Google's policy, you can report it. Google decides.

Step 9: posts and questions

Posts let you share news on your profile: a new service, an offer, different hours during the holidays. A post about the Christmas closure that is still at the top in March looks careless.

Questions and answers come with a caveat. Google has been changing that part of the profile recently, and it is not visible in the same way on every profile. If you see questions on your profile, answer them yourself and clearly. The safest approach: put the answers to the questions you get most often (parking, payment methods, service area) in your description, with your services and on your website.

Step 10: make the profile and the website say the same thing

Name, address, phone number and opening hours on your website must be exactly the same as in your profile. Conflicting details make it unclear to customers and to Google which information is right. Also check your Facebook page and the directories you are listed in. There is more on those listings in our guide to local SEO in Flanders.

Also make the website button in your profile point to the right page.

What a profile cannot do without a decent website

A profile is free and indispensable, but it is not a website.

• It cannot explain your services. Anyone in doubt clicks through. If they land on a slow or unclear site, or on nothing, they phone the next business.
• It covers only part of the search results. The profile appears on the map and for your business name. In the regular search results below it, your website appears.
• It is not yours. Google sets the rules, can change or remove features and can suspend a profile. Your website and your domain name are under your own control.
• It offers little room. Separate pages per service or per town, prices with an explanation, an enquiry form: those belong on a site.

The Slotenmaker AMG case study shows the map result and the website side by side in the search results, captured on 26 May 2026 from Belgium. Positions vary by location and moment. So read it as an example, not as a promise for your business.

No site yet, or one that contradicts your profile? See what website development involves. Unsure about the technology? Read WordPress or a custom website.

What Sozially does here

The Google Business Profile is not part of our website packages. It is part of the Local SEO Starter Package, €250 one-time: a local SEO foundation with service pages, metadata, Google Business Profile, schema and internal links. The price is on our pricing page, and the approach is explained under SEO optimisation. If you mainly work in one city, our page on SEO in Ghent shows what that looks like locally.

The next step

Open your profile today and go through the ten steps. Start with the category, the service area and the opening hours. Would you like someone to look at your website as well? Request a free SEO audit or get in touch.