How to bring your Google profile up to date in one afternoon
Your Google Business Profile is the first thing a new customer sees. What to check, in what order, and which mistakes to avoid.
When someone searches for your kind of business nearby, the first thing they usually see isn’t your website or your social media. It’s your Google Business Profile: the map, the stars, your hours and the call and directions buttons. If those details are wrong, the customer leaves before they ever meet you.
The good news: the profile is free and you control it. You just need to have claimed and verified it.
Check these, in this order
- Your name. It should be your business’s real name, the same as on your sign. Google doesn’t allow extra words like your service or city.
- Your primary category. It’s what helps Google most to understand what you do. Pick the most specific one available.
- Your hours, including holidays. Outdated hours are the most common complaint.
- Your phone. One that someone at your business answers, not a call center.
- Your website. It should lead to a page of your own, not a directory that also lists your competitors.
- Recent photos: the storefront (so people recognize it when they arrive), the inside and your team at work.
Why it matters
Google says local results depend on three things: relevance (how well your profile matches the search), distance, and prominence (how well known your business is, including your reviews and your presence on the web). You can’t change distance. The other two, you can.
Tip: when your hours change for a holiday or a vacation, use special hours instead of editing your regular hours. That way you don’t forget to change them back.
The mistake we see most
Businesses with hundreds of good reviews whose “website” button leads to a generic listing or to a page that no longer exists. It’s the last step before a customer contacts you, and that’s where they drop off.