Google Business Profile Optimisation: The Basics and Beyond
Most businesses set up their Google Business Profile once, fill in the basics, and never touch it again. Then they pay an SEO agency $1,500 a month to do work that is 80% less impactful than what they just ignored. Your GBP is not a set-up task. It is an ongoing channel. This post covers what full optimisation looks like and what most businesses are getting wrong.
Business Categories: Primary and Secondary
Your primary category is the most important field in your entire Google Business Profile. It tells Google what type of business you are and directly influences which searches your profile is eligible to appear in.
Be specific. "Italian Restaurant" ranks better for "Italian food near me" than "Restaurant" does. "Family Law Firm" works harder than "Law Office." Google has hundreds of categories. Browse the full list at the category selection screen and choose the most precise match for your primary business activity.
Secondary categories extend your eligibility. A restaurant that also does catering should add "Catering Food and Drink Supplier" as a secondary category. A dental practice offering cosmetic dentistry should add "Cosmetic Dentist." You can add up to ten secondary categories. Use them. Just do not add categories that do not genuinely apply to your business because Google can detect mismatched signals between your profile and your actual reviews and website content.
Service Areas vs Physical Location
If customers come to your premises, list your physical address. If you go to customers, use a service area instead. If you do both, list your address and add service areas.
Service areas tell Google where you operate. You can set them by city, suburb, or postcode. For an Adelaide business that services the metro area, adding the major suburbs and council areas is worth doing. This affects which location-based searches you appear in. A plumber based in Glenelg with service areas covering Adelaide's western suburbs will appear in "plumber Henley Beach" searches far more reliably than one with no service areas configured.
Do not use service areas as a way to fake a presence in a location. Google's guidelines are clear that a service area business should not have a location it is not actually operating from. The risk to your profile is not worth it.
Attributes: The Most Overlooked Section
Attributes are the checkboxes and toggles in your GBP that tell customers and Google specific things about your business. "Outdoor seating," "free Wi-Fi," "wheelchair accessible entrance," "accepts reservations," "LGBTQ+ friendly," "women-owned business."
These attributes do two things. First, they appear in your profile and give customers useful information at a glance. Second, and more importantly, they make your business eligible to appear in filtered searches. When someone searches Google Maps for "dog-friendly cafe Adelaide" and you have the "dogs allowed" attribute checked, you appear in that filtered result set. Without it, you do not, even if your cafe actually is dog-friendly.
Go through every attribute Google offers for your business category. Check every one that genuinely applies. This takes fifteen minutes and most businesses have never done it.
Photo Frequency and What to Upload
Volume matters less than recency. A profile with 300 photos uploaded in 2021 is less active-looking to Google than a profile with 80 photos where 10 were added in the past month.
Upload photos at least once a week. Cover multiple categories: exterior (so customers can recognise your location from the street), interior (the atmosphere), product or service photos, team photos, and photos of customers if you have consent. Photos taken on a current iPhone or modern Android camera are fine. You do not need a professional photographer for weekly uploads, though professional shots for your primary images are worth the investment.
Size your images correctly. Google recommends photos between 10KB and 5MB. Portrait photos display less well than wide-format images in most GBP contexts. JPG format is fine. Avoid adding watermarks or promotional text over photos because Google can suppress these.
Posts: The Weekly Channel Nobody Uses
Google Posts are mini-updates that appear on your GBP. They expire after seven days for standard posts and stay live for events posts until the event date. Almost nobody uses them consistently. That is a gap you can fill.
A post takes five minutes to write. It can be an offer, an event, a product highlight, or a simple update. "Our winter menu launches Friday" with a photo and a link to your menu page is a valid post. "We are open on the Easter long weekend, 9am to 5pm" is a valid post. These posts keep your profile looking active and give customers current information without leaving Google.
Write one post per week. It does not need to be elaborate. A photo, two sentences, and a call-to-action button. That is enough.
Q&A: The SEO Section You Are Ignoring
The Q&A section of your GBP lets anyone ask questions about your business, and anyone can answer them. Including your competitors. Including people who have never been to your business. This is a risk that most business owners have no idea about.
Monitor your Q&A section weekly. Answer every question promptly and accurately. When you answer as the business owner, your answer is labelled and given prominence.
Here is the part most people miss: you can add your own questions and answer them yourself. This is not cheating. Google allows it. Think about the questions customers ask most often, "Do you have parking?", "Are you halal-certified?", "What is the minimum spend for a private function?" Write those questions into the Q&A section and answer them clearly, using the keywords customers would use when searching. This adds relevant content to your profile without touching your website.
Review Responses: Not Just PR
Responding to reviews is a ranking signal. Google has confirmed that interacting with your profile, including responding to reviews, affects how actively managed your profile appears.
Every response should be genuine. Avoid copy-pasting the same response to every positive review. Customers read these. So does Google. A personalised "Thanks for coming in, Sarah, really glad you enjoyed the pasta" takes thirty seconds and looks far more authentic than "Thank you for your wonderful review! We hope to see you again soon!"
For negative reviews: stay calm, acknowledge the issue, apologise if warranted, and take it offline. "We're sorry to hear about your experience. Please call us on [number] and we'll make it right." Do not get defensive. Do not argue. Do not write paragraphs. One short, calm response is all you need.
What Actually Affects Local Pack Ranking
Not all of this is confirmed by Google, but the pattern across hundreds of local businesses is consistent. The GBP elements with the strongest correlation to Local Pack ranking are: primary category selection, review volume and velocity (how many and how often), review rating (average stars), photo recency, NAP consistency between your GBP and your website, and website authority.
The elements with weaker but still real influence: secondary categories, attributes, post frequency, Q&A content, and services listed. Fill all of these out. The cumulative effect matters even if each individual element is a small signal.
Getting More Reviews Without Breaking the Rules
Google's review policy prohibits incentivising reviews, asking customers to only leave a review if it is positive, and paying for reviews. The penalty for violating these policies is profile suspension. It happens. It is not worth it.
What you can do: ask customers in person immediately after a positive interaction. Train your front-of-house team to mention the Google review page when handing over a receipt. Put a QR code on your counter that links directly to your review submission page. Send a follow-up email or SMS after a completed service. None of these are incentives. They are requests. The difference matters.
Volume over time is what counts. If you are getting two to three genuine reviews per week consistently, you will be outranking businesses with 400 reviews that all arrived in one month within a year.
Start with the basics, get them right, and then build the habits. Your Google Business Profile is probably the highest-return marketing asset your business has and most businesses have not finished setting it up. Talk to us if you want a GBP audit or want us to take it over entirely.