When customers look for a professional near them, they rarely look at your website first: they look at your Google Business Profile. Rating, photos, opening hours, phone number, directions… everything they need to choose is there. A complete, accurate profile wins you customers; an incomplete or wrong profile loses them, often without you knowing.
Here is the method, section by section, to optimize your profile, and the mistakes you must absolutely avoid.
Why the profile matters so much
Google explains it in its tips to improve your local ranking: three criteria determine how a profile is shown, relevance (does your profile match the search?), distance and prominence. You can do nothing about distance. Relevance, however, depends directly on what you fill in, and prominence is built with your reviews, your replies and your activity on the profile.
In other words: every empty field is a search for which Google has no reason to show you.
1. The name: reality, nothing but reality
The profile name must be the one you use in real life, on your shop front and your documents. Adding a town or keywords (“Cheap plumber Lyon – Dupont”) goes against Google’s guidelines and can lead to the profile being suspended. It is the most common and the riskiest mistake.
2. Categories: the most underestimated setting
The primary category is Google’s strongest signal: it must describe your core business as precisely as possible (“Italian restaurant” rather than “Restaurant”). Secondary categories, up to nine, cover your other real activities: a wine estate that also offers B&B rooms and tastings has every interest in saying so.
Choose only from the categories offered by Google, and only those that match what you really do. Google’s help on managing categories gives useful examples.
3. The description: useful above all
You have 750 characters to present your business. The help page on the description recalls what is forbidden: no links, no prices or promotions, no off-topic content. A good description:
- says in the first sentence what you are and where;
- presents your strengths and services, with the words your customers use;
- stays natural: no keyword stuffing.
Good to know: for accommodation (hotels, holiday rentals, B&Bs), Google writes the description itself and does not allow it to be edited. It is then the accommodation amenities that make the difference.
4. Opening hours: the number one source of dissatisfaction
Finding the door closed when Google said “Open” is one of the worst customer experiences, and a classic cause of negative reviews. Keep your opening hours up to date, with several time slots if you close at lunchtime, and above all fill in special hours: public holidays, vacations, closures for works, exceptional openings.
A profile with opening hours that are always accurate inspires trust, in your customers as in Google.
5. Contact details, attributes, services
- Phone and website: check that they are up to date and lead to the right place (a booking page, for example).
- Attributes: accessibility, Wi-Fi, terrace, contactless payment, booking link… Google offers them according to your categories. The help on attributes explains how they work. They answer the filters internet users apply.
- Services and menu: list your services with a description and, for a restaurant, publish your menu. We devote an article to services and menus.
6. Photos, reviews and posts: signs of life
An optimized profile is also an active profile: recent, good-quality photos, replies to every review, and regular posts. These signals show that the business is looked after, and they feed your prominence.
7. Monitor your profile: Google sometimes changes it without you
It is a little-known reality: Google can change your profile based on suggestions from internet users or other sources, for example changing your opening hours or your phone number. These changes are not always right. We explain in a dedicated article how to spot and correct changes made by Google.
The mistakes that cost you most
- Keywords or a town added to the business name;
- a primary category that is too vague or inaccurate;
- wrong opening hours, especially on public holidays;
- a description containing a link or a phone number (rejected by Google);
- a profile left with unanswered reviews and no activity at all;
- several profiles for the same business (duplicates).
A simple routine to keep your profile up to date
Optimization is not a one-off operation. A light routine is enough to keep an impeccable profile:
- every week: reply to new reviews and publish a post;
- every month: check opening hours, phone and website, add a few recent photos, look at your insights;
- before each special period (holidays, vacations, works): fill in special hours;
- every quarter: reread the description, services and attributes, and adjust them as your business evolves.
Fifteen minutes a week is enough to stay one step ahead of most of your competitors.
How Replik helps you optimize your profile
With profile management in Replik, you edit your whole profile in one place, for free: name, categories (searching Google’s real categories), description, contact details, opening hours with several time slots, special hours, opening status, attributes, services, menu and amenities. Only the changed fields are sent to Google, and every change is kept in a history.
The AI audit analyzes your profile, attributes, reviews, photos, posts and the searches that bring you up. It gives you a score out of 100, the weak points section by section and one-click suggestions: categories checked with Google, attributes actually available for your business, an optimized description. You review, then save.
Finally, Replik monitors your profile every day and alerts you if Google changes it, if it is suspended, or if a customer photo is a problem.
In short
An optimized profile is an accurate, complete and lively profile. Start with the name, the primary category and the opening hours, then complete the description, attributes and services, and keep it alive with photos, replies to reviews and posts. The easiest way to know where you stand: run the free audit of your profile, then check the pricing of the tools you are interested in.