How do you optimise a Google Business Profile?
You optimise a Google Business Profile in this order: choose the correct primary category, add every service individually, write a description containing your most important search terms, upload current photos, maintain opening hours and contact details, publish posts regularly, and actively collect and answer reviews. The foundation: name, address and phone number must be identical everywhere on the web.
Levers 1–3: The foundation
The primary category decides which searches you appear in at all — it should match your core business exactly, with secondary categories as complements. Next: add every service individually, because Google matches search queries directly against this list. And fill the description — 750 characters in which your key terms occur naturally, without keyword staccato.
Levers 4–6: Show that you mean it
Photos are the most underrated ranking factor: profiles with current, original images measurably get more clicks and route requests than those with three phone photos from 2019. Upload regularly — work samples, team, spaces. Add exact opening hours (including holidays) and a booking link that takes prospects straight to an enquiry.
What do Google reviews do for rankings?
Reviews are one of the strongest local ranking factors: quantity, recency and response behaviour all feed in directly. Even more important is the effect on people — from around ten honest reviews, contact rates rise noticeably. Ask satisfied customers for a review right after the project and answer every single one, including the critical ones.
Levers 7–8: Activity Google can see
Posts on your profile work like a shop window: news, projects, offers. Google rewards profiles that live. One post a month with a good image is enough — more shop window than blog. And: answer the questions feature before strangers do.
Levers 9–10: The connection to your website
Profile and website must speak the same language: identical contact details, the profile’s services as real subpages, local structured data in the source code. Google checks consistency — and rewards it. If your profile promises “web design” but your website only offers “creative solutions”, you are giving away visibility.
How long until Google profile optimisations take effect?
First effects show after two to four weeks, solid improvements after two to three months of continuous care. Google does not rate the one-off clean-up but the continuously maintained profile — which is why profile care belongs in a fixed monthly rhythm.
We have just run these ten levers on our own profile — and set them up for clients as part of our visibility care: from restaurants in Charlottenburg to B2B companies in Brandenburg. In a free first conversation we will look at your profile and tell you which of the ten levers are lying idle.
Founder & creative director, We Love 2 Design — in the craft for over 20 years.