Google Business Profile Optimization
Your Google Business Profile Is Doing More Work Than Your Website
For most local searches the profile is what people see, read and act on, often without ever opening a website. Getting it right is the fastest visibility work available to a local business.
- Categories and services
- Business information
- Photos and posts
- Reviews and replies
Local Surfaces
Why It Matters
What the Profile Actually Affects
Three things, none of which the website controls.
Map Results
Where the business appears when somebody searches nearby. The profile is what is being ranked in that result, not the website behind it.
First Impressions
Hours, photos, services and reviews are read directly in the results. For a lot of searches that is the whole of what someone sees before deciding.
Direct Actions
Calls, direction requests and website clicks all happen from the profile itself. A weak one loses those before a visit ever starts.
Sound Familiar
Common Profile Problems
Most profiles have at least two of these. Several of them take minutes to fix and have been costing visibility for years.
Incomplete Categories
Your primary category is wrong, or the secondary ones were never set. Categories decide which searches you are eligible for at all.
Inconsistent Information
Your name, address or phone number disagrees with what other listings say. Search engines notice the disagreement even when customers do not.
No Recent Activity
Your profile has not been posted to in months. An inactive profile reads as an inactive business.
Unanswered Reviews
Reviews sitting without a reply, good ones as well as bad. The reply is read by everyone who arrives afterwards.
Missing Services
Your services and products are undefined, so the profile cannot match a search for something you genuinely do.
No Visibility Tracking
You have no way of knowing whether any of it is working, or where in your area you are visible and where you are not.
Free Visibility Audit
Get a Free Visibility Audit
A written audit of the profile, and of the site behind it, built on the same four headings as the monthly recap: what is there, why it matters, what is working and what is not, and what to do next.
- Categories, services and business information
- Listing consistency across the web
- Profile activity, photos and reviews
- Where the profile is visible across the service area
No call required.
The Work
What JMC Does to a Profile
Three things once, and three things every month, on a profile you own throughout.
Profile Audit
A full review of the profile as it stands, against how people in your area actually search for what you do.
Category & Services Setup
Primary and secondary categories set deliberately, with services and products defined so the profile can match real searches.
NAP & Citation Consistency
Name, address and phone standardized, then corrected across the listings that carry an older version of them.
Ongoing Profile Posts
Regular posts through the month, so the profile stays active rather than going quiet after the setup work finishes.
Review Requests & Replies
Requests sent to real customers and replies written to what arrives, positive and negative alike. Nothing is fabricated or incentivized.
Local Search Grid Tracking
Visibility measured across the service area rather than as one blended number, so you can see where the profile is strong and where it is not.
Reporting
The Monthly Recap
Profile work is easy to do invisibly, which is exactly why it gets reported the same way as everything else.
What We Did
The posts published, the listings corrected, the reviews replied to, named individually.
Why We Did It
Why that work was the priority, and what it was expected to affect.
What Changed
Grid visibility across the service area, compared with last month, including the quiet ones.
Where We're Headed
What is queued for the coming month, written down before it starts.
Questions
Profile Questions
Start With the Profile
The audit says what the profile is missing, what it is costing, and what to do about it first. It is the same four headings as the monthly recap, written before anyone has paid for anything.