Local search is the most measurable channel most service businesses have, and the profile is usually half-built. The work is unglamorous, repeatable and disproportionately effective.
The three local ranking inputs
- Relevance: how well your profile and services match the query
- Distance: proximity to the searcher, which you cannot change
- Prominence: how well known and well reviewed the business is, online and offline
- Optimisation works on relevance and prominence; distance explains most local ranking surprises
Profile setup that most businesses get wrong
- Primary category chosen for the main money term, not the broadest available label
- Secondary categories added only where you genuinely deliver the service
- Services and products listed individually, with descriptions that use the language customers search
- Service areas set realistically; over-broad areas weaken proximity signals
- Business hours, holiday hours and phone number kept exactly consistent with the website
Photos, posts and questions
- Add real photos of premises, team and completed work, refreshed monthly
- Post weekly: offers, updates, new content; posts are a freshness signal and a conversion surface
- Seed the Q&A section with the questions your sales team answers most often
- Answer every question, and never let a competitor’s answer stand as the only one
Reviews: the highest-leverage activity
Ask every satisfied customer, at the moment they are happiest rather than weeks later. Reply to all reviews, including the negative ones, in the same tone you would use on a call. Review velocity matters more than total count, and review content matters because the words appear in the profile.
Measuring local performance
- Calls, direction requests and website clicks from the profile, reviewed monthly
- Local pack ranking tracked for a fixed set of terms from fixed locations
- Search queries that triggered your profile, which reveal demand you may not be targeting
- Attribution into GA4 guide with a tagged profile URL, so local leads are separable
Connecting the profile to the website
Profile signals are strongest when the destination page reinforces them. A location page that repeats the category, services and area language, and carries LocalBusiness schema, closes the loop. Where the profile underperforms, the fix is often split between the profile and a thin location page, and our SEO audit checklist flags which pages are too thin to support it.
Monthly routine
- Post once a week, photo refresh once a month
- Request reviews after every completed job
- Reply to every review within 48 hours
- Check the query report for new service terms to target
- Fix any profile field that Google has flagged as needing attention