Google Business Profile: how to build the profile properly

Google Business Profile is the one marketing channel that costs nothing and still decides whether a nearby customer sees you at all. It is also the channel most companies have filled in about a third of the way.

Below is the order in which we build a profile. It can be done in one evening.

1. Verification

Without verification the profile exists but barely appears on maps. Google offers verification by video, phone call, email or postcard — which options you get depends on your industry and location.

The usual stumbling block is video verification. It is filmed in one take with no cuts, and three things must appear: the street with the house number, the entrance with your signage, and the interior with equipment or stock. If there is no sign, prepare one in advance or the check will fail.

A business without premises (a tradesperson, a consultant) registers as a service area business: the address is hidden and a service area is filled in instead. For Prague it pays to list specific districts rather than the whole city.

2. Categories

The single most important field. The primary category largely decides which queries you can appear for at all.

• Primary: the narrowest one that genuinely fits. Not "Car repair shop" but "Transmission repair", if that is your main work.
• Secondary: another five to ten, but only things you actually do. Unrelated categories make results worse.
• To see what competitors use, open their listing on maps — the category sits under the name.

3. Services and products

An empty services section is wasted space. Enter each service as a separate item with its own description; Google uses them to match against queries.

Write the 750-character business description for a person, not a robot: what you do, for whom, what makes you different, where you operate. Keywords stuffed in a row do not help and put readers off.

4. Photos

Fifteen minimum, more is better. What actually works: the frontage and entrance (so the customer recognises you), the interior, the team at work, finished work, the logo and a cover image.

Two extras: add photos over time rather than all at once — steady activity is itself a signal. And let customers upload their own; their shots usually get more views than corporate ones.

5. Opening hours, including public holidays

A small thing that trust falls apart on. Set the special hours for Czech public holidays — Google prompts you about them, and a profile with holidays filled in looks maintained. A customer who drives to a closed door writes a review, and it stays for years.

6. Reviews

The strongest factor you can influence quickly.

• A system, not a campaign. The request belongs at the moment of satisfaction: at handover, at payment, the day after delivery.
• A short link. The profile dashboard has a ready-made "Ask for reviews" link that opens the form directly. Never send a customer off to "find us on Google".
• Reply to all of them. Answer a negative review factually, without emotion, with a way forward. The reply is not read by its author but by the next hundred people who see it.
• Never buy reviews. Google detects them and removes them along with the profile.

A steady pace beats bursts: eight reviews a month consistently is a better signal than fifty in one week.

7. Posts and questions

Posts (news, offers, events) appear directly in the profile and count as a sign of activity. One or two a month is enough.

Questions and answers can be seeded by you: take the questions customers actually ask, post them, and answer them straight away. This is legitimate and handles part of the objections before anyone calls.

8. Measurement — the step almost nobody takes

Without measurement you cannot tell whether the profile works.

• Call tracking: the profile lets you set a measurement number, or you can use call forwarding.
• UTM parameters on the website link: put a tagged address in the website field, for example ?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=gbp. Only then will analytics show how many visits and enquiries the profile produced.
• Profile insights: watch how many people found you by brand name versus by a generic query. Growth in generic queries is what local visibility actually looks like.

9. What the profile will not fix

The profile puts you in the results, but it will not rescue a weak website, a slow reply to an enquiry or a poor offer. If the phone rings and nobody answers, working on the profile only makes lost opportunities more expensive.

Today's checklist: verified business · narrow primary category · services filled in · 15+ photos · holidays in opening hours · a review-collection system · UTM on the website link. Seven items, zero cost, one evening.