Confirm the business truth
Write down the official customer-facing name, real staffed locations, service areas, primary phone, website, hours, categories and important policies before editing profiles or listings.
- Verify ownership of every profile
- Remove or resolve duplicate listings
- Use one documented source for location data
- Record holiday and temporary-hour ownership
Align profile and website
The profile and its landing page should describe the same services, location and next step. Important pages need a unique title, one clear primary heading, useful service detail and crawlable internal links.
Build trust and local authority
Ask for honest reviews at appropriate customer moments, respond consistently, publish real work and pursue relevant community or industry references. Avoid review gating, fake locations and mass low-quality directories.
Measure and maintain
Track local organic landing pages, profile actions, map visibility across useful points and qualified enquiries. Assign owners for updates so hours, services, photos and links do not decay.
Reviewed sources
Primary sources and standards
Use these official resources to confirm platform rules and technical guidance. They are maintained by their publishers and may change over time.
- Google Business Profile: improve local rankingGoogle’s explanation of relevance, distance and prominence, plus profile completeness and review guidance.
- Google Business Profile representation guidelinesOfficial eligibility, business-name, address and service-area rules.
- Google Maps prohibited and restricted contentGoogle’s rules for genuine reviews, incentives, conflicts of interest and rating manipulation.
- Google Search Central: link best practicesOfficial guidance for crawlable links and descriptive anchor text.