Local SEO
How to set up a Google Business Profile
Claim the profile, verify it, choose the most specific correct primary category, declare honest service areas, and complete every field. Category choice is one of the strongest local ranking signals and the most commonly wrong.
Before you start
- A Google account
- Your exact business details
- Photographs of real work
The steps
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Step 1: Search for an existing listing
Many businesses already have an unclaimed one. Claim rather than create a duplicate.
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Step 2: Verify
By postcard, phone, email or video depending on what Google offers. Unverified profiles rank badly.
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Step 3: Choose the primary category carefully
The most specific one that exists. Add secondary categories after.
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Step 4: Set service areas honestly
The places you will genuinely travel to, not an aspirational radius.
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Step 5: Complete every field
Hours with exceptions, services with descriptions, attributes, payment methods.
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Step 6: Add real photographs
Your own work, not stock. Update them periodically.
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Step 7: Use the Q&A section
Post the questions you actually get asked, and answer them.
Storefront or service area
If customers do not visit you, hide the address and declare service areas instead. Publishing a home address is unnecessary and is a privacy exposure with no ranking benefit.
What actually moves local rankings
Profile completeness, category accuracy, proximity to the searcher, and review flow. Your website contributes, and far less than people expect — which is why the profile comes first.
Posts and the parts most people never use
Google Posts expire after seven days and almost nobody publishes them, which is exactly why they are worth the ten minutes a week. The Products and Services sections are also chronically empty on competitor profiles, and each filled field is another term the profile can surface for. Completeness is a ranking factor in local search in a way it simply is not on the open web, so the profile rewards patience more than cleverness.
The background behind this
Local SEO when customers do not come to your address covers the reasoning in about 3 minutes — free, ungated, written from client work.
Who wrote this
Anas Bin Masud builds e-commerce sites and does technical SEO for businesses in the UK, Canada, Ireland and Pakistan. These procedures are the ones I run on client work, written down rather than invented — including the ones where the honest answer is that the fix is not available on your current hosting.