When someone searches for a business near them, the map results often appear above everything else. Google says local results are based mainly on relevance, distance and prominence. You cannot change where a customer is standing, but you can control relevance and help prominence, and most of that happens in your Google Business Profile.
Choose the right primary category
Your primary category is the strongest signal of what you are. Pick the one that matches your main service exactly, not the broadest option available. A flooring contractor who mostly refinishes floors should look at how the categories describe that work before settling for a general one.
Add secondary categories for real services you offer, and stop there. Adding categories you only touch occasionally dilutes the message.
Fill in services, hours and attributes
List each service you offer and describe it in a sentence or two, using the words customers use. Set accurate hours, including holidays. Wrong hours cost you calls and reviews, and they are one of the easiest things to fix.
Get the address and service area right
If customers visit you, show your address. If you travel to customers, you are a service-area business, and Google's guidelines let you hide the address and list the areas you cover instead. Keep the list to places you genuinely serve, since an overly wide area does not help.
Make your business name, address and phone number match your website exactly. Small differences, such as a suite number or an old phone line, create doubt.
Use real photos
Add photos of your work, your team, your premises and your vehicles. Customers use them to judge whether you look real and established. Stock images do the opposite. Add new ones regularly, not all at once.
Ask for reviews, and answer them
Reviews are a large part of prominence. Ask each customer once the job is done, while it is fresh, and make it easy with a direct link. A steady flow looks natural. A sudden burst does not.
- Reply to every review, including the critical ones, calmly and briefly.
- Do not offer rewards for reviews or screen customers so that only happy ones are sent to Google. Both break Google's policies and can get reviews removed.
- Never write reviews for your own business.
Check for duplicates and unverified listings
A second listing for the same business, often created years ago by a previous owner or directory, can split your reviews and confuse Google. Search your business name and phone number, then claim or request removal of anything that should not exist.
Make the website support the profile
The profile gets you seen. The website has to close the sale. Link to a page that matches the service, put your phone number where a mobile visitor can tap it, and use the same wording on both. A new business can get a long way with just this. One recent client, a new flooring contractor, reached the top Google Maps position for its main service within 30 days of registering its domain, and you can read how that case unfolded along with what the numbers do and do not show.