A complete, step-by-step guide to optimising your GBP — whether you're starting from scratch or fixing a neglected profile.
Your Google Business Profile is the first thing most local customers see when they search for your business or a business like yours. A poorly optimised profile doesn't just miss opportunities — it actively loses you customers who find a competitor instead. We manage 43 GBP profiles across spas, resorts, clinics, restaurants, and real estate businesses. In that time, we've developed a systematic approach to GBP optimisation that's delivered results like 416,000+ profile views for a single resort in 12 months, and 4,000+ monthly calls across our wellness portfolio. This guide walks you through every element of a high-performing GBP, in priority order.
Everything starts with verification. An unverified profile can't be fully managed, can't respond to reviews, and won't show your business information reliably. Google offers several verification methods depending on your business type and history — the exact options vary, so work through whichever route Google presents for your listing and complete it before touching anything else.
Once verified, lock down the fundamentals:
Photos are usually the first thing a potential customer actually looks at on your profile — before your description, before your posts. A profile with a handful of dated photos reads as inactive, and customers move on to the competitor whose gallery shows them exactly what to expect.
Build your gallery deliberately:
Most profiles we audit are thin on photos. In our experience it's the fastest visible improvement you can make to a neglected profile.
Google Business Profile posts are short updates that appear directly on your profile. Most businesses never use them — which is exactly why the ones that do look conspicuously active by comparison.
What works as a post:
On frequency: consistency beats bursts. A post every week keeps the profile visibly current; twelve posts in one afternoon followed by three silent months does not. Posts also age out of prominence quickly, so a steady cadence is the only way to keep fresh content on the profile.
Write posts for the customer who is already looking at your profile: one idea per post, a clear next step, and a real photo rather than a text graphic wherever possible.
Reviews do two jobs at once: they influence whether Google surfaces your profile, and they influence whether the human reading it picks up the phone. A review strategy has three parts — generating, responding, and staying inside Google's rules.
Generating reviews: ask every satisfied customer, at the moment the experience is fresh, with a direct link to your review form. For service businesses, a follow-up message shortly after the visit works far better than a sign at the counter. The goal is a steady flow of recent reviews, not a one-time push.
Responding: respond to every review — positive and negative. A short, specific thank-you tells prospective customers someone is paying attention. For negative reviews, respond once, professionally: acknowledge the issue, state what you've done about it, and take the conversation offline. Never argue in public.
Staying compliant: never buy reviews, never incentivise them, and never selectively ask only happy customers through filtering software ('review gating'). All of these violate Google's policies and put the profile at risk — which is a far worse outcome than a slightly lower rating. Earned reviews compound; shortcuts get profiles suspended.
Across the 43 profiles we manage, the businesses that treat reviews as a weekly operating habit — not a crisis response — are the ones whose profiles keep climbing.
