Start with the primary category
Google matches your profile to a query largely through the primary category. A general contractor listed as "Contractor" instead of "Roofing contractor" will lose roofing searches to a competitor with the exact category, regardless of reviews or site quality.
Find the category your best competitors in the map pack use for the query you want, and match it if it honestly describes your work. Add secondary categories for the other services you genuinely deliver, but do not stuff them: every irrelevant secondary category dilutes the profile and can surface you for searches you cannot serve.
Reviews: volume, recency, and language
Reviews are the second-strongest lever, and the one competitors cannot copy quickly:
- A steady weekly trickle beats a batch of thirty in one month
- Recency matters; a profile with 200 reviews all older than two years underperforms a profile with 60 recent ones
- Reviews that mention the service and the city give Google extra matching signal, so ask customers what job you did for them rather than for a rating
- Owner responses on every review, positive and negative, within a few days
- Never gate, incentivize, or buy reviews; suspensions are difficult to reverse
Fill the structured fields most businesses skip
These are free, take one afternoon, and are empty on most local profiles:
- Services list with a written description for each one, using your customers' words
- Products for anything you sell with a price or price range
- Business attributes: appointment required, on-site services, languages spoken, accessibility
- Opening hours, including special hours for holidays, so the profile is never wrong
- Service area set to the cities you truly cover, not the entire metro
- Business description mentioning what you do, where, and who for, without keyword stuffing
- Booking or appointment link pointing at a page that loads fast on mobile
Photos, posts, and Q&A
Photos correlate with engagement and conversion more than with ranking. Upload real job photos regularly, geotagging is not necessary, and avoid stock imagery, which customers recognize instantly.
Posts drive clicks during the window they run, but there is little evidence they move position. Use them for offers and seasonal work, not as a ranking tactic. The Q&A section is worth seeding: post the five questions you answer on every call and answer them from the business account.
Connect the profile to the right landing page
The website link on the profile should not always point at the homepage. Send it to the page that matches your primary category and city, with matching NAP details, LocalBusiness schema, and a phone number that is tap-to-call on mobile.
When your profile, your landing page, and your citations all agree on the same name, address, and phone, the profile ranks more predictably. When they disagree, everything else you do is working against noise.
What to measure
Track calls, direction requests, and website clicks from the profile insights, plus map pack position for your five priority queries measured from a location near your customers rather than from your office. Ranking measured at your own address will always look better than the reality customers experience a few miles away.