Get the fundamentals genuinely complete
A profile with the business name, address, phone, hours, website, and a real description filled in accurately and completely is table stakes — Google explicitly favors complete profiles over partial ones. This includes precise service area settings for businesses that travel to customers rather than a single fixed location.
It’s worth auditing this even on an older, seemingly established listing — profiles accumulate small inconsistencies over time (an outdated phone number, stale hours) that quietly erode trust signals without any obvious warning.
Category selection matters more than most owners realize
The primary category is one of the strongest relevance signals Google uses to match a profile to a search. A business that self-selects a broad or slightly incorrect category — a general "Contractor" instead of the more specific "Kitchen Remodeler" — can lose meaningful visibility on the exact searches it most wants to win.
Secondary categories are worth using deliberately too, to capture adjacent searches, but the primary category should be the single most precise match available for the core service.
Reviews: volume, recency, and response all count
Review count and average rating matter, but recency matters nearly as much — a profile with fifty reviews from three years ago and nothing since sends a weaker freshness signal than a profile with steady, recent review flow, even at a lower total count.
Responding to reviews, positive and negative, is a signal Google explicitly considers and — separately — a real trust signal to the human reading the profile before deciding whether to call.
Photos and posts keep the profile active
Regularly added, genuine photos (not just stock imagery) and periodic Google Posts contribute to the ongoing activity signal Google associates with a legitimate, currently operating business, and they directly improve how the profile converts once someone views it.
Common mistakes that quietly suppress rankings
Inconsistent NAP (name, address, phone) data across directories — a slightly different phone number on Yelp, an old suite number on Facebook — undermines the trust signal Google is trying to verify. Keyword-stuffing the business name field is against Google’s guidelines and risks suspension, not just a ranking penalty. And duplicate listings, often created accidentally during a move or rebrand, split review volume and confuse both Google and searchers.