If you have a business with a physical presence or a geographic service area and you don’t have a fully optimised Google Business profile, you are handing customers to your competitors. This is not an exaggeration. When someone searches on Google for "mechanic near me" or "restaurant in Bilbao" or "emergency plumber Getxo", the first three results that appear —before any organic website results— are the Google Business profiles of the businesses Google considers most relevant and most reliable for that search.
Occupying one of those top three positions doesn’t require an advertising budget. It requires having the profile correctly set up, active and with a review strategy that works. This guide explains how.
Why Google Business is different from traditional SEO
The SEO of a website and the SEO of Google Business share the same logic — proving to Google that you are relevant and trustworthy — but they have different metrics.
For web positioning, the most important factors are content quality, backlinks and domain authority. For Google Business positioning, the most important factors are the completeness and consistency of the profile information, the number and rating of reviews, recent profile activity and geographical relevance.
This means a relatively new business can have a very strong local presence on Google Maps even if its website is not particularly well ranked, provided it actively works on its Google Business profile.
The setup that 80% of businesses get wrong
The first step is to verify that the profile has been claimed and verified. It is surprising how many businesses have a Google Business profile that Google created automatically from public information, but which the business has never claimed. That profile cannot be edited by the business, may contain incorrect information, and does not send the activity signal that Google values.
The basic information must be accurate and complete: business name exactly as it appears everywhere else, address in a consistent format, phone number, up-to-date opening hours — including special hours for bank holidays —, primary and secondary categories that accurately reflect what the business does, and a link to the website.
Consistency of information is an important local SEO factor. The business name, address and phone number must be identical on Google Business, on the website, on Yellow Pages, on Facebook and on any other directory where the business appears. Inconsistencies send negative signals.
The photos that influence visits most
Profiles with more than twenty photos receive an average of thirty-five times more clicks than profiles with fewer than three photos. Google knows this and rewards it in rankings.
But not all photos have the same impact. Photos of the interior of the business and the team have a far greater impact on the conversion rate —visits that convert into customers who call or visit the business— than photos of products or the exterior facade. Customers want to see the atmosphere, see the people, and get a sense of what the place is like before they go.
Each photo must have a descriptive file name before uploading. "foto1.jpg" is a missed opportunity. "taller-mecanico-bilbao-recepcion.jpg" is one more relevance signal for that geographical search.
The review strategy that works and the one that doesn’t
Google Business reviews are the most important trust factor for local ranking and for users’ decisions to contact or visit a business. A profile with forty reviews with a rating of 4,6 consistently outperforms a profile with ten reviews with 5,0.
Asking customers to leave a review is not asking them to lie about their experience. It is reminding someone who had a positive experience — and who would otherwise do nothing — that a thirty-second review has a real impact on the business.
The best moment to ask for a review is right after the customer has had the positive experience: when they leave the workshop satisfied, when dinner at the restaurant is over, when the medical appointment went well. At that moment, their level of satisfaction is at its highest, and so is their willingness to make a small effort.
Responding to all reviews — to positive ones with brief, personalised gratitude, and to negative ones with empathy and constructive explanation — is a signal of activity that Google values and that potential users read. A business that responds to its reviews shows it cares about its relationship with customers.
The posts that 90% of businesses don’t make
Google Business lets you publish updates on the profile, equivalent to posts on social media. These posts appear on the profile when someone visits it and are a signal of activity that influences ranking.
Publishing once or twice a week about news, offers, relevant blog articles or simply useful content for potential customers is one of the actions with the best effort-to-impact ratio in local SEO. Most competitors do not do it. Those who do have a visible advantage.