What are your top tips for optimising a Google Business Profile?

Google Business Profiles are an essential marketing tool for businesses of all sizes. Potential customers use these profiles to gain important information about your business, such as its opening hours, to read your business’s reviews and also to gain directions directly to your business.

To put it quite simply, if you have a well optimised Google Business Profile, this can help to improve your local SEO- which can help to draw in more customers, as well as improve the reputation of your business if you have a lot of positive business reviews.

Author: Ryan Christopher Walsh

Date: 18/09/2025

Google Business Profile can be a critical marketing asset for any business. The reason is that it if you get shown in the top 3 results, this is a brilliant position just below the Google Adwords and above the organic search results.

The point we are trying to make is simple: if your business consistently ranks in the top three of Google Business Profile results, you can attract more customers, entirely free of charge.

In this in-depth article, we will cover:

• Why your business needs a Google Business Profile account
• How you can claim your Google Business Profile
• How to verify your listing
• What you need to optimise and improve your Google Business Profile
• How to keep your account up-to-date

Why should I go through the effort of setting up a Google Business Profile account?

It’s simple.

When customers want to find anything in the city of Cardiff, they often turn to Google.co.uk for the answers.

Therefore shoppers often turn to their smartphone for the answer, whether that’s a nice Samsung smartphone or perhaps an Apple device, most of us usually ask Google to find a local business for us. Whether that’s the closest Greek restaurant, or where we can buy a new mattress

Often, then right in front of the customer, will be Google My Business results.

This is why it’s so important; and why its still crucial for companies to get displayed in the Google Business results, as you can potentially attract thousands more visitors every single year to your business profile.

A detailed and reliable survey indicates that 46% of all searches are conducted on Google, are actually defined as customers looking to find local businesses or information about local events. This means that if your business is not ranking high on Google, you can most definitely be missing out on a tremendous amount of business.

The local three pack

It was the case, quite some time ago, that Google would actually show around seven businesses within the Google business results. Therefore, there was a considerable opportunity for a company to appear here; however, as things change, it’s now just 3 businesses which are shown here.

Businesses now have to fight fiercely for just three positions within the Google business results; therefore, it’s very hard for companies to appear here. This is why businesses need to now make serious effort to improve their local search engine optimisation if they do not appear in the Google Business results.

How can we claim our Google business listing?

Perhaps it is the case that your Google listing already exists; therefore, it’s just a matter of typing your business into the search bar on Google, choosing your business and then simply clicking on the “claim business” button.

This is most definitely worth verifying and claiming you’re listing.

The reason is simple: if you don’t, the competitors might actually claim your business listing instead.

Although it’s not there’s to claim, if they do claim the listing, they can then makes unauthorised edits to the business listing.

For example, from our experience, some people will “suggest an edit” on the Google Business listing, and then change the opening hours or even mark as “permanently closed” when this is not the case.

Therefore, this could cost the business a significant number of customers if many potential customers falsely believe businesses is closed when it is actually not.

Therefore, do claim your Google business listing, it only takes a minute to do. You don’t want other competitors or people making edits to the listing, such as changing your opening hours, address, or phone number.

How do you go about setting up a Google Business Profile?

The best part is that it’s an absolute piece of cake to set up a new Google Business account; it doesnt take up a considerable amount of time at all.

Therefore, all you have to do is log in to your Google account, and then you will be done in a matter of minutes.
Simply search for “Google Business” and start the process of setting up your account.

Do make sure that you choose the right business category

Setting up a your business category is vitally important, and you should be pretty surprised with the amount of businesses actually set their

Google Business account up in a rush, using the wrong business category. For example, you could be running a landscaping business, simply by clicking on hedge cutting services, or offering lawn cutting services, may not describe the services your business offers.

Take the time to work through the list and choose a business category that accurately describes the services or products you sell, so that you choose the right category for your business.

Accurately filling the NAP formation.

When you complete your business profile, please fill in the NAP information accurately. Various marketing agencies’ websites which you might have visited before will have most likely mentioned that, nap, the stands for the “name, the address, and the phone number” of the business is an important part of SEO. The NAP information on-page and also off-page needs to be consistent.

You therefore need to make sure that on your company website, make sure that the NAP information is written in plain text on the website, and might also add the NAP information to the footer and the contact page as well. Do make sure that Googlebot can “crawl and index” this information.

This NAP information should match exactly the information you add to your Google My Business page.

A word on opening hours

When you’re running your business, you might actually change the opening hours from time to time- for example, you might want to extend your opening hours during holiday season sales.

When you talk to any good marketing agency, what they will actually tell you is that it’s a good idea to log in from time to time to your business’s Google My Business account(s) and update the various details.

What this actually does is tell Google that you are updating your account regularly, which will tell Google your doing a good job of keeping the information up-to-date and accurate.

It also helps customers, as they will often use the Google business profile as a way of checking say your businesses opening hours, making sure that the store is open before they start their commute to your shop.

By actually logging into your Google business profile from time to time, you are therefore showing Google that your business cares about keeping your business information up-to-date, and a lot of marketing agencies believe that this can help improve your local SEO, when your keeping your profile up to date.

Write a good business description.

It might seem more straightforward to copy a brief business description directly from your own website, but this is actually not recommended, thats because the text needs be unique

Therefore, take the time to write a unique business description in a text editor, such as Microsoft Word, and try to cram as much information as possible about your business into the available word count.

It’s essential to take the time to do this, because they say the capital city, like Cardiff, that business description could actually be read, potentially thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of times.

For example, let’s say that you run a really nice coffee shop, some shoppers might be wondering, do you have any side rooms that you can rent out as meeting space within your coffee shop? For those businesses who make this clear in business description, that they do have metting space in their business description, this could help them to gain more customers.

Therefore, take the time to write a clear business description.
How to verify Google Business Profile

There are several ways to verify your Google listing. For example, you can choose to ask for a postcard sent to your business address; however, it is our understanding that this method is becoming less commonly used.

Instead, there are many other methods, such as requesting an automated phone call instead.

You can also send an email to verify the account.
As we earlier alluded to, an excellent idea is to verify your listing as soon as you can; the reason is that sometimes competitors instead verify the listing, they will then have control over the business listing.

Google Business Profile Optimisation

The important part is how you can better optimise your Google Business Profile.

As we mentioned earlier, businesses in the city of Cardiff are fiercely competing for the top three positions. Think about it for a second, in most business sectors, lets say you are a heating engineer in this capital city. How many direct competitors does it have?

It could potentially have over a hundred direct competitors.

Therefore, it is essential not only to have a Google Business Profile, but also to ensure that it’s well-optimised and kept up to date.

Optimising your business profile gives you the edge, simply making your profile better, more relevant, and much more helpful to the customer. Because of this, Google is much more likely to show your business listing more readily and on a more regular basis.

Therefore, you have the edge over the competition, making you more likely to be shown more often by Google results, in those top three positions on Google. This can actually draw more visitors to your business.

Again, we must emphasise this point: it’s fiercely competitive to have your business regularly shown in Google’s business results; however, this can bring a lot of free visitors to your website.

It is therefore very different from Google Adwords, which will have to pay for every single click on your Adwords account. Instead, Google

Business actually helps draws in free traffic to your business.

So, without further ado, here’s exactly how to optimise your Google Business account.

Add photographs

Imagine your business has a unique selling point.
let’s say, for example, you have a nice restaurant with floor-to-ceiling glass with panoramic views across the Atlantic Ocean, which will naturally be a fantastic place to have a nice meal in the evening with your partner.

Therefore, you could add pictures of the restaurants interior onto the Google business account, then you actually show why shoppers should choose your business and visit your restaurant.

Perhaps it’s the food you sell, they might want to add some pictures of the signature dishes which you retail?

It might be a picture of your friendly and highly experienced team, you might want to add a picture of them as well?

Business reviews

If someone within your shop, or let’s say your restaurant, really likes your business and the products you serve, then in a friendly manner, direct them to your Google Business account and politely ask them to leave a positive review.

It’s widely thought, by most search engine optimisation agencies, ours included, that by accumulating a lot of honest reviews, that’s positive five-star reviews left by genuine customers, this is the strongest and best way to improve your business’s Google ranking.

Therefore, this is an excellent idea, as it can massively help improve your business’s local search engine optimisation (SEO).

How we can help improve your businesses search engine optimisation?

Ryan Christopher Walsh is one of the longest-serving SEO experts in the whole of Cardiff, South Wales. During his time, he has worked with large e-commerce online retailers, right down to small local businesses.

We are one of the most highly experienced SEO agencies, with over 10 years experience. Ryan is dedicated to helping businesses improve their SEO.

Ryan Christopher Walsh is, therefore, the best SEO consultant in the entire Cardiff area. We will most definitely will not offer the cheapest quote, yet what we can guarantee is that the work is of a consistent high quality, and the best SEO is likely to be found in any city in the

United Kingdom.

Contact us today for a no-obligation quote.