How to Optimise Your Google Business Profile to Get More Local Customers

I was speaking with a new client recently, a hair salon owner who had just invested in a new website and quite rightly felt proud of it.

Then I asked her a simple question.

"Have you looked properly at your Google Business Profile recently?"

There was a pause.

"I think it is fine," she said. "It has been there for years."

That response comes up more than almost anything else in my conversations with local business owners. And it is exactly why I wanted to write this.

Because for most local businesses, your Google Business Profile is working harder than your website. It is the first thing a potential customer sees. It is where trust starts. And for the majority of businesses that have not touched it since the day it was set up, it is quietly losing them customers every week.

Here is how to change that.

Why your Google Business Profile matters more than you think

Before someone visits your website, before they ring you, before they book, they Google you. Or they search for something like "hair salon near me" or "plumber in Leeds" or "physiotherapist Harrogate."

What shows up first is not usually your website. It is your Google Business Profile. That panel with your photos, your reviews, your opening hours, and your services is where people decide whether you feel right for them. Most of those decisions are made in seconds, before anyone has clicked through to your site at all.

This means your Google Business Profile is not a secondary piece of your online presence. For most local businesses it is the primary one. Getting it right has a direct, measurable impact on how many people contact you.

The consistency principle that most local businesses miss

One of the most important things to understand about Google Business Profile is that Google rewards clarity and consistency. It is looking for confidence that the information it is showing its users is accurate. When the information about your business matches across every place it appears online, Google becomes more confident in recommending you.

That means your business name, address, phone number, opening hours, and core services should be identical on your Google Business Profile, your website, your social media profiles, and any online directories you appear in.

Even small differences cause problems. If your website says "The Edit Hair Studio" but your Google profile says "The Edit Hair and Beauty," Google can treat those as two different businesses. The inconsistency weakens both. It is one of the quietest and most common reasons local businesses underperform in search despite doing everything else reasonably well.

Before you do anything else, check your basics and make sure they match everywhere.

How to optimise your Google Business Profile properly

Choose the right primary category

This is one of the most impactful and most overlooked settings in the whole profile. "Hair salon" and "hairdresser" are not the same to Google. "Electrician" and "electrical contractor" return different results. Your primary category tells Google what kind of business you are and which searches to show you in. Choose the one that most precisely matches what you do for most of your customers.

You can add secondary categories too, but get the primary one right first. A wrong or vague primary category is like filing yourself under the wrong section in a directory. You will be there but nobody searching for you will find you.

List your services in detail

Most businesses set up their profile with a name and address and leave the services section empty or with a one-line description. This is a significant missed opportunity.

Google uses your service listings to match your profile to specific searches. If you offer balayage but it is not listed as a service on your profile, you are far less likely to appear when someone searches "balayage specialist near me." If you are an electrician who does EV charger installations but that is not listed, you will miss those searches entirely.

List each service with its proper name and a short, clear description. Use the same language your customers use. Think about the specific searches you want to show up for and make sure every one of them has a corresponding service on your profile.

Add real photos consistently and regularly

Google Business Profiles with regular photo updates perform better than those with a static set of images uploaded on day one. Google interprets consistent activity as a signal that the business is active and well maintained.

More importantly, photos are what make a potential customer feel something before they have spoken to you. For a salon, that means photos of your actual work, your team, your space, and your client results. For a tradesperson, it means photos of completed jobs. For a clinic or therapy practice, it means the environment, the team, and the kind of welcome a patient or client can expect.

Aim to add new photos at least once or twice a month. They do not need to be professional shots every time. Real, genuine images taken on a good phone are often more compelling than polished stock-style photography.

Collect reviews consistently, not in bursts

A steady flow of new reviews over time is far more valuable than a burst of ten reviews in one week followed by nothing for six months. Google notices the pattern. So do potential customers.

Build review collection into your everyday process rather than treating it as an occasional campaign. After a completed job or appointment, send a short follow-up message with a direct link to your Google review page. Most satisfied customers are happy to leave a review if you make it genuinely easy and ask at the right moment.

When you ask, give them a steer on what to include. Ask them to mention the specific service they had, the person they worked with if relevant, and what outcome they were happy with. A review that says "Sarah did my balayage and I have never had so many compliments" is worth five times more than "great salon, highly recommend" for both conversion and search performance.

Reply to every review, including the difficult ones

This is the one that gets skipped most often, and it matters more than most people realise.

When you reply to a review, you are not just responding to the person who wrote it. You are sending a message to every future customer who reads that exchange. A thoughtful, warm reply to a positive review shows you appreciate your customers. A calm, professional response to a negative review shows you take responsibility and you care about getting things right.

For positive reviews, thank the person by name, reference something specific they mentioned, and keep it genuine rather than formulaic. For negative reviews, stay calm, acknowledge their experience without getting defensive, and offer to take the conversation offline to resolve it.

People are not looking for perfection. They are looking for reassurance that a real, decent human being is running the business. Your review replies are one of the most visible ways to demonstrate that.

How your Google Business Profile and your website should work together

Your Google Business Profile and your website are not separate things. They should be reinforcing each other at every point in the customer journey.

The most common mistake is sending everyone who clicks on your profile straight to your homepage. If someone taps "Balayage" on your Google profile, they should land on your balayage page, not a general overview of your salon. If someone clicks your booking link, they should go directly to a booking page, not have to hunt for a way to make an appointment.

Your profile sets expectations. Your website needs to meet them. When the experience carries through cleanly from the Google result to the landing page, conversion rates improve significantly because there is no moment of doubt or confusion in between.

This also applies to your reviews. Reviews are not just social proof to be collected and displayed on a testimonials page. They are content, written by real people in natural language, describing real experiences of your services. That language is often closer to how your customers search than anything you would write yourself.

At Frively, our Sites subscriptions include a service that takes selected five-star Google reviews and places them on the relevant pages of your website. Reviews mentioning a specific service appear on that service page. Reviews naming a team member appear on the team profile. Reviews describing the atmosphere or the results appear on the homepage. The trust built on Google carries through to your website rather than stopping at the click.

This benefits the site in two ways at once. It reassures visitors immediately. And it strengthens the website's local search performance over time because the reviews add natural, service-specific language and regular freshness signals to pages that would otherwise be static.

A practical checklist for your Google Business Profile

Work through these and you will be significantly ahead of most of your local competitors.

• Business name, address, phone number, and hours are correct and match your website exactly
• Primary category is as specific and accurate as possible
• All key services are listed with proper names and short descriptions
• At least ten recent, real photos are uploaded and you are adding new ones regularly
• You are asking every satisfied customer for a review and making it easy to leave one
• You are replying to every review, positive and negative
• Your profile links go to the right pages on your website, not just your homepage
• Your profile is checked and updated whenever your hours, services, or team change

None of this is complicated. It just needs to be done properly and kept up consistently. That consistency is what separates the local businesses that show up reliably in search from the ones that wonder why they are not getting found.