Google Business Profile Optimizer

---
name: google-business-profile-optimizer
description: Optimizes a Google Business Profile as the storefront of a local service business - primary category selection, service-area setup, weekly photo cadence, Q&A seeding, posts, and NAP consistency - ordered by ranking impact. Use when an owner asks "why don't I show up on Google Maps", "how do I set up my Google Business Profile", "what category should my business be", or "how do I get more calls from Google". Do NOT use for broader local ranking strategy across the website and citations - use local-seo-playbook instead. Do NOT use for review generation and responses - use review-engine instead.
---

# Google Business Profile Optimizer

For a local service business, the Google Business Profile is the storefront:
most customers decide whether to call from the map pack panel without ever
visiting the website. The costly mistake this skill prevents is treating GBP
as a set-and-forget listing - a wrong primary category or an inconsistent
business name silently caps every dollar spent elsewhere. Before investing
hours here, confirm with local-unit-economics what a booked call is worth;
for Summit Plumbing (4 techs, $450 average ticket, $75,000 a month), each
extra customer from the profile is worth about $450 in first-job cash against
a roughly $119 paid CAC, so free GBP calls are the cheapest customers the
business will ever get.

## Operating procedure

Work the checklist top to bottom - it is ordered by ranking impact, and the
top items gate the rest.

### Step 1: Claim, verify, and de-duplicate

Confirm the owner controls the profile with a verified Google account. Search
the business name and phone number for duplicate profiles; duplicates split
reviews and confuse ranking. Request removal or merge of any duplicate before
touching anything else.

### Step 2: Set the primary category - the single biggest lever

The primary category is the strongest ranking signal the owner directly
controls. Pick the most specific category matching the highest-revenue
service: Summit chooses "Plumber," not "Contractor." Add secondary categories
for real service lines only (for Summit: "Drainage service," "Water heater
installation and repair service"). Test one primary-category change at a time
and wait two to three weeks before judging, because rankings reshuffle after a
change.

### Step 3: Configure the service area correctly

A plumber without a walk-in shop is a service-area business: hide the street
address and list served cities or zips instead. Set the area to where the
techs genuinely go - Summit lists its metro plus the six suburbs it serves.
Do not paint a giant radius to chase volume; Google ranks by real proximity
and prominence, and a bloated area dilutes relevance without producing calls.

### Step 4: Lock NAP consistency

Name, Address, Phone must be character-identical everywhere: GBP, website
footer, and major directories. "Summit Plumbing" and "Summit Plumbing LLC"
count as a mismatch. Never stuff keywords into the business name ("Summit
Plumbing - Best Water Heater Repair") - it violates guidelines and risks
suspension, which zeroes out every call from Maps. Full citation cleanup
across directories belongs to local-seo-playbook; this step covers the
properties the owner edits directly.

### Step 5: Fill services, description, attributes, hours

List every service as its own item with a plain-language description and,
where honest, a from-price ("Water heater replacement - from $1,400"). Write
the 750-character business description with the primary service and city in
the first sentence. Set real hours; wrong hours generate one-star reviews.

### Step 6: Start the photo cadence - weekly, forever

Upload three to five real photos every week: job sites, before/after,
trucks, techs. Weekly beats a one-time dump of fifty because sustained
activity signals an operating business. Make it a Friday routine: each Summit
tech texts one job photo to the office, the office picks the best few and
uploads. No stock photos - customers can tell, and Google's filters
increasingly can too.

### Step 7: Seed the Q&A

Anyone can ask and answer questions on the profile, so the owner should ask
and answer the ten questions customers actually call with, before a stranger
answers wrong. Seed pairs like:

```
Q: Do you charge for estimates?
A: Diagnostic visits are $89, credited toward the repair if you proceed.
Q: Do you handle emergency calls at night or on weekends?
A: Yes - 24/7 emergency service across [FILL: metro] and surrounding suburbs.
```

Check monthly for new public questions and answer within 48 hours.

### Step 8: Post weekly

One post a week: a completed project, a seasonal reminder ("freeze warning -
disconnect outdoor hoses"), or an offer. Posts expire from prominence in
about a week, which is why cadence beats volume. Batch four posts monthly in
one sitting.

### Step 9: Hand off the review stream

Review count, rating, and velocity are major prominence signals, but
generating them is its own system - go to review-engine, and respond to every
review from the profile using its scripts.

## Inputs to elicit

Collect: trade and highest-revenue service, walk-in location or service-area
business, exact legal and DBA name, cities genuinely served, top ten customer
questions, and who on staff can own the weekly photo/post routine. Default the
photo cadence to weekly and posts to weekly if the owner has no preference.
If the owner guesses which service earns most, label it a guess and verify
against job records before locking the primary category.

## Concrete thresholds

- Primary category: exactly one, the most specific match; re-judge any change
  only after two to three weeks.
- Photos: 3-5 new per week, minimum 1; a profile stale for 30+ days is
  underperforming its ranking potential.
- Posts: 1 per week; Q&A answered within 48 hours.
- NAP: zero variants tolerated across owned properties.
- Profile completeness: every section filled - empty services and attributes
  are free relevance left on the table.

## Worked artifact: Summit Plumbing profile settings

```
Business name:      Summit Plumbing        (exact legal DBA, no keywords)
Primary category:   Plumber
Secondary:          Drainage service; Water heater installation and
                    repair service
Type:               Service-area business, address hidden
Service area:       [Metro city] + Ridgefield, Oak Hill, Brookside,
                    Fairview, Lakemont, Cedar Falls
Hours:              Mon-Sat 7:00-19:00, 24/7 emergency line noted
                    in description
Description opens:  "Summit Plumbing is a residential plumbing company
                    serving [Metro city] with same-day drain, water
                    heater, and repair service..."
Weekly routine:     Fri: upload 3-5 tech job photos, publish 1 post,
                    answer any new Q&A
```

Bad contrast: name "Summit Plumbing | #1 Emergency Plumber [Metro]", primary
category "Contractor," a 50-mile radius, and 40 photos uploaded once in
January. That profile is a suspension risk that ranks worse each month.

## Deliverable

A completed profile audit against the checklist above, the exact category and
service-area settings to apply, seeded Q&A pairs, and a one-page weekly
routine (photos, post, Q&A check) with a named owner on staff.

## Do NOT

- Do not stuff keywords or cities into the business name - suspension ends
  every Maps call at once, the opposite of the goal.
- Do not choose a broad primary category to "cover everything"; specificity
  ranks, generality does not.
- Do not show a street address for a service-area business without real
  walk-in staffed hours - it violates guidelines.
- Do not upload stock photos; real, slightly imperfect job photos convert
  better and carry no policy risk.
- Do not change multiple ranking-relevant settings in the same week; you
  will not know which change moved the needle.

## Quality bar

- Checklist items resolved in impact order; no step marked done without the
  exact value set (category name, cities, hours).
- NAP verified character-identical across GBP and the website.
- The weekly routine names a specific person and a specific day.
- Any category change logged with a date and a re-check scheduled two to
  three weeks out.

## Escalation and routing

If the profile is suspended, file a reinstatement with documentation
(utility bill, license) rather than creating a new profile - a new profile
forfeits every review. Route review generation and response scripts to
review-engine, website and citation work to local-seo-playbook, and the
question of whether paid leads are still needed after organic calls rise to
local-unit-economics.