Keynotes: 

• Claim the business
• Optimize the distance, categories and reviews
• Add photos and regular update posts
• Monitor the competitors fake report
• Do local link building

As a business owner if you have a physical store/local shop in 2025 you should have a Google Business Profile (GBP). It will be your digital online store front. It is a handy info box that appears to customers when he/she searches for the exact service through Google or Maps. If you want to seriously boost visibility, attract more customers than you have to manage this properly. If you can not do this by yourself then you have to hire someone for gradually maintain GBP. 

Why Managing Your GBP Matters?

GBP is one kind of online ID card. It’s a free tool of Google that controls how your company shows up in SERP, Maps, LLMs platforms. Now you can raise a question about what benefits you can get from this business profile. 

A well-managed GBP helps you:

• It will appear in the local search engine result page (Local 3-Pack) and Google maps. 
• Get more calls, messages, directions, profile interactions, website visits
• Builds trusts with new customers
• Shows Google you are active
• More sales and beat competitors
• Better Local SEO performance

How to Manage your GMB (Google My Business)?

I hope you have already Google My Business profile or if you are a new business first create a business profile.  After creating a profile, claim it and verify by video or SMS. If you can not do that contact us. 

Optimizing Your Profile for Maximum Visibility

First, understand how local search works and when you are in the top 3 you will get traffic. It depends on searchers distance, categories, reviews. And now optimization can do magic. A half-filled profile won’t give you better results. So, what to do? 

1) Choosing Categories and Attributes

Pick the right categories that will match with your business. Start with the business primary or main category and then add secondary categories. You can add up to 6-7 sub-categories. You can use extensions for spying the competitors’ secondary categories. Use GMB everywhere or Pleper Local SEO Extensions to find the alternative keywords, business hours, reviews and ratings. 

2) Adding Photos, Videos, and Products

Upload high-quality photos, videos of your interior (furniture,team, antiques, rooms), exteriors (business name, roads, building), offerings and product images, logos and cover image. 

3) Crafting Your Business Description and Services

Add 750 characters to your business. You can write this description with AI or writers or by your own. Also add your social media profiles for more authenticity. 

4) Managing Reviews and Customer Interactions

Reviews are very important for your business rankings. Take real reviews from your customers after purchasing something or offer special discounts or free products.Five star reviews must include your main keywords and photos and if you found negative reviews reply with positivity with clear vision. It should come on a regular basis. For collecting reviews generate a QR code linking to your review link. 

5) Posting Updates and Engaging Content

You can see GBP has a post update section where you can post your activity on a regular basis. Treat your GBP like a mini social feed. Regular posts signal activity to Google and keep customers coming back. Post weekly, share events, offers, products, add different call-to-action buttons as your business goals. It’s better to minimum 5-8 posts per month if you can not spend time on this business profile. 

6) Track GBP Insights and Making Adjustments

Monitor your insights monthly on how business is performing. Check it monthly to see how people find you (map or Google), what keywords they search for, and interaction stats. 

7) Staying Compliant with Google’s latest Guidelines and Updates

The main important thing is to protect your GMB profile from competitors’ jealousy. They can report your business name marking as a fake business. So stick to real info: Use your exact business name (no keyword stuffing), accurate hours (update for holidays), and legit addresses. And also avoid uploading sensitive photos to your profile. Sensitive images penalize instantly.

8) Local Citations

You also have to list your site to the local directories to better visibility. Listing numbers depend on you. But be aware of the right listings, specially notice the NAP consistency means Name, Address, Phone number. Those should be correct when listed, if wrong then it won’t show the map/search engine result page. So, be aware. If you want to let someone do it visit SERP Thrive. 

Mistakes That Should Not Happen

It’s easy to slip up, but here’s a quick table of pitfalls I’ve seen (and how to dodge them):

We SERP Thrive provides national SEO, local SEO and international SEO services. If you think you can not do it, you take our services. We will do all of those things with local listings and reporting to you half-monthly and monthly. What is needed to do that – just the Google Business Profile (GBP) access.