What a Google Business Profile is
It is a free business profile that Google shows in Search and on Maps: name, address, opening hours, phone, photos, reviews and a directions button. It used to be called Google My Business. It is not a website and does not replace one, but for queries like "hairdresser near me" or "dentist Novi Sad" the local pack with the map sits above every organic result. If you are not in it, a competitor gets the call before the customer ever scrolls to your site.
Who is allowed to have one
Any business with direct customer contact: a shop with an address, a clinic, a workshop, and also a business that travels to the customer without a storefront (a tradesperson, a delivery service, an agency). The difference is the type: a business with premises shows its address, while a business that travels picks a service area and hides the address. Do not open a profile for a business with no direct customer contact, because Google suspends those.
The steps
- Go to google.com/business and sign in with a business Google account, not the personal one you use for everything else.
- Enter the exact business name. The one on the door and on the invoice, with no keywords bolted on.
- Pick a category. This is the single most important field on the profile, more on it below.
- Add the address or the service area, then the phone number and the website.
- Start verification and let it finish before you spend time polishing the profile.
Verification: where it usually stalls
Google wants proof the business really exists at that address. The most common method now is video: the app asks for a short unbroken clip showing the location, equipment or signage, then the interior, then evidence that you are the person running it (keys, till, paperwork). It has to be one continuous take. If it fails, the second attempt usually needs more outside context: the street, the building number and the sign in the same frame. Postcards with a code still appear for some categories, and then you wait up to two weeks.
Category and name: the two choices that carry your ranking
The primary category decides which queries you compete for at all. "Dental clinic" and "Orthodontist" are not the same and do not bring the same calls. Choose the one that describes your main source of revenue, then add secondary categories for the rest. Leave the business name exact: stuffing keywords into it ("Best Belgrade Hairdresser") breaks the rules, can be reported in one click and leads to suspension, and a suspended profile comes back slowly and painfully.
What to do the moment verification clears
- Opening hours, holidays included. Wrong hours are the most expensive mistake on a profile because they create an angry customer at a locked door.
- Ten to twenty real photos: outside, inside, the team, the work. No stock images, people recognise them.
- A plainly written description, with no keyword lists in it.
- Services or products with prices, if you publish prices.
- A link to the site, pointing at the page that answers the same question, not always the homepage.
Reviews, the one part you cannot engineer
Reviews are the largest single local ranking factor under your control, and the only way to get them is to ask. Ask at the end of the job, while the goodwill is fresh, and send a direct link. Do not buy reviews and do not write them yourself, because the pattern is visible and the profile suffers. Reply to all of them, including the bad ones, briefly and without arguing: that reply is read by future customers, not by the person who complained.
Where the profile meets the website
The details must be identical on the profile and on the site: same name, same address, same phone, down to the comma. Google compares them and inconsistency weakens the local signal. If you change the phone number, change it everywhere the same day. How that connection is used more broadly, and why a local business almost always fixes the profile before paying for ads, is covered in our piece on ads versus SEO, and SEO is the service that keeps it all consistent.
If you would rather someone did this for you, together with the site behind the profile, tell us what you do and where and you get a fixed offer.