A Google Business Profile for small teams

The advice here is unglamorous, which is probably why it gets skipped. Most advice about a Google Business Profile assumes a team that does not exist at your size. Here is the version that does not.

Search work compounds slowly, which is why it gets abandoned about two months before it would have paid off. Check it against what you would want a competitor's site to get wrong.

What to keep

For many local businesses it outperforms the website itself. Small and consistent beats large and occasional here. It rarely shows up as a line item, which is exactly why it slips.

What to drop

Process that exists to coordinate ten people is overhead when there are two of you. The teams that handle this well are rarely the ones with the biggest budgets.

Where to start

Answering reviews publicly signals an active business. It is worth being explicit about, because assumptions differ quietly. It rarely shows up as a line item, which is exactly why it slips.

What this looks like day to day

Technical fixes remove obstacles; content earns the position. Both are needed and they are not interchangeable. Three things worth confirming about a Google Business Profile before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• For many local businesses it outperforms the website itself — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

Worth checking on your own setup before it becomes someone else's problem to fix.