The map box is the decision
When somebody near you searches for what you do, the first thing they see is a map with three businesses under it. Most people call one of those three. Very few scroll far enough to find the fourth.
Your Google Business Profile is the thing that decides whether you are one of those three. It is also, for most businesses, half empty.
The fields almost nobody fills in
Services
There is a whole section for the services you offer, with a description field for each. Most owners have never opened it. Google reads what is in there. Put every service in, spelled the way a customer would say it rather than the way it appears on your invoice.
Service areas
If you have not told Google which towns you serve, you are not eligible to appear in most of them. It does not infer this from your address. This is the most common thing we find switched off and one of the quickest to fix.
The description
Seven hundred and fifty characters, free, and almost nobody uses more than twenty words of it. Say what you do, who you do it for, and where. Do not put prices or promotional offers in it, that is against Google’s rules for the description field, though it is allowed in Posts.
Photos
If your most recent photo is two years old, the listing reads as a business that might not be operating. One photo a week takes thirty seconds and it is a live signal.
Questions and answers
Anybody can ask a question on your listing. Anybody can also answer it, including people who have never used you. Seed it yourself with the five questions you answer on the phone every day.
Review replies
A wall of reviews with no replies reads as nobody home. And if the reviews themselves are thin, asking every customer automatically fixes the supply. Replying takes a minute and it is visible to everybody reading. If you are in a regulated field, medical, dental, veterinary, keep public replies generic and take any detail offline.
None of this costs money. Your competitor didn’t outrank you because his work is better. He filled the form in.
What it will not do
Filling your profile in properly will not guarantee you the top spot. Nobody controls Google, and distance from the searcher is a factor you cannot change. What it will do is stop you being disqualified for reasons that were entirely within your control.