Getting your Google Business Profile right (and asking for reviews without breaking the law)
When someone nearby searches for what you do, the map results often get the click before any website does. Those results come from Google Business Profile, the free listing Google gives every business. It is one of the highest-value pieces of local SEO work you can do yourself, and this guide covers the two halves of it: filling out the profile the way Google actually reads it, and gathering reviews without crossing a legal line that catches plenty of well-meaning businesses.
The three things Google says decide local results
Google publishes what determines local ranking, and it is refreshingly short: relevance, distance and prominence. Relevance is how well your profile matches what was searched. Distance is how far you are from the searcher. Prominence is how well known your business is, online and off. That is the whole official list, and each one translates into something concrete you can do this week.
Relevance: fill in everything, precisely
Google says relevance depends on complete, detailed business information, so completeness is not cosmetic. Choose your primary category carefully, because it is the strongest single signal about what you do, and add secondary categories only where they genuinely apply. List your services individually rather than lumping them together, keep your hours current including public holidays, and write the business description in plain words a customer would actually search.
Add real photos of your work, your premises and your team, and keep adding them. A profile that looks alive reads very differently from one set up in 2019 and never touched.
Distance: you cannot move, but you can be accurate
You cannot optimise where you are, but you can make sure Google knows it exactly. Confirm your address is right, or if you travel to customers rather than serving them at your premises, set your service areas honestly instead. Just as important: your name, address and phone number should match what your own website says, character for character. Mismatched details make Google less confident about showing you at all.
Prominence: reviews are the lever you can actually pull
Prominence covers how well known your business is: links, mentions and, most visibly, reviews. Review count and quality feed directly into local ranking by Google's own description, and reviews are the part of prominence a small business can influence week by week. Which is exactly why it is worth knowing where the legal line sits.
Asking for reviews: what is fine and what is illegal
What is fine, and worth building into how you finish every job: asking happy customers to leave a review, sending them the direct link to make it easy, and responding to every review you get, including the rough ones. A calm, factual reply to a bad review often says more to future customers than the review itself.
What is illegal: under Australian Consumer Law, a business must not create fake or misleading reviews, or arrange for anyone else to do so. That covers paying for reviews, review swapping with other businesses, and asking staff or family to pose as customers. The ACCC publishes plain guidance on this, and the rules have real teeth.
Incentives sit on a narrow ledge: offering a reward for a review is only permitted if it is offered equally for positive and negative reviews, and the incentive is clearly disclosed. An offer that only rewards five stars is the illegal kind. The safest path is also the simplest: do good work, ask promptly, make it easy.
A profile is not a substitute for your website
A well-built profile gets you into the map results, but it points at your website, and that is where the enquiry actually happens. The profile and the site reinforce each other: consistent details, service pages that match the categories you chose, and a site that loads well on the phone the searcher is holding. If the foundations under your site are shaky, start with our 20-minute website health check, then come back to the profile.
If you would like a straight answer on whether your profile, your website or both need work, tell us the situation. As always, no page-one promises, because nobody honest can make them.