The listing is the storefront, the website is the interior
When somebody searches for a service near them, the first thing they see is a map with three businesses on it. Those three come from Google Business Profile data, not from your website. You can have an excellent website and never appear there.
This is why the listing deserves attention first. It is free, it takes under an hour to do properly, and for a business with a physical location or a service area it frequently drives more enquiries than the site does.
Get the category right, then stop adding categories
The primary category is the single most influential field in the profile. It should describe what you mostly are, in Google's own vocabulary: not "beauty business" but "Nail salon", not "health" but "Dental clinic".
Add a small number of genuinely accurate secondary categories and no more. Stuffing the list with loosely related categories dilutes the signal rather than widening your reach, and can pull you into searches you cannot serve well.
Hours, including the awkward ones
Hours are the field customers act on most directly and the one most often left stale. Fill in regular hours, then use special hours for public holidays before they arrive. A listing that says open when the door is locked produces a bad review, and a listing that says closed when you are open produces nothing at all.
If you take appointments outside your walk-in hours, say so in the description rather than extending the hours to cover it. Overstated hours cost you more in disappointed visits than they gain in traffic.
Photos are not decoration
Listings with real, current photographs get engaged with more than listings without. The useful ones are not stylised marketing shots, they are the practical ones: the front of the building from the street so people can find the door, the inside so they know what they are walking into, the parking, and the work itself.
- Exterior from the pavement, in daylight, showing the sign.
- Interior wide enough to read the space.
- The actual product or work, current rather than from three years ago.
- The team, if they are comfortable with it. People book people.
Make the listing and the site agree
Name, address, phone number, and hours should be identical on the listing and on your website, character for character. Not "Suite 4" in one place and "Ste 4" in the other. Consistency across the two is one of the ways Google gains confidence that both refer to the same real business.
The same applies to your service list. If the listing advertises services the website never mentions, that mismatch is doing you no favours in either place.
Reviews, asked for at the right moment
Reviews influence both ranking and whether anybody clicks. The practical trick is timing: ask when the customer is visibly happy and still in front of you, not by email three weeks later. A short link on a card at the counter converts far better than a follow-up nobody opens.
Reply to reviews, including the poor ones, in a way a future customer would find reasonable. Prospective customers read the replies as much as the reviews, and a calm reply to a harsh review often does more good than a dozen five-star ratings.
Keep it alive
A profile is not a form you complete once. Post occasionally, update photos when the space changes, correct the hours before holidays, and answer the questions people submit. A listing that shows recent activity outperforms an identical one that has been untouched for two years.