Optimising Every Section of Your GBP Listing

Business description and services

The business description (750 characters) should describe what the business does, who it serves and what makes it distinct, written for a human reader rather than stuffed with repeated keywords, which Google's guidelines explicitly discourage. Use the opening sentence for the clearest possible statement of what you do and where, since it is often the only part visible before a reader taps to expand.

The services or products section should list every genuine service individually with its own short description rather than one generic combined entry — each listed service is a small additional relevance signal, and specific service names ('emergency boiler repair' rather than just 'plumbing') help match more specific searches.

Attributes, hours and Q&A

Attributes (wheelchair accessible, women-led, outdoor seating, appointment required) should all be filled in accurately since these both aid relevance matching and appear directly in the profile as trust signals to a browsing searcher. Set accurate regular hours and, critically, keep special hours updated for public holidays — a profile showing incorrect hours is one of the most common causes of a frustrated customer and a subsequent negative review.

The Q&A section is publicly editable by anyone, so seed it yourself with the three to five most common questions customers actually ask, answered accurately and in your own voice — an unanswered or incorrectly answered public question sitting on your profile for months actively costs you conversions.

• Fill in every accurate attribute available for the category
• Set accurate regular hours and update special hours for holidays
• Seed Q&A with your own common questions and answers
• List services individually with specific names and short descriptions

Auditing completeness in RankLocal

RankLocal's profile audit scores completeness across every optimisable field and benchmarks it against the top-ranking competitors in your local area, showing specifically which fields they have filled in that you have not. This competitive gap view is more actionable than a generic completeness percentage alone.

Re-run the audit monthly, since Google periodically adds new attribute types and fields, and a profile that was fully complete a year ago may have new unfilled fields sitting quietly on it today.

Key takeaways

• ✓Write a human-readable description with the clearest statement first
• ✓List services individually with specific names, not one generic entry
• ✓Fill in every accurate attribute and keep hours updated including holidays
• ✓Seed the public Q&A section before customers post unanswered questions

Why this lesson matters

This lesson belongs to Google Business Profile Foundations, the part of Local SEO Mastery where the goal is: understand how the local map pack works and get a google business profile fully set up and optimised.

Read it once, then do it straight away on a real site inside RankLocal. Nothing here is theory for its own sake — every step produces something you can show a client.

Do it now

1. 1Open RankLocal with sample data already loaded, so you are not stuck on setup.
2. 2Audit the local footprint.
3. 3Connect your Google Business Profile to RankLocal and run the profile completeness check.