I've looked at a lot of Google Business Profiles over the years, for local clients, for friends' businesses, for random shops I walk past. And the same problems come up again and again.

None of them are hard to fix. Most owners just don't know they're there. I offer GMB and local SEO services, which I'll link below, but you can fix most of this yourself in an afternoon.

The wrong primary category

By far the most common one. A cosmetic dentist listed as "dental clinic" instead of "cosmetic dentist". A roofer listed under "contractor". Google leans heavily on that primary category, so getting it wrong quietly holds the whole profile back.

Missing services and products

Google gives you space to list every service you offer. Most profiles list two, or none. Each service is another chance to show up for a search.

Old or stock photos

A profile with three blurry photos from years ago doesn't inspire much confidence, either for Google or for the customer. Real photos of the work, the team and the location make a real difference.

Hours that are wrong

You'd be surprised how many businesses have holiday hours from two years ago still showing, or no hours at all.

Nobody owns the login

This is the scary one. I've met owners who can't edit their own profile because a previous agency or an ex-employee set it up. If that's you, sort it out now. When I build profiles through my GMB profile setup service, the login always goes to the owner, with 12 months of support after.

The details don't match anywhere else

Even a perfect profile struggles if your name, address and phone are listed differently across the web. That's what citations fix. I do them by hand through my local citation service, because automated tools tend to create more mismatches than they solve.

Then links and content

Once the profile and citations are right, a few relevant links and solid service pages push things further. Local guest posts work well, like the ones from my real traffic guest posts service, and some businesses in tough markets add a few John Wick PBN links behind them. Good service pages from a decent article writing service round it off.

But honestly, fix the profile first. It's the cheapest win in local SEO.