The Google Business Profile checklist we use for SA businesses.

Short answer: own your profile, use your real business name, pick the primary category the map-pack leaders use (if it’s true for you), list every service, set real service areas and hours, add your own job photos, ask every happy customer for a review and reply to them, and keep posts within Google’s content rules. The detail is below.

1. Ownership and access

• The profile is owned by a Google account the business controls, not a past web designer or an agency.
• Anyone helping you (us included) is added as a manager, not an owner.
• There is only one profile for the business at that location. Duplicates split reviews and confuse Google.
• The profile is verified. If it isn’t, nothing else on this list matters yet.

2. Name and categories

• The name matches your real-world business name, exactly as it appears on your signage, invoices and website. No added keywords or suburbs.
• The primary category is the most specific one that describes your core business. Search your main service and look at which category the top three map results use. If it’s accurate for you, use it.
• Secondary categories cover the other things you genuinely do, and nothing you don’t.

Keyword-stuffed names (“Smith Plumbing Best Plumber Adelaide”) are against Google’s guidelines, easy for competitors to report and a common reason profiles get suspended. Relevance comes from categories, services, your website and reviews instead.

3. Address, service area and hours

• If customers come to you, show your address. If you go to them (welders, pest control, cleaners), set it up as a service-area business and hide the address.
• Service areas list the suburbs and towns you genuinely work in.
• Hours are accurate, with special hours set for South Australian public holidays.
• Never use a virtual office or a mate’s address to “be” somewhere you aren’t.

4. Services, products and menus

• Every service you offer is listed, each with a short plain description.
• Products are added where relevant. For Roam Offroad we added twelve services to the profile, so map searchers can see the fitment and workshop side of the business, not just the shop.
• Hospitality businesses load the full menu. For Barossa 50’s Diner we loaded all 119 menu items.
• The description (up to 750 characters) says what you do, where, and for whom, in plain English.

5. Photos

Your own photos beat stock photos every time. The shot list we give clients:

• Three or four finished jobs, before and after if you have them.
• You or your team at work (faces optional; hands and tools are fine).
• Your vehicle with signage, and your premises or workshop if customers visit.
• A logo and a cover photo that are clear on a phone.

Add a few new photos every month or two. It keeps the profile current for people deciding between you and the next listing.

6. Reviews

• A short review link saved on your phone, ready to text after every job.
• Ask every happy customer, not just the ones you think will write five stars. Selectively asking (review gating) is against Google’s rules.
• Reply to every review, good and bad, specifically and calmly. Future customers read the replies.
• Never pay for reviews or offer discounts in exchange. Google removes them and the ACCC treats fake reviews as misleading conduct.

7. Posts, and the mistake we learnt from

Posts let you share offers, updates and recent jobs. They don’t have a confirmed direct effect on rankings, but they help people already looking at your profile decide.

• One useful post every week or two: a recent job, a seasonal tip, an offer.
• No phone numbers in the text, no salesy link spam, no prohibited content.
• Use the post’s button for the action (Call, Book, Learn more) instead.

8. Make your website back it up

Google’s own explanation of how local results are ranked comes down to relevance, distance and prominence. Your profile is only part of relevance; your website is the rest. Every service on the profile should have somewhere on your site that explains it, the name, phone and address should match exactly, and your area pages should cover the places in your service area.

Roam Offroad is a good example of the two working together. With the profile and the site both saying clearly what the shop sells and where, Roam was #1 on Google Maps for “4x4 accessories” from Gawler, and 2nd in the regular Google results for “bull bars adelaide” from Adelaide (live checks, 5 Oct 2026).

9. Tracking what it does

• Check the profile’s Performance section monthly: calls, website clicks, direction requests and the searches that found you.
• Add a tracking tag to the website link (for example ?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=gbp) so Google Analytics shows visits from the profile separately.