When a customer searches “hairdresser in Graz” or “physio near me”, the first thing Google shows is not a website — it is a map with three businesses pinned to it. Your Google Business Profile decides whether you are one of those three. It is free, it takes an afternoon to set up properly, and nothing else in local marketing returns as much for as little.
The profile has one job: to turn a nearby search into a phone call, a route, or a click to your site. Everything below is about doing that job better than the shop across the street.
Claim and verify — then treat it like a second homepage
Search for your business on Google. If a profile already exists, claim it; if not, create one at Google Business Profile and verify by postcard, phone or video. Verification is non-negotiable — an unverified profile cannot rank or be edited. Once it is yours, resist the urge to fill it in once and forget it. The profiles that win are the ones that look maintained.
Categories: the setting most owners get wrong
Your primary category is the single strongest lever on which searches you appear for. Be precise, not broad: a category of “Hair salon” ranks better for haircuts than the vaguer “Beauty salon”. Then add every relevant secondary category.
- Pick the most specific primary — “Italian restaurant”, not just “Restaurant”; “Dental clinic”, not “Doctor”.
- Add secondary categories for each service you genuinely offer — a workshop might add “Tire shop” and “Brake shop”.
- Do not stuff categories you do not serve — Google notices, and it dilutes your relevance.
Fill in every field — completeness is itself a signal
Google rewards profiles that leave nothing blank, and customers trust them more. Work through the whole thing:
- Name, address, phone exactly as they appear on your website — identical punctuation and spelling.
- Services and products with short descriptions and prices where you can.
- Attributes — wheelchair access, free parking, outdoor seating, women-owned — these show as badges and match filtered searches.
- A real description and your website link — the two properties reinforce each other, and this is the backbone of any local SEO strategy.
Photos and posts: the freshness Google rewards
Profiles with recent, real photos get far more clicks and direction requests than bare ones. Add your storefront, your team, finished work, the inside of the room a customer will actually sit in. Then use Posts — the mini-updates for offers, events and news — every couple of weeks. They cost nothing and signal that the business is alive.
An empty profile says “we might be closed.” A maintained one says “we are open, busy and proud of the work.”
Reviews: the profile’s engine
Reviews are the strongest local ranking factor you can actually influence — and the strongest reason a stranger picks you. Build a simple habit: after every happy customer, send your review link or point a QR code at it. Then answer every review, the good and the bad, calmly and by name. Future customers read the replies as closely as the stars.
Keep hours accurate — the fastest way to lose trust
Nothing burns goodwill faster than driving to an “open” shop that is dark. Set your regular hours, and — this is the part people forget — set special hours for public holidays. In Austria that means marking days like 26 October or the days around Christmas. A profile that is honest about Sunday and holiday hours quietly earns the trust that turns into calls.
Where this fits
The profile is the free half of getting found locally; a fast, well-structured website is the other half, and the two feed each other. If you want the whole picture first, start with the SEO basics for business owners. When you are ready to build the website side properly, see what that would cost for your business or ask me directly — I answer within 24 hours.