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Here's something I did for years without realizing it was a problem. I set up my Google listing, put in the address and phone number, uploaded four photos, and never touched it again.

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And in your head, that box was checked.

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Completely checked. For a decade.

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That's the number one thing I run into. Owners think of it as a form they filled out. It's a live piece of marketing that competitors work on every week.

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Welcome to the Six Minute Marketing Pod. Big strategies in bite-sized chunks. Brought to you by Lead Converter. I'm Jake Morgan, and Maya Torres is here. She builds these systems for a living.

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Good to be back.

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Today's episode goes with a blog post on the site right now about Google Business Profile Optimization. Maya, what even is this thing?

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Your Google Business Profile, people call it GBP, is the listing that shows up when somebody searches for your company or for what you sell. Search, maps, near me results.

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And that's where the hours and the reviews come from.

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Name, address, phone, hours, category, services, photos, reviews, posts. And here's the part owners miss. A lot of people interact with all of that and never visit your website.

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So it's not a listing, it's the first impression.

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For most of your customers, yes.

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First pushback. Categories. I picked one when I signed up, and I don't think I gave it 10 seconds of thought.

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Most people don't, and it's the highest leverage thing on the profile. Your primary category tells Google the main type of business you run. Everything else gets read through that.

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So if I picked wrong, I'm invisible for the thing I actually do.

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You can be. And some owners go the other way, loading up on extra categories to show up for more searches.

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I'd probably do that. Why is that bad? More shots on goal?

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Because you're describing a business that doesn't exist. A landscaper who adds pool contractor and general contractor is giving Google a blurry picture instead of a clear one.

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That's fair. Blurry is worse than narrow.

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Every time. Same idea with the services section, which almost nobody fills out. An estate planning firm can list living trusts, wills, probate. A landscaper can list design, installation, irrigation.

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And that's just sitting there empty for most businesses.

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Sitting there empty. Free space to say exactly what you do, and people skip it.

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Okay, point two, accuracy. And I'm gonna be honest, this feels like the boring one.

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It's the boring one that costs the most money. Wrong hours, an old phone number, an address you moved out of. A customer hits that and they're gone, and you never find out.

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There's no notification that you lost somebody.

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None. And if your website says one phone number, a directory says another, and your profile says a third, Google is trying to decide which one is true.

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Let me push back. Nobody's checking a directory from 2011.

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No human, right, but Google reads all of it. That's why profile work and listing cleanup go together. Same problem wearing two hats.

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What about photos? I hate taking pictures of my own work.

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You don't have to be good at it. Storefront, team, equipment, finished projects. A profile with no photos reads as inactive, even if you've been in business 20 years.

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Point three, reviews and posts. Reviews I get, posts I've never done once.

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Reviews first. Recency matters. A hundred reviews that all stopped two years ago reads differently than one new review every month.

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So it's part of the job, not a campaign you run in March.

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Built into how you close out a customer, and then you respond to the good ones and the rough ones.

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Why bother with the good ones? They already like me.

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Because the response isn't for them. It's for the next person reading it.

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Okay, and posts?

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Updates you publish straight to the profile. New services, a promotion, seasonal hours, a question you answer 20 times a week.

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Does that actually move rankings? Be straight with me.

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There's no formula where 10 posts equals a better position, and I won't pretend otherwise. It keeps the profile current and tells search platforms more about what you do.

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So it helps, but nobody can hand me a number.

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That's the honest version. But if you publish nothing for a year and the shop across town doesn't, you handed them the advantage.

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And the blog says this is never actually finished.

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Never. Somebody sitting below you today can pass you just by being consistent.

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Alright, owner's got 20 minutes this week in a business to run. One thing.

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Open your Google Business Profile and check two things. Your primary category, is it really the business you're in, and your services section. Is anything in it at all?

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So category and services, not photos, not posts, not reviews. Those two.

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Those two. Fix them, and you've done more than most of your competitors did all year.

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Okay, we skipped plenty today. The full blog post walks through the description, review responses, the AI search piece, and a long FAQ. It's on the site with this episode. Go read it.

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And if somebody wants to know how they actually stack up, instead of guessing, we do a free local visibility audit.

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Tell them what that is, because audit sounds like a sales call.

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It isn't. We look at your profile, listings, reviews, website, and your map's visibility from more than one spot in your market, then show you where competitors are ahead of you. Links in the description.

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And if you read all this and think, I know I should and I'm never going to, that's what Lead Converter does. We run it so you don't have to. Which is most of us.

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Thanks, Jake.

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Thanks, Maya. This has been the Six Minute Marketing Pod. Go check your categories, and we'll see you next time.