Ask a shop owner where their customers come from and they will usually point at their website. Then you look at the numbers and find most of the activity happened in the map result, before anyone clicked through to anything. The profile is not a listing you tick off. For a local business it is the shopfront.
1 · The three results above everything else
Most searches with local intent are answered by the map pack, the three businesses shown with a map above the normal results. Getting into it is a different job from ranking a page, and it turns on relevance, distance and prominence. You cannot move your shop, so the work is all in the other two.
2 · Categories decide what you are eligible for
The primary category is the single most powerful field on the profile, and the one most often left on whatever was picked in a hurry. A barber listed under Hairdresser competes in the wrong set of searches. Secondary categories add reach, but the primary one does the heavy lifting.
3 · The profile and the site have to agree
Name, address, phone number and opening hours are cross-checked against what is on your site and anywhere else you appear. One old listing with a dead number quietly undermines the lot. This is unglamorous and it matters more than almost anything else on this list.
4 · Services, products and the booking link
The profile will hold your full service list with prices, your products, and a link that takes someone straight into booking. Most profiles have none of it filled in, which means a competitor who has can answer the customer's question without them ever leaving the search result.
5 · Reviews, and specifically recent ones
Steady recent reviews read as a live business. A burst of twenty two years ago does not. The practical fix is making the ask automatic at the moment the customer is happiest, which for our clients is a tap on a Webitag at the counter.
6 · Photographs, dated
Profiles with current photographs get more engagement, and the date matters as much as the quality. A set uploaded this month says the business is open and cared for.