How to Optimise Your Google Business Profile in Harare & Zimbabwe

One listing for the real premises

The Google Business Profile is the panel Google shows on Maps and next to local results: the name, the category, the hours, the photos, the reviews. For a business with an office in Harare, that listing should describe the office you actually have. It should not be copied once per suburb.

Name, address and phone

Use the business name as it appears on the door and on the website. Adding a service and a city into the name, to chase a search, is how listings get suspended or ignored. The address and phone on the profile should be the same words and the same number as the website and the email signature. If the site says “2nd Street” and the profile says a different road, Google and customers both have a contradiction to resolve.

Sonke’s own site uses one address and one published phone for this reason. The same discipline applies to a client listing. If you are not sure which of two old addresses is current, fix that before you touch the profile.

Category, hours and description

Pick a primary category that is the thing you actually do. Extra categories are for real services, not for every neighbouring trade. Hours should be hours you keep. A description is a short account of the business in ordinary language, with the city written once, not a list of keywords.

Photos, services and posts

• Photographs of the real premises, the team and the work outperform stock images.
• The services list should match what a customer can buy this month.
• Posts are useful when they announce something true: a new service, a closure, a finished job. A post schedule with nothing to say can wait.
• The website link on the profile should be the canonical site, with https, not an old campaign URL.

Reviews and questions

Ask customers who have actually bought. Reply to the reviews you get, including the unhappy ones, without arguing a case in public that belongs in a phone call. Do not buy reviews. Questions on the profile deserve an answer in the same plain language as the website.

What this guide is not

Setting the profile up is something a business can do itself with the steps above. Keeping it accurate, along with the rest of a search programme, is a different engagement. On Sonke’s SEO retainer, a Google Business Profile is part of the Pro and Premium plans. That offer is described on SEO and AIO. This page does not restate the retainer.

The related service

This note explains the topic. The offer sits on SEO and AIO.

Published by Sonke Digital. Questions about a project go through Get a quote, not through this guide.