Posts and the questions section

Posts

A post is a short update on the profile: a paragraph and a photograph, optionally with a button. Google shows recent posts on the profile and in some result panels. Their direct ranking effect is not documented and the handbook claims none; their value is that a profile with a post from last week looks open and a profile whose last post is from two years ago looks abandoned, to customers and, plausibly, to Google's freshness signals.

What to post: something that happened. A job finished, with a photograph and permission. A seasonal service. A change of hours. A new team member. An offer with a date. Keep each to a few sentences and a real image. Do not post the same offer weekly; do not post stock imagery; do not stuff posts with the target queries.

The questions section

Every profile has a public questions-and-answers section. Anyone can ask; anyone can answer, including competitors and people guessing. Businesses discover it when a stranger has answered “do you do emergency call-outs?” with “no” and it has sat there for a year.

Seed it yourself. From the profile's own account, post the five to ten questions customers ask most, and answer each accurately: parking, hours, whether you do X, what areas you cover, whether you need an appointment. Then check it weekly and answer new questions within days, before anyone else does. Upvote your own accurate answers so they show first.

The routine

Fifteen minutes on the same day each week: one post if there is something to say, none if there is not; the questions section checked and answered; the reviews from the previous chapter answered in the same sitting. The monthly routine chapter folds this into the larger schedule.

Illustrative example. A garage seeds its questions section with eight questions covering NCT prep, tyre stock, courtesy cars and payment, posts a photograph of a finished job every second week, and finds after a few months that its questions section is the first thing customers mention on the phone. That describes a routine, not a measured outcome.

Output

The questions section seeded and answered, a first post published, and the weekly slot in the diary. That completes the profile. Next, the details that must match everywhere: name, address and phone.