A landscaping client I’ve been working with mentioned a few months back that his Google Business Profile views had dropped about 30 percent over six months. He’d noticed it in the data but couldn’t work out why. His photos were fine, his reviews were good, nothing obvious had changed.
When I looked at his main competitor in the same suburb, the difference was immediately obvious. The competitor had started posting to their profile every Tuesday. A job they’d finished, a before-and-after, a question they got asked constantly. Nothing fancy. Just consistent.
My client hadn’t posted in eighteen months.
We spent about twenty minutes setting up a simple rotation for him. He did his first post that afternoon. By the following month his profile views had recovered most of the ground they’d lost.
Google Posts are short updates you publish directly to your Google Business Profile. They show up on your listing when someone searches your business name, and they can appear when people find you in Google Maps.
Think of them as little announcements. A job you just finished, a question customers keep asking, a seasonal reminder, a service you want more enquiries about. They’re not blog posts and they’re not meant to be clever. They’re meant to be current.
Most posts stay visible for about seven days before they roll off the front of your profile, which is exactly why posting once and forgetting about it doesn’t work here. Consistency is the whole point. (For more on why your profile matters as much as it does, see Your Google Business Profile Is a Trust Page Now.)
Google Posts probably aren’t a direct ranking factor, and I’m not going to pretend they are. What they do is contribute to something bigger: your overall online footprint and the impression your profile makes on people who are already searching for someone like you.
Someone searches “electrician Joondalup” and sees three businesses. Two of those listings look dormant. Yours has a post from Tuesday showing a switchboard you just upgraded. Which one feels open, active, and worth ringing? That’s the whole game.
Your profile isn’t a phone book entry anymore. It’s a trust page, and posts are the part of it that proves you’re still trading and still paying attention. There’s a second benefit too: posting regularly gives Google fresh, specific text about what you actually do and where you do it, in your own words. That’s never a bad thing.
This is the question I get most often now, so it’s worth dealing with properly.
When someone asks ChatGPT or Google’s AI for “a good plumber in Fremantle”, the answer gets built from what’s already out there about you. Your Google Business Profile is one of the loudest, most structured signals about your business that exists. A profile that’s current, complete, and describes your services in plain language is easier for any system to read and repeat back.
I’m not going to promise that posting weekly gets you into AI answers. Nobody honest can promise that. For a clear-headed look at what AI search actually means for local businesses, see Does AI Search Replace Google for Local Service Businesses? What I will say is that the businesses I see getting pulled into those answers didn’t do anything clever. They kept their profile current and answered the questions real customers actually ask. Google Posts are one of the simplest ways to do both.
Once a week is plenty. Genuinely. If you post once a week you’ll be ahead of nearly every competitor on your street.
Here’s the rotation I give clients.
Week 1: A job you just finished. “Replaced a hot water system in Bayswater yesterday. Two hours, no mess.” Photo from your phone. Done.
Week 2: A question you get asked constantly. Whatever you end up explaining on the phone five times a week, write it down once. That’s your post.
Week 3: Something timely. Open over the long weekend? A particular service in demand right now? Say so.
Week 4: A service you want more of, or an offer if you have one. Use the Offer post type if there’s a real deal attached. If there isn’t, don’t fake one.
A few things that make the difference: use your own photos, real work beats stock images every time. Put the important bit in the first sentence because Google truncates posts. Write like a human being, say “we fix leaking taps in Perth’s northern suburbs”, not “we provide comprehensive plumbing solutions”. Add a call-to-action button. Skip the hashtags, this isn’t Instagram.
People treat Google Posts like social media, notice that nobody is liking or commenting on them, decide it isn’t working, and stop.
Google Posts aren’t social media. Nobody is scrolling a feed of them. The only people who ever see your post are people who are already searching for a business like yours right now, with intent to hire. That’s a tiny audience with enormous intent, and it’s the opposite of the social media grind. You’re not chasing reach. You’re making sure that when someone finds you at exactly the moment they need you, your listing looks alive.
Open your Google Business Profile. Write one post about the last job you finished. Add a photo from your phone. Hit publish. You’re now doing something most of your competitors aren’t.
Then do it again next week.
If you’d rather someone just handled the whole local visibility side of things, that’s exactly what our Local Visibility SEO Package is for. Or if you’d like a second opinion on whether your profile is pulling its weight, book a free 15-minute chat and I’ll take a look and tell you straight.
Karen Dauncey has been working in SEO since 2003 and is a recognised expert in Local SEO for professional and service-based businesses across Australia.
She is the founder of Blue Cherry Online Marketing, a Local SEO and Google Ads agency she established in 2008. Through Blue Cherry, Karen has optimised over 1,000 websites and managed millions of dollars in Google Ads spend, giving her a deep understanding of what drives visibility and enquiries for service businesses in a constantly evolving search landscape. Over the past two decades, she has worked with a wide range of local service businesses including trades, allied health, psychologists, childcare centres, naturopaths, accountants, lawyers and many more.
Karen is also the creator of The SEO School, an online SEO course designed to teach business owners how to take control of their own SEO. She regularly delivers educational programs for Local, State and Federal Government and was an advisor for the ASBAS Digital Solutions Program. Her passion for making SEO accessible drives everything she does, from free resources to hands-on training.
Karen has attended search engine conferences in London, Stockholm, Adelaide and Sydney, and was invited to attend a pilot Business Coaching Course at Google's Head Office. She holds a Diploma in Marketing from the Chartered Institute of Marketing in the UK.
She is also the co-owner of the Digital Experts Directory, an online directory for female service-based businesses.
To keep up to date with the latest in SEO, join her Facebook group The SEO School Community or follow her on Facebook or LinkedIn.
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