14 step Google Business Profile posts plan with templates for UK SMEs

Google Business Profile posts are short updates you publish directly to your profile to drive visits, calls or clicks, using the Update, Offer or Event post types to match what a customer is actually looking for. Google reviews and displays them alongside your listing on Search and Maps, so what you post and how often shapes whether nearby customers act. Get the mechanics and the content right, and posts become one of the cheapest ways to convert people who are already searching for you.

TL;DR:

Use the correct post type for your goal: updates for general news, offers for promotions with deadlines, events for scheduled activities, and products to showcase specific items.

Incorporate clear headlines under 58 characters, authentic media, and relevant landing pages with UTM tags to maximize clicks and conversions.

Schedule recurring posts via the API for routine promotions, but avoid repetitive generic updates that can appear stale to customers.

Keep posts compliant with content policies by avoiding restricted, misleading, or unsafe links, revising non-approved posts promptly.

Prioritize timely, intent-matched posts over broad SEO efforts, and always verify the destination link before publishing to prevent wasted effort.

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What Google business profile posts are and where they show up
Which type of GBP post should you use, and when?
How do you create, schedule and manage a GBP post?
How do you optimise Google Business Profile posts for clicks?
How does scheduling and the GBP API work for recurring posts?
Why do GBP posts get rejected or disappear from view?
How do you measure whether your GBP posts are working?
SemLocal’s practitioner playbook: templates and common fixes
Geoff’s take: prioritise posts that match customer intent
Let SemLocal manage your Google Business Profile posts for you
Sources

What Google business profile posts are and where they show up

A Google Business Profile post is a short piece of content, made up of text, an image or video, and usually an action button, that Google attaches to your listing. According to Google’s own guidance, posts can include text, photos or videos and an action button, and where that content appears depends on the device and the type of post you have chosen.

On desktop, posts typically surface in the “From the owner” section of the knowledge panel, the box that appears on the right of a Google search result when someone searches your business name or category. On mobile, the same content lives in the Updates or Overview tabs, often presented as a scrollable carousel sitting just below your photos and reviews. If someone finds you through Google Maps rather than Search, recent posts can appear there too, depending on the device and how the listing is being viewed.

Offer, Event and deal-type posts behave slightly differently from standard updates. Google notes that posts about events, deals or specials may automatically surface on mobile and can even pull in content from previous posts or connected social channels when Google decides to feature them. That is worth knowing before you assume every post you publish disappears the moment a newer one goes live.

Visibility itself works on a simple principle: newest first. Posts display in reverse-chronological order, meaning a fresh update will usually push an older one down the carousel or out of prominent view. Standard update posts tend to stay live for a limited period before fading from the featured position, though they remain accessible in your profile’s post history. Offers and events, by contrast, stay visible for as long as their specified dates run, which is one reason they are worth using for anything with a genuine deadline rather than a generic “shop now” push.

This matters for a wider reason too. As Search Engine Land explains in its guide to local SEO, Google Business Profiles sit right at the point where local search intent turns into a transaction, and posts function as microcontent designed to tip undecided searchers toward calling, visiting or clicking through. A post is not a branding exercise. It is a nudge, placed exactly where someone is already deciding whether to choose you.

Which type of GBP post should you use, and when?

Google gives you four main post formats, and picking the wrong one for the job is the most common reason posts underperform. Each type has its own fields, its own limits, and its own best use case.

Update posts are the general-purpose option. They support a short headline, body text, an image or video, and an optional call-to-action button such as “Learn more” or “Call now”. Use them for anything that does not fit a specific offer or date, service changes, new starters, seasonal notes, or reminders about opening hours.

Offer posts require a title and start and end dates, and they generate a distinct “View offer” button rather than a generic CTA. Google’s documentation confirms that offer posts need dates and produce that dedicated button, which makes them the right tool whenever you have a genuine promotion with a deadline, a seasonal discount, a limited-time package or a loyalty push.

Event posts also require start and end dates, and if you skip the specific times, Google can display the event as running for the full 24 hours on those days. That is a small detail that trips up a lot of businesses expecting a tighter time window to show. Use event posts for in-store demonstrations, workshops, launch days or community activities where the date itself is the hook.

Product posts let you showcase an individual item or service with its own name, description and price, functioning almost like a mini-catalogue entry attached to your profile. These work well for highlighting a new menu item, a seasonal product line or a flagship service you want to put in front of searchers before they even click through to your website.

Quick dos and don’ts by type:

Do match the post type to genuine intent. An update post dressed up as a fake “offer” with no real discount erodes trust fast.
Do use event posts whenever a date is the whole point. A vague update saying “join us soon” wastes the format.
Don’t leave offer or event dates vague or overlapping with an older, expired promotion still technically live.
Don’t use product posts for services with no fixed price. Vague pricing looks unfinished and gets skipped over.
Do rotate types across the month rather than publishing the same update format every time. Variety keeps the carousel worth checking.

Getting the type right does more work than any amount of clever copywriting on the wrong format.

How do you create, schedule and manage a GBP post?

Publishing a post takes minutes once you know the sequence. The dashboard and the mobile app follow the same broad steps, though the layout differs slightly between the two.

Sign in to your Business Profile. On desktop, go to Google Business Profile Manager or search your business name and manage it directly from the Search result. On mobile, open the Google Maps or Google Business app.
Find the “Add update” or “Create post” option. This usually sits on the profile’s home screen or under a dedicated Posts tab.
Choose your post type. Select Update, Offer, Event or Product depending on what you are announcing, since this choice determines which fields appear next.
Write your headline and body text. Keep the headline short and specific; the body should explain the offer, event or update in plain language without padding.
Add media. Upload a photo or short video. Google recommends clear, well-lit images relevant to the specific post rather than generic stock photography.
Set dates where required. Offer and Event posts need start and end dates; add specific times for events if you want Google to display an accurate window rather than a full-day default.
Add a coupon code or redemption link, if relevant. Offer posts allow you to include a code customers can quote or enter, which also gives you a rough way to track uptake offline.
Choose or confirm your call-to-action button. Options typically include “Call now”, “Learn more”, “Buy”, “Sign up” or “Get offer”, and the button should match the actual next step you want someone to take.
Preview the post. Check how the text wraps and how the image crops before it goes live; a good desktop preview does not always match how it looks on mobile.
Publish or schedule. Some interfaces let you set a future publish date directly; others publish immediately once you confirm.
Repeat across locations if you manage more than one profile. Google Business Profile Manager lets you apply certain updates to multiple listings, though post content is generally best tailored per location rather than copied wholesale.
Check the status indicator. Newly published posts often show as “pending” briefly while Google reviews them, before flipping to “live”. A post marked “not approved” needs editing and resubmission.
To edit a live post, open it from your posts list, make changes, and save. Minor text or image edits usually go through without a fresh review delay, though substantial changes can trigger another moderation pass.
To delete a post, open it and select the delete or remove option; this takes it out of the carousel immediately, though cached versions can occasionally linger in search results for a short period.

For recurring campaigns, some accounts now support setting a repeat pattern directly, so a weekly special or a monthly offer does not need manual re-entry every time. This sits alongside the wider move toward automated recurrence, covered in more detail further down.

Pro Tip: Screenshot your post before submitting it. If it comes back “not approved”, you will already have a record of exactly what you wrote and can adjust the specific line that likely triggered the rejection instead of guessing.

How do you optimise Google Business Profile posts for clicks?

Most posts fail quietly. They get published, they sit in the carousel, and nobody clicks, not because the offer was bad but because the copy, the image or the landing page did not earn the click. Optimising a post is mostly about removing friction between “I saw this” and “I did something about it”.

Headlines and opening lines. Keep the headline under roughly 58 characters so it does not truncate on mobile, and front-load the benefit rather than the business name, which the customer already sees elsewhere on the profile. Google’s post body text has a character limit around 1,500, but the first two lines are what actually get read before someone decides whether to expand or scroll past, so put the offer, date or benefit there rather than at the end.

Images and video. Use real photos of your business, staff, products or premises rather than stock imagery; profiles with authentic, specific images read as more trustworthy at a glance. Google recommends images at least 400 by 300 pixels, though higher resolution photos crop more cleanly across both the desktop panel and the mobile carousel. Add descriptive alt text where the upload tool allows it, both for accessibility and because it gives Google another signal about what the image actually shows.

CTA buttons and landing pages. The call-to-action button only works if it sends people somewhere that matches the post. A “Book now” button linking to your generic homepage instead of a booking page is a common way to lose the click you just earned; as BrightLocal’s practitioner guidance notes, mismatched landing pages routinely waste the traffic posts generate. Check the link works, loads quickly on mobile, and lands on the exact page relevant to the offer.

UTM tagging. Add UTM parameters to every link so the traffic shows up cleanly in Google Analytics rather than blending into unattributed direct traffic. A workable pattern looks like:

utm_source=google&utm_medium=gbp&utm_campaign=spring-offer&utm_content=offer_post

Swap the campaign and content values for whatever you are running, but keep utm_source=google and utm_medium=gbp consistent across every post so you can filter and compare them as a single group later.

Two quick A/B tests worth running:

Button wording. Try “Call now” against “Learn more” on otherwise identical posts and compare click-through rate over two weeks.
Image style. Test a staff or in-store photo against a product close-up for the same offer, and compare which drives more views and clicks in your Business Profile insights.

Small changes like these compound. A post with a sharp headline, an honest photo and a correctly linked landing page will consistently outperform a well-written post let down by a lazy link.

How does scheduling and the GBP API work for recurring posts?

Built-in scheduling inside Google Business Profile Manager lets you write a post now and set it to go live on a future date, which is useful for planning a week or a month of content in one sitting rather than logging in daily. For a single-location business, that native scheduling covers most needs without any extra tooling.

Multi-location operators and franchises tend to hit the ceiling faster. Recreating the same offer across ten or fifteen profiles by hand is slow and invites inconsistency, which is where the Google Business Profile API becomes relevant. A developer update from Google confirms that RecurrenceInfo now enables scheduling recurring posts through the API, meaning a genuinely repeating promotion, a weekly special, a monthly offer, a standing event, can be set once and left to publish on its own cadence rather than re-entered manually every cycle.

That capability is worth using with some discipline. Recurrence works best for promotions that are legitimately repeating and worth repeating, not as a shortcut to avoid writing fresh content. A weekly “quiz night” event or a monthly loyalty offer is a good fit. Posting an identical generic update every week purely to fill the carousel tends to look stale fast, and customers notice repetition faster than algorithms reward it.

Deciding whether to build against the API yourself, use a third-party scheduling tool, or hand the whole thing to a managed service comes down to three practical questions:

How many locations are you managing? A handful of profiles rarely justifies API development; a few dozen or more usually does.
Do you have technical capacity in-house? Building against the API requires developer time; most small teams do not have that spare and are better served by a scheduling tool or an agency.
Is the content genuinely recurring or does it need fresh judgement each time? Recurrence suits routine promotions. Anything reactive, seasonal stock, a one-off event, a response to local news, still needs a human deciding what to post and when.

For most small and medium local businesses, the native scheduler inside Business Profile Manager covers day-to-day needs, and the API only earns its complexity once you are managing enough locations that manual entry becomes the actual bottleneck.

Why do GBP posts get rejected or disappear from view?

A post that never goes live is worse than no post at all, because it usually means wasted time and a missed window on a genuine offer or event. Google’s posts content policy sets out the categories most likely to trigger rejection, and most rejections trace back to a handful of repeat causes.

Restricted content categories cover things like adult content, regulated goods (alcohol, tobacco, certain medical claims), and anything that could be read as discriminatory or offensive. Misleading claims, an offer that overstates a discount, a service claim with no basis, also gets flagged. Unsafe or broken links, particularly URLs that redirect through unfamiliar shorteners or land on insecure pages, are a common and easily avoidable trigger.

Every post moves through one of three states. Live means it has passed review and is visible on your profile. Pending means Google is still checking it, which usually resolves within a few hours to a day. Not approved means it has been rejected, and the fix is almost always to reread the copy for anything resembling a restricted claim, strip out risky wording, check every link works and loads securely, then resubmit. Google rarely gives a detailed reason, so the sensible approach is to simplify the post rather than guess repeatedly at what triggered it.

Separately, it is worth knowing that Google’s own update system can automatically change details on your profile, sometimes independently of anything you have posted. Keeping your core listing details accurate and checking your profile periodically reduces the risk of automated changes conflicting with the offers or events you are actively promoting.

How do you measure whether your GBP posts are working?

Google Business Profile gives you built-in insights on each post, showing views and, for some post types, clicks on the call-to-action button. Treat these numbers as a directional signal rather than an exact figure. They are useful for spotting which post type or subject line gets more attention, but they do not tell you what happened after the click, whether someone actually booked, called or bought, and that gap is exactly what UTM tagging and Google Analytics are for.

A workable UTM template, applied consistently across every post, looks like this:

Update post: utm_source=google&utm_medium=gbp&utm_campaign=weekly-update&utm_content=update_[date]
Offer post: utm_source=google&utm_medium=gbp&utm_campaign=[offer-name]&utm_content=offer_post
Event post: utm_source=google&utm_medium=gbp&utm_campaign=[event-name]&utm_content=event_post

Keeping utm_medium=gbp fixed across all three lets you build one clean filtered view in Google Analytics showing everything Business Profile posts have driven, separate from organic search or paid campaigns.

Track a small, consistent set of KPIs rather than everything the dashboard offers: post views, CTA clicks, UTM-tagged sessions, and, where you can capture it, actual enquiries or bookings traced back to that traffic. A four-week testing cadence works well for most small teams: publish consistently for two weeks, review which posts and post types performed best, adjust headline style or image choice for weeks three and four, then compare the two halves. That short cycle is usually enough to show whether a change in approach is worth keeping.

SemLocal’s practitioner playbook: templates and common fixes

Across the small businesses SemLocal manages Google Business Profiles for, a simple, repeatable routine consistently beats sporadic bursts of enthusiasm. A useful monthly rhythm looks like one promotional offer, one event or community update, and a weekly quick update covering hours, seasonal notes or small operational changes. That mix keeps the carousel active without demanding a content team.

Three simple templates worth copying:

Update post outline: headline stating the change in five or six words, one sentence explaining what it means for the customer, a relevant photo, and a “Learn more” button pointing to the specific page it concerns.

Offer post outline: headline naming the discount or deal, one sentence with the terms and the deadline, start and end dates set precisely, a photo of the product or service on offer, and a “View offer” button linking to a page built specifically for that promotion.

Event post outline: headline naming the event, one sentence covering what happens and who it is for, exact start and end times set rather than left blank, a photo from a previous event if available, and a “Sign up” or “Learn more” button.

The most common mistake SemLocal fixes when taking over a profile is the mismatched landing page, a “Book now” button sending traffic to a homepage with no obvious booking path. The second most common fix is stale posts: a business posting once a quarter, then wondering why the carousel looks abandoned next to a competitor posting weekly. Both fixes are quick once spotted, which is exactly why a scheduled routine, checked and adjusted monthly, tends to outperform ad hoc effort by a wide margin.

Geoff’s take: prioritise posts that match customer intent

Most advice on Business Profile posts treats posting frequency as the whole game. It is not. The businesses getting real value from posts are the ones matching post type to the actual moment a searcher is in, an offer when someone is comparing price, an event when someone is deciding whether to visit today, an update when someone just wants reassurance you are open and operating normally.

The second lesson is less comfortable: a post is only as good as where it sends people. I have seen well-written offers wasted entirely because the CTA button led to a generic contact page instead of a booking form built for that exact promotion. Fix the destination before you polish the headline.

If you are short on time, prioritise posts over other local SEO tasks whenever you have something genuinely time-sensitive to announce, a limited offer, a live event, a change in hours. Evergreen SEO work can wait a week. A post about an event happening in three days cannot.

Pro Tip: Write your CTA link and check it loads correctly before you write a single word of the post copy. It takes thirty seconds and saves you from publishing a great headline that goes nowhere.

— Geoff

Let SemLocal manage your Google Business Profile posts for you

Semlocal is the alternative to hiring an in-house marketer for Google Business Profile management: you get consistent posting, correctly linked landing pages and proper UTM tracking, without adding another task to your own week. Every post is built around one goal, more calls, more bookings and enquiries you can actually trace back to the profile, not vanity views on a carousel nobody follows up.

Outsourcing makes the most sense once you are managing multiple locations, you have no spare time to post weekly, or you need recurring campaigns set up properly through the API rather than re-entered by hand every month. A specialist service can handle the scheduling, the content, the landing pages and the tracking end to end, so posts stop being a task you mean to get to and start being a steady source of enquiries.

If your profile has gone quiet, or you are not sure your current posts are pulling their weight, get a straightforward audit of what is working and what is not through the Google Business Profile Manager service, and see exactly where the next enquiry is likely to come from.

Sources

This guide draws on Google’s own documentation for creating and managing posts and its posts content policy, alongside the Google for Developers update on recurring post scheduling. Practical optimisation guidance references BrightLocal’s guide to Google Business Profile posts and Search Engine Land’s explainer on local SEO. For broader ranking context, see SEO Analytic’s guide to Google Business local SEO.