Boost Your Local Brand: 30 Easy DIY Photos to Make Your Google Business Profile Shine

Photos speak louder than words when it comes to convincing local businesses to optimize their Google Business Profiles. Research shows that profiles with photos get more clicks and driving directions than those without. This alone provides ample motivation for most local brands.
While Google's guidelines offer technical details, they lack illustrative examples to spark creative ideas. That's where we come in.
Today, we'll help you transform the photo section of your listings into an inspirational focal point. Though professional photo shoots have immense value, let's focus on DIY shots using your phone or camera.

Also take wide, open interior shots without people. Some customers want to visualize the space clearly without distractions. Ravens Restaurant nails it with a pristine interior photo spotlighting their ample, well-lit dining room. This gives guests a feel for the atmosphere and layout before visiting.

Do like Greens Restaurant has done, following up with photos showing your business at a busy time to convey its vibe and help customers decide if they can imagine themselves there.

Many types of businesses feature common areas. Entities like the Cashel Palace Hotel have a common lounge, and this photo is incredibly inviting – well-lit, cozy, clean, and spacious.

But auto repair shops have lounges, as do elder care homes, medical offices, and any business model that requires patrons to wait somewhere.

If your premises feature a public waiting room, an onsite gym, a swimming pool, a dog park, a children’s play area, or any other setting that guests share, photograph it well to prove that your customers’ comfort has been seen to.

The Pod Brooklyn Hotel gets it right again with this clean, uncluttered image of one of their rooms. Any type of lodging, whether for temporary stays or long-term living, should place a premium focus on taking excellent photographs of rooms.

Photograph every aspect of your business designed to welcome, serve, and please customers. Your amenities might include:

A great way to showcase your expertise is by uploading photos demonstrating your business's long history. 

If your business building, vehicles, brochures, or other assets display the year your business was established, photograph them to prove your longevity. Most businesses that last a long time tend to do so because of customer satisfaction.

Have a sign at your place of business that proudly displays your company’s mission statement, like Wahpepah’s Kitchen? Photograph it. It’s a great way to instantly signal your intent to potential customers looking at your listing. If you don’t have a feature like this on your premises, you might want to consider installing one.

Wahpepah’s Kitchen sends a powerful signal of special identity and expertise with the statement “Native American Owned” on their window. It’s a smart photograph to display on a Google listing, and if your business has pride in being Indigenous-owned, Black-owned, Women-owned, LGBTQIA+-owned, family-owned, or some other excellent attribute, your photos can quickly help searchers understand this.

Prove the ‘T’ (trustworthiness signal in Google’s E-E-A-T) of your service area business by photographing the company vehicles customers can expect to arrive at their homes or businesses if they choose you. DoitGreen Carpet Cleaning has done a great job here, with a good shot of a vehicle on which the business logo and other signage are clearly visible. There’s a ton you can learn to do to boost your Local E-E-A-T signals.

Similarly, if your staff wears uniforms when visiting the homes and businesses of customers, photograph this, as Roto-Rooter has done here. It will boost the trust customers can feel in knowing that a legitimate staff member of your company is at their door.

Take note of this photo from Redwood Yurok Canoe Tours, which shows customers genuinely experiencing the service being offered.

Beware of stock photography that tries to imitate experiences; it just can’t replace custom photos of your operations.

The first ‘E’ in Google’s E-E-A-T stands for “experience” and hinges on whether individuals have first-hand experience of your business. Images can help prove this. Additionally, they can convey what it’s like to personally experience aspects of a business, helping the potential customer imagine themselves enjoying or benefiting from a service.

If you’re lucky enough to have a photo-op spot on your premises, like The Vermont Country Store’s covered bridge, or you’ve put in the creative work of creating a selfie-spot, showcasing this feature can help inspire customers both to visit you and to upload their own engaging photos. This is an excellent way to prove the ‘E’ (experience in Google’s E-E-A-T) component of your business.

Yes, your GBP already lists your hours of operation, but when a customer is browsing through your photos, they are no longer looking at that information. A photo reminder can help them make up their mind to choose you.

If your storefront features open hours signage, like Red Bird Bakery, photograph it as a ‘T’ (trustworthiness in E-E-A-T) signal. But I’d suggest a further addition either to the sign or to the photograph of it to ask people to phone to inquire about holiday hours because, for most businesses, there are some days of the year when your availability differs from your normal hours.

Let customers see your inventory before they come in like the Village Sock Shop has done with this array of dog-themed stockings. Shelfies can be very close up, like the above, or can pan out a little to prove the extent of your selection, like this:

Take your ten best-selling individual products and photograph them.

Good Earth Natural Foods shows this product on a shelf, instilling confidence in customers that they can get this item at the shop. However, be cautious about photographing any inventory that isn’t in constant supply, as it could lead to customer disappointment. Go with the goods you know are regularly in stock and in the highest demand by your community.

However, do think twice about whether or not to show prices in product photos, as they are often subject to change.

This tip mainly applies to restaurants, but could apply to any business where food is present – customer-uploaded photos may not always be appetizing. Images of smeared plates, half-eaten meals, and even poor lighting may not do your menu or brand justice.

Get the clearest, most appetizing images you can of your main offerings. When I look at Millennium Restaurant’s soup above, I see a meal that hasn’t yet been nibbled on, well-lit and nicely composed on what looks like an uncluttered, clean, and pleasant table. Everyone’s tastes are unique; a good standard practice is to emphasize both cleanliness and deliciousness when presenting photos of food. Such images showcase the “E” (expertise in Google’s E-E-A-T dynamic) of your business.

Showcase your business's expertise, like DoitGreen Carpet Cleaning, with photos of your staff in action. Note the active pose of the technician here and the presence of tools and vehicles that signal readiness to work hard on a job. This type of photo applies to both brick-and-mortar and service area businesses, whether you are showing a staff member cutting hair, cleaning a gutter, remodeling a kitchen, or frosting a cake.

Such photos exemplify the “E” of expertise. As always, use original images – not stock photos.

Finished product photos can be great, but if your work requires a lot of specialized skill, it can be a strong signal of expertise to show your staff in the midst of a project. The Caning Shop does a great job at showing a staff member weaving a caned textile.

Sites like Instagram are filled with both photos and videos of craftspeople showing the process of a job, rather than just the finished product, because seeing work materializing can engage and excite an audience.

If the results of your finished work have to be seen to be believed, take a note from Mother Nature’s Carpet Cleaning and showcase how your service makes a dramatic difference to the customer.

I’m also a big fan of branding some photos with your logo. They repeatedly remind the potential customer of the company’s name as they browse, and repetition aids memory.

As well as showing experts at work and before-and-after shots, completed project images can be magical. This finished renovation by Aum Construction would inspire almost any potential customer. If a logo were added to it, it would be a tremendous advertisement for the “E” (expertise) of the business.

Engaging photos of the owner and forward-facing practitioners at your business proves that real and friendly people staff your business.

I like the informality of this image of Pacific Eye Associates’ Danny Y. Lin, MD. It doesn’t look terribly posed, and it certainly can’t be mistaken for a stock photo. The nature of your business will indicate the tone that is appropriate in your staff photos. Then, take the extra step of adding the names of your staff to your image to help customers feel they know the people at your business.

This image from Ukiah Family Dentistry gives a sense of both the size and friendliness of their whole team. It signals that this is likely a single-practitioner business with adequate support staff, and the fact that they took the time to pose for the camera indicates that they are making an effort to warmly welcome patients. Again, the nature of your business will indicate the appropriate tone of this type of photo, whether formal or fun.

This photo of Sharon L. Albright, DDS, giving a patient an award is warm and informal. It could help potential customers who are nervous about dental visits feel like they will be in caring hands at this practice.

Ask your customers’ permission to photograph them interacting with your staff to demonstrate both “E” (experience) and “T” (trustworthiness). Again, don’t make the mistake of trying to substitute stock photos here. Real interactions will help your business convey that it is genuine.

If you have happy customers who wouldn’t mind being photographed enjoying your business like this group at JoMa’s Artisan Ice Cream, showcase that. It not only vouches for “E” (experience) but also hints at “A” for authoritativeness because these customers recognize that your establishment is a place that can be trusted for great service.

Take your best reviews and showcase them as Edri Construction is doing here. Seeing any product or service adjacent to a customer’s praise is so impactful. I think it’s honestly an overlooked tactic that can be used to great effect.

In fact, why not go one step further and combine your photos of customers loving your business with a testimonial you jot down from them at the time you take the picture? Here’s a fictitious example of what that might look like for a hypothetical dry cleaner:

The hidden beauty of this approach is that, while you are NEVER allowed to upload reviews to your Google Business Profile on behalf of customers, there is no reason why you can’t turn testimonials into images.

It may take some organizing to coordinate this, and you may have to use a program like Canva to design your little cards, but if you’ve put in the time to build real relationships with your customers, it can result in a very eye-catching and persuasive presentation of their sentiments.

Customers’ own words are almost always best. 68% of survey respondents say they trust what customers say about a business more than what the business says about itself, and that’s a stat you should pay a lot of attention to in your content marketing.

If you claim your Google Business Profile and fill out all its basic fields like name, address, phone number, and hours of operation, you should see an option to upload a logo image in the New Merchant Experience dashboard via which you manage your listing.

It’s under the “Add Photo” tab and looks like this:

Do like Roto-Rooter has done and upload your logo to help with brand recognition.

Introducing a new service or product line? Why not fire up a photo on Canva to make a mini-ad showcasing your offering?

Note how they’ve included “E” (experience) in showing that they’ve been in business for 40 years. They’ve got a slogan, a URL, a phone number, and an email address in this image. It’s basically like a brochure, all in one GBP image.

In addition to broadcasting the news that there’s something new at your business, this format could be ideal for many types of text+photo combos to highlight:

Perhaps it’s important for your customers to see what your venue looks like both during the day and at night, and you’ll need several images to cover both so you can convey the atmosphere. Or maybe there’s a dish so popular at your restaurant that customers keep begging for the recipe, and you decide to share it on an old-time recipe card as a photo.

There are a number of creative scenarios that aren’t covered by the 29 other types of photos because they could be unique to your business. Your company mascot might be in a comic-strip-style series that gets customers laughing. Your views might be so spectacular that they merit a showcase. Your founder might be internationally famous or an influencer, and any photo of them will earn extra clicks. Or maybe you’d like to upload an image like this, letting customers know how much you value their photo to fill out your profile even more:

Does seasonality play a significant role in your business, like Earthbound Farmstand, which might have pumpkins in October but strawberries in April and a completely different look to their stand at different times of year? Maybe your shop goes big for holiday decorating and can showcase this as the year rolls around, labeling your photos with text like, "What you’ll see if you visit in December" or “Valentine’s Day at our location.”

Right now, chances are very good that unmotivated competitors in your market are not yet fully utilizing the photograph album Google is making free to all local businesses via the Google Business Profile.

If you act on this, it could really set your business apart for customers. The great news is that there are dozens of types of photos that could be applicable to your model and audience, and the cameras on mobile phones enable us to take pretty fine images these days. All you need is a little time and creativity.

I’m going to close with a pro tip. This article has focused on images that will appeal to people because nothing matters more than what your potential customers think. But the story we’ve not really touched on is taking photos that can be understood by Google.

Do yourself a favor and run some of your favorite business photos through the Google Cloud Vision API to see if Google is correctly parsing their contents. If not, try again from a different angle or with better lighting. These days, it’s ideal to publish images intelligible to both humans and bots for maximum visibility, and you can read more about the API here.

Want some more pro tips? I’ve got four full chapters of them for free, including amazing advice from a dozen of the world’s best local SEOs, in The Local Business Content Marketing Guide.

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