Local ranking looks mysterious until you know what Google is weighing. Google states it plainly: local results are ranked on relevance, distance and prominence. Distance you cannot change. The other two you can, and most businesses leave both on the table.
1. Get your primary category exactly right
Your primary category is the single most influential thing you control. It tells Google what searches you should even be considered for. "Coffee shop" and "cafe" surface differently. Pick the category that describes what the business fundamentally is, then add accurate secondary categories for what else you genuinely offer.
Do not stuff categories you do not belong in. Irrelevant categories are a policy violation, and they dilute the relevance signal you are trying to build.
2. Never put keywords in your business name
It is tempting, and it does sometimes work in the short term. It is also one of the fastest ways to get your listing suspended. Your name field must match your real-world signage. Every serious local guide agrees on this one.
3. Build reviews steadily, and reply to all of them
Review count and average rating feed prominence. So does responding: it is a trust signal for Google and a conversion signal for the human reading your profile. A steady trickle of reviews beats a sudden burst, which looks unnatural.
Ask every customer the same way. Google prohibits incentivising reviews or asking only the happy ones, and review gating can get you penalised.
4. Complete the boring fields
Hours, phone, website, description, attributes, photos. A complete profile ranks better and converts better than a half-filled one. Wrong hours are especially costly: they generate one-star reviews from people who drove to a closed door.
5. Stay active
Posts do not directly rocket you up the rankings, but an active profile signals a live business, and posts influence the human decision at the moment of comparison. Weekly is a good rhythm.
Where to start
Work in that order: category, name compliance, reviews and responses, completeness, activity. If you want the list scored and prioritised for your own locations, GBP Manager calculates a Visibility Score across exactly these factors and tells you which item to fix first.