Are you wondering how to set up a Google My Business account for your therapy practice? If so, you’ve come to the right place!
Setting up a Google Business Profile (previously Google My Business) is a free, essential way for your practice to get in front of more ideal clients on Google Search & Maps.
In this post, we’ll walk you through everything you need to do to set up your Google Business Profile so that potential clients can find and learn more about your practice.
If your Google My Business account isn’t attracting the clients you need, Therapy Flow can help. Our done-with-you program offers insights and strategies to optimize your profile. See if our approach is right for you. Book a free strategy call today!
Why Set Up a Google Business Profile?
Consider these 10 benefits of having a Google Business Profile for your therapy practice:
- Get in front of potential clients in your local area on Google Search & Maps.
- Choose a primary category and specific service areas to help get found.
- Make it easy for people to find, learn about, and contact your private practice.
- Share your services, website, business description, hours of operation, and more.
- Collect Google reviews to improve your reputation and boost local search rankings.
- Share photos & videos of your practice such as exterior, interior, and team photos.
- Publish Google Posts to share practice updates, offers, events, and more.
- For group practices, you can manage multiple locations from a single dashboard.
- Get insightful data on search queries, phone calls, customer actions, and more.
- Creating a Google Business listing for your practice is completely free.
How to Set Up Your Google Business Profile
With a little time and effort, you can get your business listed in front of hundreds (or even thousands) of potential clients who are searching for help in your area. Let’s get started!
1. Creating Your Profile
To get started, head over to the Google Business Profile page and sign into your Google account or create one if needed.
Once signed in, you can create a profile here. On this page, first, try typing in your business name to see if there is already an existing listing for your practice.
In the rare case that your practice already has a verified business profile, you will have to request ownership of the business profile.
Otherwise, click on “Add your business to Google” to start the listing creation process.
On the following page, simply enter your practice’s name and a primary category.
2. Choosing a Category
For mental health practices, consider choosing one of the following available categories:
- Psychotherapist
- Mental Health Clinic
- Mental Health Service
- Counselor
- Marriage Counselor
- Family Counselor
- Psychologist
- Psychoanalyst
You can do a quick search on Google for your target area, such as “therapist in Chicago” to see the primary categories being used for the local listings that appear. Commonly used categories are psychotherapist, counselor, psychologist, and mental health clinic.
Once you’ve added in your business name and category, click “Next”.
3. Location or Service Areas
The following page will ask you if you’d like to add a physical location customers can visit, which will show up as part of your listing on Google Maps and Search.
If you only provide online therapy services (teletherapy or telehealth), choose “No”. In this case, you may still have to provide an address to send a verification postcard. However, you will not have to publicly show your address once your listing is published.
If you have an office people can visit during business hours and you choose “Yes” and select “Next”, you may be asked to enter your business address or position a marker on a map to specify the location of your therapy practice.
If you choose “No”, you will land on a page to select your service areas. You can add up to 20 service areas, which can be a combination of cities, towns, and/or zip codes.
Make sure to add all of the areas you serve to maximize your local search visibility.
Note from Google: “We recommend you do not extend the boundaries of your overall area farther than 2 hours driving time from where your business is based. For some businesses, it may be appropriate to have a larger service area”.
4. Entering Contact Details
After submitting your location or service area details, you’ll enter your phone number and a link to your website.
It’s a good idea to use the same phone number that’s listed on your website and other local listings online. For local SEO, Google likes to see consistent citations being used. This is also known as NAP (name, address, phone number) consistency.
While the website link is optional, it’s highly recommended! Adding a link to your practice’s website can help to positively impact your organic and local SEO.
For a single practice, this is usually your homepage, since it often has the most authority, backlinks, and relevance to your practice in the eyes of Google.
If you plan to create a Google Business Profile for multiple locations people can visit, consider linking each profile to a dedicated page with info about the specific location.
5. Verifying Your Listing
The last step to getting your Google Business Profile published online is to get verified!
To start the verification process, enter your mailing address so you can receive a postcard from Google with a code on it. Note that Google doesn’t allow post office boxes.
If you provide remote therapy services and chose not to use a storefront in the previous step, you can use your home address.
The address will be hidden from the public.
You can also choose to “Verify later”. However, keep in mind that you will need to verify in order for your edits and listing information to go public and start appearing for searches.
After adding your mailing address and clicking “Next”, you’ll be presented with one or several ways to verify your Business Profile on Google. This may be by postcard (which can take up to 7 business days to receive), phone, text, email, or video.
More information can be found about verifying your business on Google here.
Once you have successfully verified your listing, it can take a few weeks for your business info to show up on Google. Then, you can update and add info to your listing at any time.
Take your practice to the next level and achieve more of your goals!
At Therapy Flow, we provide done-with-you marketing, coaching, and practice consulting for growth-minded private practice owners (solo and group) across the U.S.
We help private practice owners go from zero to full caseload or scale to 6-7+ figures.
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