A Google My Business (GMB) profile is a great tool for helping new patients find your healthcare practice. If nothing else, GMB is a local search powerhouse. Healthcare practices not taking advantage of it or making Google MY Business Mistakes are losing out on the potential to reach a much wider local audience.
As with most things SEO, taking maximum advantage of GMB requires understanding how it works. Unfortunately, healthcare practices lack that understanding. But that’s to be expected. Practices specialize in healthcare delivery, not healthcare SEO and digital marketing.
Below are some of the most common mistakes healthcare practices make with GMB. If you find your practice has made them, let’s talk. We can help you overcome the mistakes to improve your local search results.
1. Ignoring Basic SEO Principles
The biggest mistake healthcare practices make in the GMB arena is completing their profiles without giving any attention to SEO. Their websites perform poorly on search engine results pages (SERPs) because, despite having a profile, Google is not able to rank them properly. The lesson here is to make sure you utilize basic SEO principles when completing your business profile.
2. Making Poor Category Choices
Businesses are organized by categories in GMB. As a healthcare practice, category choice is important. The mistake is choosing categories based on what your practice offers. Instead, choose based on what your practice is. For example, GPs are technically internal medicine specialists. While your practice offers internal medicine, it is a family practice first and foremost. That should be your main category.
GMB allows business owners to choose multiple subcategories as well. These are fine, but only if subcategories are neither confusing nor contradictory. Choose subcategories wisely.
3. Posting Incomplete Descriptions
While your category choices describe the nature of your practice, the profile description should detail all of the services you offer. Do not leave anything out. An incomplete description only serves to leave out essential information that might be the key to some patients finding you.
As a side note, profile descriptions are where SEO practices make the most difference. This is where it is important to pay attention to keywords, including your location. An example of a good keyword is ‘family practice + your city’.
4. Incomplete or Inaccurate Contact Information
Bearing in mind that GMB is a powerful tool for local search, it’s a mistake to submit a profile with incomplete or inaccurate contact information. Your profile should include the practice name, physical address, phone number, and web address. If your website has a dedicated URL for scheduling appointments, it should be included in the contact information as well.
5. Failing to Include Pictures
Human beings are visual creatures. That’s why we say a picture is worth a thousand words. Knowing this, one of the common Google My Business mistakes is to publish a profile without including some pictures. You can utilize stock photos if you like. Just make sure any pictures from your actual practice are professionally produced.
6. Failing to Solicit Reviews
Finally, patient reviews provide a fantastic boost to GMB profiles. It is a mistake to not ask your patients to write reviews for Google. As a side note, if there is anything unique about your practice that can be encapsulated in one or two keywords, ask your patients to use those keywords in their reviews.
GMB may seem confusing or intimidating. We get it. We would be just as intimidated by the prospect of providing healthcare services. So let’s make a deal: you provide the healthcare and let us handle SEO and GMB. When you partner with WebTek Digital Marketing, we both get the opportunity to do what we do best.
