How to Optimise Google My Business to Improve Local Google Ranking

Google My Business (GMB) is a free Google tool that helps businesses gain visibility on Google Maps and Google search. Thus, you must optimise Google My Business if you want to improve your local SEO ranking.

GMB is like a mini-website for your business hosted by Google. It usually shows your business information such as business name, address, contact details, photos and your updates.

Why optimise Google My Business?

Health clinics/hospitals, like every other local business, need to optimise Google My Business. This is to allow patients searching for their services on Google to find them easily. Thus, GMB gives you excellent online visibility. Your clients will not only find you but also learn about what you do – before they even meet you. By so doing, your patients will know, like and trust you.

Health clinics/hospitals can also take advantage of GMB to increase their Google ranking and drive traffic to their websites. If a patient is satisfied with your services and reviews your business with a good rating, it increases your SEO ranking. This action can, in turn, drive even more traffic to your website.

Therefore, for any business operating from a local address, the need to optimise GMB cannot be overemphasised.

Therefore, this article helps you:

• Claim your business on Google My Business
• Provide complete and accurate information about your practice
• Get Google reviews for your clinic/hospital
• Learn what to post on your GMB profile
• Use GMB insights to track your progress
• Identify common GMB mistakes and fix them

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You may also be interested in How to Grow Your Health Practice Rapidly. Or, you can download the 13 Simple Tactics for Rapid Health Practice Growth.

Claim your business on Google My Business

The first step to optimise Google My Business is to claim your business on GMB. Claiming your business entails following some simple steps. Firstly, sign in to your Google My Business account, or sign up if you haven’t created one. If you have logged into your Google account or Gmail, Google will redirect you.

Next, search for your business name and address to ensure that no one else has verified the business. If your business has never been verified, click on ‘I’ve correctly entered the business’ or ‘No, these are not my businesses’. Then, you will be prompted to enter additional details about your business. Enter the exact address and phone number of your business, and click ‘Submit’.

After the online process, wait for 3-5 working days. Google will send you a postcard to the address you provided with a verification code and further instructions for you to complete the claiming process. Once you’ve done this, you can begin to optimise your Google My Business profile to maximise your search ranking and attract more clients.

Different scenarios to optimise GMB for clinics/hospitals

For health practices, there are three scenarios we need to consider.

Single practitioner

The first scenario is for a single practitioner practice. If you are the only health professional managing your medical practice, you will need a single GMB listing. It could be in this form: medical practice: practitioner’s name. For example, General practitioner, Kate Mark M.D.

Individual doctors should create their listing, as long as they can be contacted directly in the location during the hours stated. They must not have multiple listings. They may simply use their names and speciality as the title, without including the name of the hospital.

Multiple practitioners

The second scenario is for multiple practitioner practice. In this case, a health practice may provide a variety of medical services which operate at different times. For example, immunisations, specialist clinics, operation theatre, etc. To claim this type of business on GMB correctly, the hospital/clinic will need to create separate listings for its various locations.

Multiple practitioners with multiple locations

The third scenario is multi-practitioner and multi-location practices. In this case, multiple practitioners work in a hospital/clinic at different locations. To claim a GMB listing in this kind of scenario, Google allows separate listings for each service and location. However, this kind of listing is mostly discouraged. It creates confusion for Google users. You may be better off sticking with the second option.

Provide complete and accurate information about your practice

To optimise Google My Business for better local Google ranking, you need to provide complete and accurate information about your practice. For example, the name of your business, address of the business location, and if you deliver goods and service to customers. You will also need to specify your service area, and choose a business category from a dropdown list. Furthermore, you will need to add a phone number and website URL, and complete your GMB verification.

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Name, address and phone number (NAP)

You must provide complete and accurate information about your practice, especially the name, address and phone number (NAP). Bear in mind that any inconsistencies will reduce your local SEO ranking. Your practice NAP should be consistent throughout the internet. This is so important that if you want optimise Google My Business for better ranking. More on this in the section on getting citations (below).

Photos and videos

Include high-quality images in your GMB profile. For instance, your logo, personal headshots, and photos of your hospital/clinic. You may also include videos in your profile as this makes you stand out from other practices. However, avoid using stock photos/videos on your GMB profile.

See below for more on what to post on your GMB profile.

Working hours

Next, add hours that you are open for business. Google allows you to select specific hours you work each day of the week. Note that changes to your working hours may take up to 3 days to update. So, make sure you enter the correct times to avoid confusing visitors.  

Business category

Include your business category. Google My Business allows you to select up to 10 business categories. The first category is considered your primary category, so it should be very specific to your practice.

For example, instead of selecting ‘doctor’, select something more specific like “dentist” or “chiropractic” or “neurosurgeon”.

Also, describe each of your services. If appropriate, provide your prices as well. The more complete your profile is, the better optimised your GMB profile is and the better your chances of ranking higher on Google Maps.

Business description

Provide a compelling business description on your GMB profile. However, do not include URLs or HTML codes. Feel free to engage potential patients. Tell them what distinguishes you from other practices and why they should patronise you.

Then, add the URL for your hospital/clinic’s website in the place provided. Google also allows you to provide a specific link for visitors to book an appointment with you.

Ensure that your links are up-to-date. Avoid including URLs that redirect potential clients to your social media pages.

Learn more about what to post on social media and get a lot of people to follow your business social media pages.

Post on your GMB profile

Posting on your GMB profile is a simple way to optimise Google My Business to improve local search ranking. Besides increasing your ranking, posting on your GMB profile can attract more patients to your hospital/clinic.

Posting on your GMB profile is as simple as blogging. Besides, providing potential clients with valuable information is a great way to position yourself as an authority.

What to post on your GMB profile?

1. Announcements: For example, if you are hosting an event, you can publish the date, time and venue of the event. Anyone searching for you will immediately know about it.
2. News: GMB allows you to post news about your business on your profile. You can seize the opportunity to tell your patients what new services you offer at your clinic/hospital.
3. Specials: You can use posts on your GMB profile to inform them about special opening hours, offers, and change of business location.
4. Answers to FAQs: Moreover, you can post answers to frequently asked questions as well as relevant healthcare topics on your GMB profile.

Although GMB posts expire after every 6/7 days, it allows you to include a call to action. Therefore, include ‘Learn more’, ‘Sign up’, ‘Reserve’ or ‘Get offer’ to redirect potential clients to your website or email list.

Each post has a ‘Share’ button so patients can share your GMB posts on their social media timelines.

Posting on your GMB profile gives you an exceptional competitive advantage. Seize it!

Get Google reviews for maximum optimisation

The next step would be to get Google reviews for your clinic/hospital. Positive reviews of your clinic/ hospital help to optimise your Google My Business for better SEO ranking. In addition, research has shown that 90% of clients searching for businesses online make a decision based on business reviews.

Four ways to get Google reviews for your clinic/hospital from patients

1. Ask your visitors: You can directly ask your patients to write a review of their experience in your clinic/ hospital. Your patients may not know that they can leave reviews of your hospital online. Among those who know they can, only those who are not happy with your services are usually motivated enough to write a review. They may be the minority, but if they are the only ones writing a review, your practice will look very bad in the eyes of visitors and Google ranking algorithms. Hence, invite all of your patients/clients to leave a review on Google.
2. Ask via follow-up email or SMS: This is a great way of getting Google reviews for your clinic/hospital. Send a follow-up email/SMS to your patients after an examination or consultation. In the email/SMS, thank them for patronising you, then ask them about their experience during their visit. You can take it a step further by asking them to leave an online review. You can achieve this by including a link to your GMB profile in the email/SMS.
3. Request via social media: Today, almost everyone has an account on social media. Hence, it has become a great marketing tool for businesses. Besides using your business accounts and pages for marketing, you can use them to get reviews for your clinic. When your clients engage on your posts with positive feedback, reply with a link to your GMB profile, asking them to leave their review there.
4. Your website: You can get great reviews for your clinic/hospital by linking your GMB listing to your website. Insert clickable links and images on your websites that redirect visitors to your GMB listing.

There are other methods of getting reviews, but sticking to the above should be more than enough for a clinic/hospital. Remember that Google reviews and ratings are essential components to optimise Google My Business for better local SEO ranking.

Get citations to optimise Google My Business even better

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Citations on GMB simply refer to the number of places your business is mentioned throughout the internet. The key to a successful citation campaign is to make sure your business details, especially your business name, address and phone number (NAP), are consistent with you GMB listing in all citations.

How many citations do you need? Well, the answer is not the same for everyone. It depends on your location, industry, niche and local competition. However, below is a list of websites commonly used by clinics/hospitals to get citations and effectively compete for local Google ranking:

• www.yellowpages.com
• www.yelp.com
• www.dexknows.com
• www.comcast.com
• www.local.yahoo.com
• www.allconnect.com

If you would like to know which websites you need to get citations from to optimise your GMB, submit your details to us. We will run a deep analysis of your website and send you a list for your unique location, with actionable suggestions. It is a free service – our way of giving back to health professionals.

Use GMB Insights to track progress and optimise GMB

Posting on your GMB profile is one thing, but monitoring the impact of your efforts is a different kettle of fish. GBM Insights show how your post is performing with metrics from how your audience interacts with your posts.

For example, it shows how clients/patients find your listing and their location. GMB Insights also shows the actions your patients take, and how many of them view your post. You can use GMB Insights to track your progress and evaluate your posts.

To track your progress using GMB Insights, click on the Insights tab on your GMB dashboard. Although you can adjust the time window, GMB Insights only shows statistics for the past three months. It does not retain data history for more than a quarter. If you would like to track your progress for over three months, you may need to consider using Google Analytics.

Metrics to monitor on GMB Insights

Using GMB insights to track your progress helps you optimise Google My Business for better SEO ranking. You would want to concentrate on monitoring the following key metrics:

• Website visits
• Number of people asking for directions
• Number of phone calls
• Google service customers use to find your business
• Keywords people search to find your clinic/hospital
• Number of people calling your hospital/clinic via Google
• Number of business photos’ views

Finally, use your GMB Insights like a mirror to find areas where you can improve.

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Common GMB optimisation mistakes and how to fix them

We have mentioned that having a GMB listing is crucial to optimise your SEO ranking. However, there are many areas where things can get wrong. In this section, we highlight common GMB mistakes and how to avoid them.

Mistake #1 – Poor images

One of the most common GMB mistakes people make is using low-quality photos for their GMB listing. Your visuals are the first impressions potential clients have about your business.

Thus, the quality of your photos affects your GMB impressions. High-quality photos are attractive and attention-grabbing. As such, these kinds of pictures will entice your audience and keep them clicking. More clicks will send positive signals to Google and help to optimise your Google My Business for better ranking.

Mistake #2 – Poor categorisation of your business

Another common GMB mistake to avoid is category confusion. GMB category confusion leads to angry clients, negative reviews, and poor rankings.

To prevent this, ensure that your primary category tallies as much as possible with the type of practice you have. By so doing, your customers will be able to find you and leave you good reviews.

Choosing the right category for your business on GMB can be very dicey and confusing. However, getting it right is a great way to optimise your Google My Business for better search ranking. So, it is worth taking the time to find the correct category for your clinic/hospital. GMB categories help to give your business the right focus, helping your target audience find you. No matter the type of practice you have, GMB has a wide range of categories to cover your needs.

Mistake #3 – Duplicate listing or inconsistent information

Furthermore, avoid duplicate listings and inconsistent information on your GMB listing. Duplicate listings can adversely affect your web presence and could get you penalised.

We’ve mentioned this before, but it is worth repeating here. Ensure that all information about you on the website is consistent with your GMB listing, especially your NAP. It is so important if you want to optimise Google My Business and improve your client’s experience.

Conclusion

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In summary, Google My Business (GMB) is an excellent tool for connecting your business to your clients. However, to get the best results from GMB, you have to optimise it.

First, claim your business on Google My Business and verify it. Next, you should provide complete and accurate information about your clinic/hospital. Ensure that your business information, especially your NAP, is consistent throughout the internet.

Post on your GMB profile and use the different tactics discussed above to get Google reviews for your clinic/hospital. Afterwards, use GMB Insights to track your progress.

Moreover, in this article, we have highlighted common GMB mistakes and how to avoid them. Sticking to these rules will help you optimise Google My Business for better SEO ranking.