How to Optimize GMB For Healthcare Practice
Do all patients who come to you only contact you after seeing your sign board or through referral? If your answer is ‘NO,’ then read further.
What are your patients trying to find when they type/search ‘Physician near me”? The patients want to see top physicians nearby, Google Maps to reach out, hours of operation, appointment booking, fees, phone numbers, reviews, insurance partners, cashless facilities, etc. What if they get all the information at a single click? This is what Google My Business (GMB) optimization is all about.
This blog will guide you through optimizing your profile for maximum views. (Google Shows just three listings at the top, and we want you to be there.)
What Are The Benefits of Google My Business?
Google Business Profile or Google My Business is a FREE Service from Google. The key benefits of registering your business on Google are:
- Increased Visibility in Local Searches: When patients search for doctors or healthcare providers in their area, a well-optimized GMB profile increases the chances of your practice appearing at the top of local search results. This translates to more patients finding you online.
- Improved Patient Acquisition: By showcasing your practice details, specialities, and positive reviews, GMB attracts potential patients who are actively looking for healthcare services.
- Enhanced Trust and Credibility: A well-maintained GMB profile with accurate information, high-quality photos, and positive reviews builds trust with potential patients. They can learn about your practice and feel confident about choosing you for their healthcare needs.
- Convenient Appointment Booking: GMB allows you to display appointment booking options directly on your profile. Patients can easily schedule appointments online without needing to call your office, streamlining the process and potentially increasing appointment bookings.
- Better Patient Engagement: Features like Google Posts allow you to share updates, news, and announcements directly with patients through their GMB profile. This fosters engagement and keeps your practice top-of-mind.
- Valuable Insights and Analytics: GMB insights provide helpful data about user engagement, clicks to your website, and popular search terms leading patients to your profile. This allows you to refine your GMB strategy for continuous improvement and better target potential patients online.
- Free Marketing Tool: GMB is a free tool offered by Google. By optimizing your profile, you leverage a powerful marketing platform to reach new patients in your local area without significant financial investment.
If you wish to learn how to create a GMB profile, look at the detailed guide from Semrush.
All right, so you have created your GMB profile, let’s understand how to optimize it.
Proven Tips to Optimize GMB Profile For Your Practice
To explain how to optimize your GMB profile, we will use Dr. Vrushali Nikam, a dermatologist in Pune, as an example. Your GMB profile looks like the one we shared above. Now, let us understand how to optimize it.
1. Keyword Research:
The first thing we need to do in GMB optimization for healthcare is ask for the list of services the client wants to rank. The list may include 10 or 20 services.
We ask clients about the top 4 or 5 services they want to rank. Then, we optimize the keyword for local search. For example, Dr. Vrushali practices in Pune, but if we choose the keyword’ Best dermatologist in Pune,’ it will be difficult to rank as Pune is a vast area.
Rather than that, we chose the keyword “best dermatologist in Pimpri Chinchwad” (Pimpri Chinchwad is a Pune area). That way, when someone in Pimpri Chinchwad or a nearby area searches for a dermatologist, Google will display Dr. Vrushali’s profile.
2. Optimizing the Title:
The most crucial part is optimizing the title to get featured in SERP results.
As you can see, we added Dr. Vrushali’s name and optimized it for searches in the local area of Pimpri Chinchwad by adding the word “Best dermatologist in Pimpri Chinchwad.” In the title’s second section, we mentioned the essential services for which she wanted to rank. Adding keywords(services) to the title helps us to rank faster on Google for those keywords.
3. Choosing the Category:
Google has created categories for different businesses and professions. We need to select one broad category, and we can choose nine sub-categories. For a broad match, we choose Doctor, and then for each sub-category, we try to find a category that matches the GMB profile.
By doing this, we cater to different keywords people are searching for.
4. Adding a Website:
Adding a website to our GMB profile can improve conversion rates. People searching for your services can visit your website directly to book an appointment or perform the desired action. Adding a website improves ranking.
Apart from that, if your website is optimized for SEO and has a good domain authority, it becomes straightforward to rank your healthcare Google My Business Profile.
5. Service Area
You must add service areas to optimize your healthcare GMB profile for better ranking in searches. The areas should be near the vicinity where you serve. For example, Dr. Vrushali Nikam has her clinic in Pimpri Chinchwad, so we added all nearby areas to her service areas so that people searching for a dermatologist in their area can find Dr. Vrushali’s clinic.
6. Attributes
By adding attributes like who owns the clinic, whether children are allowed, accessibility, modes of payment accepted, etc., you are providing more details to your GMB profile visitors. This also helps in ranking.
7. Services Section
For your healthcare GMB profile to rank on Google, you should optimize it for the services. Adding services to your location helps your GMB rank better.
8. Products
In the case of a clinic, your services serve as your products. So you can add them to the product section with proper pictures. Like the service section, you need to add a location for each service to optimize it for GMB.
9. Q/A
It is necessary to answer the questions people ask on your GMB profile. Try to include your keywords while answering the questions; this improves your ranking in GMB.
10. Updates Section:
To rank better, you should post regularly. You should periodically post at an interval of 3 days and write keyword-optimized content to rank better. If you have any special offers for the festive season or otherwise, you can add them. Adding an update notifies Google that you are actively rendering your service.
11. Photos:
Having a human face in your healthcare GMB profile adds value and builds trust with the audience. You must add high-resolution images; to optimize it, you can add your targeted keywords. You can also add photos and short videos while treating the patient. This builds the trust factor, which helps in better conversion.
Also, the cover photo displayed on your healthcare GMB profile should look professional.
If you follow all of the above tips, then the chances of your GMB profile ranking on Google will be higher. Also, if you have an SEO-optimized website, then your chances of ranking increase twofold.
However, optimizing your Google My Business profile is not a one-time task. It requires constant effort to update products and services, respond to reviews, and take action if someone has mischievously reported your contact information as incorrect. At GrowthPixel, we endeavour to help doctors rank among the first three places in Google.
