Google My Business Profile

What is a Google My Business Profile?

Google My Business Profile is a free Google business listing. It allows you to add information and photographs about your company, such as its location, services, and goods.

Creating this free profile is an excellent method to boost your presence across Google services. Your Google My Business Profile information may display in Google Search, Google Maps, and Google Shopping.

Why You Need a Google My Business account

Google is the ultimate search referrer, whether you’re seeking foot traffic or online traffic. A Google Business Profile helps consumers find your company when they seek similar items and services in their region

Your Google My Business listing directs searchers to your location and directions. A Google My Business Profile might also help your local SEO. For instance, a listing for a local company is more likely to surface when customers search for a nearby business using Google Maps.

Local search, as opposed to paid or organic searches, is linked to Google Maps and Places. As a result, it assists patients in locating you based on geography and rating.

Google My Business allows patients to learn more about your practice. It will boost your dental practice’s traffic and sales. Google My Business helps to improve your local ranking, which leads to more patients and higher income. It also helps you stand out from the crowd by increasing the number of visitors to your website.

Optimizing the Google My Business

Business Category

You may create a core category as well as subsidiary categories for your business in Google My Business. You must select from the categories provided by Google My Business. To put it another way, you can’t make your own.

For many practices, it makes appropriate to include Dentist as your principal business category, followed by one to three other related categories. Dentists can also choose from the following categories: cosmetic dentist, pediatric dentist, dental implants periodontist, and dental clinic. These categories will have an impact on your Google My Business listings for Dentists.

However, take a step back before going crazy and selecting every option in the hopes of receiving more results. It’s critical not to add too many categories here since doing so will reduce your total score in a potential customer’s Google search for businesses that do what you do in each specific area. Less is more in this scenario, so be as specific as possible.

Service Areas

If your clinic sees patients from outside the geographic borders of the city mentioned in your location on a regular basis, it is sensible to include them as service areas. Consider the nearby towns from where your patients come and add a couple of them to the service regions in your profile.

Your actual location is your most valuable asset when ranking on Google Maps. It will be increasingly difficult for your practice to rank as you input areas further away from your real location. Patients who live further away from your clinic may seek dental care elsewhere if you are too far away.

It is advised to limit your service area listing to 20 or fewer. As a result, the area range of where you may rank will fluctuate based on the population density of where you are located.

Appointment link

Whether you make appointments over the phone, through a website contact form, or through a third-party service, adding a link to your appointments page right on your listing is a smart idea. Google makes this simple.

For dental practitioners, this is a terrific opportunity to separate out from the crowd since it streamlines the appointment booking procedure for customers because they can do it from anywhere and at any time of day rather than phoning your receptionist during work hours.

To add this appointment link (or any URL) to your profile, do the following:

Navigate to your dashboard and select “Info” from the left-hand menu.

Scroll down until you reach the “Website” section, then click the pencil symbol next to it.

This will bring up a little box where you may enter a website URL and an “Appointment URL.” After you’ve completed each of these forms, click “apply.”

Adopting the Google My Business appointment feature is worth the small time commitment since it may result in very immediate and quantitative traffic gains to your site.

GMB Business Description

Make sure to include your most critical keywords in your Google My Business Profile business description. As a reminder, most searchers today utilize long-tail keywords, so concentrate on those. You have 750 characters for your business description, so make the most of them.

This is your chance to provide folks with the information they need to make an informed decision about your practice and highlight how you stand out from your competition. When crafting your business description, make it honest, personable, and engaging. Your dental practice is more than just a business; it is the story of your customers.

Post Status

Posts are an important feature of Google My Business since they allow you to keep patients up to date. You can discuss anything new at your dental practice, unique events, or even things that your practice sells. Posting material on a regular basis might make your profile stand out from the competition. What you share on Instagram and Facebook should also be shared on your Google My Business profile.

Posts provide you the option to give patients a direct opportunity to book an appointment, learn more, or visit your website. These entries, similar to a micro-blog, provide you with a tiny amount of space, but if you pick your words well, you may pack a powerful punch into them. You may manage your posts from the dashboard or the app on your phone.

Website Link

Many patients will avoid visiting a business that does not have a legitimate website linked to their Google Business listing. When individuals are conducting research, they are attempting to learn as much as they can about your practice in order to make an informed conclusion. Allow them easy access to your website to assist them.

Most of us are impatient patients who want to find what we need as soon as possible. As a result, including links to your dental practice website’s homepage and schedule page on your GMB listing enhances the probability that potential patients will visit your site instead of moving on to a more convenient and accessible practice website.

Aside from making the search process easier for your patients, correct links alert Google to dependable, trustworthy content. Google does local crawls and checks not just the content of a website, but also the authority of the contained links. Homepages offer relevant information, such as cities and services, that are valuable to Google’s algorithm, which chooses your sites for searches and ranking.