Google My Business (GMB) listings are incredibly valuable to consumers and to local businesses. This free tool from Google provides credible business profiles that boost your performance in local search results. Potential customers can quickly access basic information and easily take action and interact with the business. GMB profiles offer them a fast solution to getting questions answered, initiating bookings and orders (for restaurants only) or leaving feedback: by messaging the business, calling them directly, asking for directions, leaving reviews, claiming special offers and visiting the company website.
Google My Business profiles offer faster, more accessible information and paths for prospects to interact with a business, leading to an increase in leads captured and site traffic. Business reap the rewards and opportunities offered by GMB profiles, which include generating calls from leads, driving traffic to the company website, informing potential customers of business hours and location, enabling clients to access and write reviews, serving as a platform for weekly posts and offers and much more!
What is a Practitioner GMB Listing?
Practitioner GMB listings are unique profiles specific to individual professionals associated with a business and exist separately from the GMB listing for the organization itself. These practitioner listings serve as a way to optimize your local search results by promoting your personal brand via a GMB profile. Since these listings are free, taking advantage of this opportunity is a no-brainer.
Creating such a listing is incredibly beneficial to business revenue by adding another way to be discovered by potential clients and obtain new customers. The aforementioned benefits of a regular Google My Business listing are doubled. Increased local SEO rankings and enhanced web traffic may drive more business to your practice. With proper digital analytics, you can also track the calls and leads generated by your practitioner listing to determine how its performance impacts your business results.
Note that Google will not consider practitioner listings or their corresponding reviews as duplicates of original business GMB listings. This means that reviews posted on each listing are considered separate. If, down the road, you wish to consolidate your practitioner and GMB listing, doing so will combine all the reviews from both listings.
Eligibility for Practitioner GMB Listings
To be considered eligible, Google outlines the following specifications and restrictions for practitioner listings:
- Individual practitioners that may create a listing are defined by Google as professionals that operate in a public-facing role.
- This can include doctors, dentists, lawyers, insurance agents, real estate agents and financial planners.
- Individual practitioners must be directly contactable during stated business hours at their verified location.
Additional restrictions apply to the following areas:
- Practitioners are allowed to include their title or degree certification in their individual listing (e.g. Dr., MD, JD, Esq., CFA).
- Practitioners with multiple specializations must include them within one profile; they may not create more than one listing to cover all specializations.
- If there are multiple practitioners at a single organization, the listing should only include the name of the individual, not the firm.
- If there is only one public-facing practitioner at a branded organization, the listing should include the company name first, then the practitioner in this format: [brand/company]: [practitioner name].
Creating and Managing Your Practitioner GMB Listing
To set up your practitioner GMB profile, simply do so the same way you did with your regular business profile. Navigate to https://business.google.com/create, log in to your Google account and click “Add your business to Google” to get started. Fill in your official name, including your title or degree certification, and the rest of your business information. After reviewing the information for accuracy, select a verification option.After creating your listing and submitting your verification, Google will process the information. Once your practitioner listing is verified, it is eligible to appear across Google. Once your profile is live, you can start posting weekly updates, news, offers and events. More importantly, your practitioner listing can also enhance your local search rankings and combine with your business GMB listing to generate more leads and conversions.
If you have additional questions about the benefits of setting up a practitioner listing or require assistance creating, verifying or managing your account, contact Bleevit Interactive today.
WRITTEN BY
Rick Hogan, CEO & Co-Founder – Bleevit Interactive Rick possesses over 20 years of digital marketing experience and started Bleevit Interactive with the primary mission of helping local businesses succeed online. When he is not working he can often be found hiking Great Falls, Virginia with his Labradoodle Lily, or sailing the Chesapeake Bay. If you have any comments or suggestions on how we can improve this post or otherwise want to give us a shout, send an email to hello@bleevit.com.
