Chances are you’ve already gone through the process of claiming your Google Business listing which has recently rebranded AGAIN to Google Business Profile (GBP) in the hope and anticipation of garnering that beloved top three sweet spot in search results locally. Your GBP may be seen in different locations, including Google Search, Google Maps and even in Google Shopping. If you already have a Google Business Profile set up, I can almost guarantee you that you are NOT maximizing it to its fullest potential, so here are the top 7 Google Business Profile Optimization tips your rehab center needs to improve its local search strategy.
7 Tips to Optimize your Google Business Profile
1) Google Business Profile Optimization for Better Visibility
Optimizing a Google Business Profiles isn’t as simple as just throwing up your company name, address, and hours of operation. Trust me, it’s far more complex than that.
When it comes to optimizing your Google Business profile, of course, you need to include your basic company information, but you’ll also need to incorporate additional information and strategically place keyword phrases into your profile where appropriate to improve the visibility of your local business online and in local searches.
The additional information you should include in your profile are:
- Service area
- Special hours (closed or open on holidays, etc.) Make sure to update it regularly including your business hours if there are changes.
- Payment types accepted
- Company description (this is VERY important and should include not only relevant business information, but also include relevant keyword phrase mentions such as “OP”, “IOP”, “Residential”, “PHP”, “drug rehab”, “alcohol rehab”, “addiction treatment”, etc.)
- Posts (posts from your site blog, social media updates, and unique posts written specifically for GBP)
- Photos (pictures of the facility, accommodations, personnel, etc.)
- Videos (facility tour, patient testimonials, etc.)
2) Build Quality Citations for your Local Treatment Center
If you’re not familiar with the term “citations”, it is simply defined as an online reference to your company’s legal business name, phone number, and business address from third-party websites such as Manta, Yelp, InsiderPages, etc.
What people may not know about citations, is the critical importance they play in getting your Google Business Profile listing to show up near the top of local search results and requires special attention to detail.
When building citations to your GBP profile, it is crucial that all citation sites referencing your business use the EXACT dataset you’ve put on your GBP listing. In other words, the legal name, physical address, and phone number reference must be identical to your Google Business Profile in order for Google to establish trust and authority in your local listing. As you’d imagine, the quantity of local citations plays a large role in earning your way up to the top of local search results, among other factors, of course.
3) Addiction Blog Content & Cross-pollination
If you’re running an active Search Engine Optimization (SEO) campaign or are simply just focused on a content marketing strategy to shore up additional admits to your rehab facility, it doesn’t make much sense to simply just publish the content on your blog and call it a day.
What most digital marketers seem to forget is Google Business Profile allows businesses to publish content with any level of regularity. By repurposing blog content and populating it on your GBP profile, you not only ensure it is easily discoverable by Google, but it is also a high potential of being seen and consumed by potential patients or loved ones seeking treatment options for a friend or family member.
You’re already writing content on the regular, so don’t be lazy and ignore posting that content to your local search profile!
4) Keyword-focused and Geotargeted Unique Content for GBP
Outside of writing, publishing, and optimizing the content on your blog and cross-promoting it to your Google Business page, here’s something I’m confident you are NOT doing — publishing unique content for just your GBP profile.
If you have an outpatient and intensive outpatient program that arms to your business, local admits are always top of mind for obvious reasons, so let’s focus on local patient acquisition and let’s create fresh and GBP-specific content to pull in those potential admits!
As an example, let’s say you’re operating an OP & IOP drug and alcohol rehab in Delray Beach, FL. We suggest writing GBP posts of varying lengths ranging from micro-posts of 50-100 words in length to lengthier posts of 500+ words. However, the keys to success in this strategy are to know thy audience, its geography, and the targeted keyword phrases you’re going after before you start pumping out content.
Potential GBP posts can include:
Post #1 – “Outpatient Rehab in Delray Beach, FL”
Post #2 – “Inpatient Addiction Treatment in Delray Beach”
Post #3 – “Drug Rehab Near Palm Beach”
Post #4 – “Alcohol Detox Center Near Boynton Beach”
Post #5 – “Best OP & IOP Options in South Florida”
The list goes on and on
5) Create a Link Development Strategy for Your Addiction Center
Link popularity is one of the most important factors for a successful drug rehab SEO strategy when your sights are set on Google’s algorithm. What may not be in your crosshairs is how links pointing back to your Google Business Profile can pump up your profile’s trust and authority.
We’ve seen clients that have their map listing posted on their site see an incremental increase in terms of climbing up the local search results.
The GBP link building strategy is quite simple and doesn’t have to be complex. Simply start by propagating your local map listing on your website as a site-wide footer element or on your Contact Us/About Us page or periodic drops to your GBP listing in blog posts. Follow this up with proactive link requests from relevant sites that offer links to local profiles and that should suffice. Over time, links to your local Google Business Profile listing will continue to build momentum indefinitely.
6) Impact Your Drug Rehab Business With Online Reviews
Reviews don’t have a significant impact on increasing your rankings within Google Maps, but the reason I’ve listed it in our list is due to the fact it does impact your brands’ perception in the eyes of potential patients or loved ones seeking options.
Let’s look at the facts. When you conduct a search on Google and up pops a list of the top three listings in the local section of search results, your immediate instinct is to look at the company name and those lovely gold stars to see how many reviews the company received and on a scale of 1-5 stars, how former clients felt about their experience getting addiction treatment there. It’s here where people will pick up the phone and call to inquire about rehab treatment options or perhaps click through to the site to consume its content prior to committing to a call, form submission, live chat, etc. In other words, the quantity and quality of your reviews/ratings on your Google Business Profile will greatly dictate whether you get additional admit potential from your listing or not. That’s a pretty big deal.
7) Implement Call Tracking and Analytics Attribution
I’ve always found it fascinating how many drug rehab treatment centers I talk to on a weekly basis don’t have call tracking in place at all, let alone setting up call tracking for unique marketing channels such as Google Business Profile. What a mistake.
Believe it or not, you can set up a unique phone number for your GBP profile so you can track inbound calls to your facility for stronger channel attribution in terms of leads and admissions coming directly from your listing.
Now before you say “Didn’t you state you had to have the same phone number for all citations? Doesn’t that mean the call tracking number would have to be used in them?” Relax. Google will know and retain your actual main phone number in its records, but by implementing a call tracking service such as CallRail, you’ll be able to dynamically inject the GBP-specific number into your profile without losing all of your citations or feeling the urge to update them with the tracking number to appease Google.
Hire a Marketing Agency to Implement Google Business Profile Optimization
If you offer treatment services or sober living accommodations to your local market and don’t have a Google Business Profile optimization strategy in place for your rehab, you’re missing out and missing out in a BIG way in terms of additional admit potential. So, get with your team or hire an addiction treatment marketing agency that can formulate and execute a google business profile optimization plan, and don’t wait another day. You’re competitors want to see you fail and right now they’re looking for your weak spots. If GBP is found to be a weakness, trust me, they’re going to exploit it and win during the process. Contact us today and find out how Lead to Recovery can help you and your treatment center.
P.S. Don’t forget to have keyword phrase mentions on your actual site! Google sees all! ;)
Content written by rehab marketing expert Matthew Travers
Co-Founder
Matthew Travers is a seasoned Digital Marketing Professional with a distinguished career spanning 21 years, dedicating the last decade to the specialized fields of addiction treatment and mental health marketing. He brings a deep passion for creating powerful marketing strategies, with a distinctive proficiency in SEO and conversion rate optimization, aligning business objectives with innovative solutions to drive success.
