A practitioner listing or professional listing is a listing on Google My Business (GMB) that is for a person rather than a location. If your business has public-facing professional that prospective clients search by name, a practitioner listing would be ideal for you. Practitioner listings are ideal for attorneys, doctors, insurance agents, and financial planners.
It is common for people to search for their dentist or attorney instead of the name of their clinic or firm. Here are some things you need to understand about GMB Practitioner Listings so that you can use the service effectively.
Solo-Practitioner Listing
Solo-practitioners refers to practitioners that have one business location or work for a single specific company. If you’re an attorney that works with a single law firm, for example, you are a solo-practitioner.
If your law firm has only one attorney, Google prefers that the company and practitioner share a single GMB listing. You should not create a practitioner listing for yourself.
The best thing about this kind of listing is that it makes it easier for clients to search for either the business name or practitioner name to get all of the information they’re looking for on a single listing. It also makes it easier for you to collect and monitor online reviews when there’s only one listing.
Multiple Practitioners Listing
If your company has several practitioners at one location, Google recommends that only one GMB listing is used to represent the business. This listing should be separate from the practitioner listings, and just be titled with the company’s name.
If your business has several practitioners practicing at several different locations, you can create an individual listing for each practitioner. If your law firm has several attorneys who all work at other law firms as well, they are allowed to create their own practitioner listings.
When creating multiple practitioner listings, you should be careful not to have several listings that are virtually identical. You don’t want the listings to compete with each other on search engine results.
Practitioner Listings and Local SEO
Practitioner listings play a significant role in boosting local search rankings. With a solo-practitioner listing, you can show a Google Places listing for extra search terms, such as your name.
It’s worth noting that Google doesn’t consider practitioner listings as duplicate content, and hence won’t remove or merge them. Moreover, if a customer leaves a review on the practitioner listing, Google won’t shift it to the business listing.
If all of these sounds confusing to you, you can engage a search engine optimization professional who is experienced in GMB listings. They’ll advise and help you to do this effectively.
In Conclusion
While local businesses have enjoyed the benefits of optimizing for local search with GMB listing for years, individual practitioners have had a challenging experience promoting themselves on GMB. The situation has since changed for the better and practitioners can improve their visibility in local searches by leveraging solo-practitioner or multiple practitioner listings on GMB.