The Google Business Profile setup for a hearing practice
The fastest-acting lever in local search, and the one that is nearly always half-configured.
8 min read
Profile work is the fastest thing that moves local rankings and it is undone at the majority of practices we audit. Not wrong — undone. Fields left blank, categories chosen once in 2017, duplicates nobody knows about.
It is also free. This guide is the whole procedure; a practice that follows it does not need us for this part.
- 01
Get the primary category right
Audiologist is the correct primary for most practices. Hearing aid store is a different category with a different competitive set and different searches attached; choosing it makes you a retailer.
The primary category does more work than any other single field. Change it and watch the grid for a fortnight before changing anything else, so you can attribute the movement.
- 02
Add secondary categories that are true
Hearing aid repair service, medical clinic, and hearing aid store if you genuinely dispense. Each one adds queries you can appear for.
Do not add categories you cannot serve. It produces enquiries you cannot fulfil, reviews from disappointed people, and eventually suspension.
- 03
Fill services and products completely
These fields are read and almost everyone leaves them blank. Every service line the practice offers should be listed with its own short description: tinnitus evaluation, vestibular testing, cerumen removal, custom hearing protection, paediatric assessment, hearing aid fitting and repair.
Products can carry the device brands you dispense. This is one of the few places where naming brands helps, because people search for them.
- 04
Set attributes, including the accessibility ones
Wheelchair accessible entrance and parking, appointment required, online appointments, languages spoken, and whether the practice serves as a provider for specific plans where the attribute exists.
These are filters. A person filtering by wheelchair access does not see practices that have not set it, regardless of ranking.
- 05
Fix hours, including the holidays
Wrong hours produce the specific review that costs a quarter of ranking progress: someone drove there and it was shut. Set special hours for every holiday in advance, once a year, in one sitting.
If the practice closes for lunch, say so. It is not embarrassing and it prevents a wasted trip.
- 06
Establish a photo cadence
Photos are a freshness signal and they are the only thing a nervous first-time patient looks at. A handful a month, showing the actual building from the road, the parking, the waiting area, the booth and the people.
The exterior-from-the-road shot matters more than any other. Older patients navigating to an unfamiliar place use it to confirm they have arrived.
- 07
Find and kill duplicates
Search the practice name, the old practice name, every former address, and every audiologist who has ever worked there. Practices routinely have three to six stray listings, and each one splits the signal.
Merge where possible, mark as permanently closed where not, and never simply delete a profile that has reviews on it.
Where this goes wrong
- Hearing aid store as the primary category, which recasts a clinic as a retailer
- Blank services and products fields, which is the most common finding of all
- A profile still listing a clinician who left years ago
- Keyword-stuffed business name, which risks suspension and is not worth it
- Photo dumps once a year instead of a small monthly cadence
- Checking rank only from the office, where it always looks best