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Google Business Profile Listing Issues and How to Fix Them

As SEO specialists, we often make use of the services Google provides to better understand SEO for therapists, and how client sites are performing.

Two of the tools we use the most are Google Business Profile (GBP) and Google Analytics (GA). The first allows you to optimize your business profile on Google and improve local SEO, while the latter allows you to track website analytics for your private practice website. Both have their uses in improving SEO for therapists. But, each can also experience many issues that can be difficult to address without understanding what they mean. So, today we are going to cover a few of the most common problems for each, and how to resolve them!

Google Business Profile: Suspended Listings

To start, I should first mention that while suspended listings can be scary to deal with, they are manageable. There are many reasons as to why your listing might have been suspended. But, Google will not tell you as to why your listing is suspended. It is up to you to investigate your listing to better understand what Google might be taking issue with. When it comes to Google Business Profile in counseling and any other profession, it is important you have accurate info on your listing. It should also be noted that if a user’s Google Account is suspended, all listings owned by the user will also be suspended.

Reasons for Suspending your Listing

Google wants to ensure that the GBP profiles on their service adhere to their guidelines. As a result, it is important that your listing be accurate and trustworthy. Some of the most common reasons listings get suspended include:

Another business has the same address as your practice
The address on your listing is different from the listing on your website
The information on directory listings doesn’t match your website
Any recent changes made to your primary address, name, or phone number
Multiple listings for the same business or location

Luckily, suspensions are just that, suspensions

They can negatively affect SEO for counselors but are not permanent. Depending on your situation, your listing should be straightforward to fix, given you have identified the issue at hand. Yet, in the event that you can’t, contacting Google Support can help you better understand what the issue might be, and give you a chance to then correct the problem.

Fixing your Suspended GBP Listing

In order to fix your GBP profile, you must ask Google to reinstate your listing. This can be done by completing their support form and providing evidence to resolve the issue at hand. This will be different for each case, but often require images of important documents to prove the validity of your claim.

For example, you may have changed your business address recently. As a result, Google suspended your listing in order to avoid spreading inaccurate info about your practice. In this case, you may be required to send them proof of your address. This may include submitting your business license or providing an image of your building along with signage. Other instances may instead require you to verify the address by sending a postcard.

This postcard often arrives within 5 days of it being requested and will have a code for you to use on your GBP listing. By doing so, you can easily reinstate your listing without having to contact any support.

Google Business Profile : Account Suspensions

As mentioned earlier in this blog, if a user’s Google account has been suspended, all their listings will also be suspended as a result. Issues like these may occur when a person makes a number of changes to their business information over a shorter period of time. Practice owners may also find their reviews have disappeared, along with all their profile listings on the Google search engine.

This result may occur when more serious violations are at hand, or if issues occur within GBP itself. As a result, practice owners should take care to understand what they are putting on their profiles matters. If Google believes something on your account is violating their guidelines for representing your business on GBP, they will have to ensure you will adhere to them before you can request to reinstate your account.

Practice owners should also be careful of creating too many accounts on GBP. If you switch between many accounts over a short period of time, Google may grow suspicious of your actions. It is a similar process to reinstating a suspending listing. But, you may have to provide documentation of some kind to prove you are the owner of the practice for security reasons.

This may verification by providing:

A utility bill with the same billing address as the Google Business Profile
Legal documentation. A business license or tax form, either of which must list the same address listed in your Google Business Profile
Proof of physical address. A storefront image showing both signage and address, including a suite number if your business has a Suite # attached to it.
Proof you are not sharing office space with another business
Your GBP listing’s dashboard URL to confirm the business profile

If this happens, Do Not Make Another Listing

It is vital to also understand that if you experience this, you should not try to create a new listing. Google can still recover your removed listing if it is lost. But, they can’t do so if you overwrite it with a new, fresh listing of your practice. If this happens, your only option is to ask Google to reinstate it.

Closing Thoughts

Dealing with these issues may be annoying at times. But, it is a good effort of Google to protect the security of their many users. Understanding how to deal with these issues can help you better manage your Google Business Profile Account. Plus, doing so helps support SEO for therapists. Google Business Profiles in counseling can be a very beneficial tool for any practice owner, regardless of the size of the practice!

Begin SEO Services with Simplified SEO Consulting

Our team of SEO specialists can offer support in managing and solving Google Business Profile issues and building your Local SEO presence. Our team is happy to offer List Management support and multiple service options. We are happy to also help improve SEO for therapists nationwide, and internationally! To start improving your SEO with Simplified SEO Consulting, please follow these simple steps:

Book a free 30-minute consultation call.
Meet with an SEO specialist.
Start improving Google’s rankings and meet your practice’s goals!

Other Services Offered with Simplified SEO Consulting

Our team at Simplified SEO Consulting is happy to offer support in a number of ways. We can offer support in improving local SEO for therapists as well as DIY Online SEO Courses. In addition, we also offer Done For You SEO services, and a Done With You 12-week Intensive SEO program. Feel free to visit our blog to learn more today!

About the Author

Sterling Humburg-Cage graduated from the University of Missouri with a BA in Psychology in 2020. He integrates what he learned in school into his work as an SEO Specialist with Simplified SEO Consulting. Sterling prides himself on helping current clients & alumni problems solve difficult SEO issues. He’s great at giving clients multiple options about how to approach a situation and responding quickly to client concerns. Since he started, Sterling has met frequently with our alumni and provided them extra problem-solving support, often going the extra mile to do outside research and make sure private practice owners have everything they need to rank well on search engines long term for the keywords their ideal clients are using!

March 15, 2022/0 Comments/by Sterling Humburg-Cage

Analytics, SEO Tools, Uncategorized

Google Analytics: How to Use the Data

You have Google Analytics installed for your counseling website. In fact, you’ve even looked at Google Analytics a few times. But what do all those numbers mean? How do you actually USE any of the data? Every time you look at Google Analytics you just feel overwhelmed and to be honest a little annoyed.

You’re a therapist. You are good at connecting with people. Crunching numbers and pouring over random pieces of data on the computer just doesn’t sound appealing.

I get it. There’s a TON of data on Google Analytics. And the truth is that some of it is more helpful than other pieces of information on there.

How to Start Using Google Analytics Data

I’d love to help simplify things a bit and break down just a couple of pieces of information you can find on Google Analytics that might be helpful. Here are a few questions that Google Analytics can help you answer:

How many people are coming to your site?

A great place to start on your Google Analytics account is the top of that main page after you login. This has some great basic information. First up, the number of users is exactly what you suspect-the number of people (or devices) that have viewed your site in the given amount of time that you’ve chosen. Sessions is slightly different, because it takes into account that the same person may look at your site several times before calling, so your number of “sessions” is typically higher than users.

While there really isn’t a magic number of website visitors or sessions you want to aim for, you do want to look at this number occasionally. In general, you want to see that as you’re improving your counseling website’s search engine optimization, the number of people visiting your site is increasing.

Where are people finding your website?

You can also use Google Analytics to figure out where website users are coming from. Google Analytics shows you how many clients come to your site directly (they just typed in your web address), through clicking on your link from social media, or another referral (usually through a backlink on another site). After I post a new blog post to my social media sites I sometimes check in real quick to not just see how many people went to the blog post, but how many found it through my social media sites to help me determine if it’s really worth putting these things on my social media pages. Google Analytics can provide you this information for each day.

Additionally, Google Analytics can show small business owners where their website visitors are located. This has some value in that you want the bulk of your website visitors to be people who can actually use your services. While there are some valid reasons for people out of state (or even out of the country) to look at your website, the bulk of your visitors should probably be from the state where your practice is located.

What is Your Bounce Rate & Is that OK?

Bounce Rate refers to people who only look at one page on your site. It’s actually very common for people to only look at one page on your site. For instance, if they are searching Google for a specific issue, click the link and read one of your blog posts and then leave your site. Why? Because your post answered their question. That’s a great reason to have internal links on your site-to show them what other valuable information your site has to offer! But I’ll save that for a future post…

A big question people ask is what is a “good” bounce rate. I don’t have a super specific answer here. I’ve heard that in general it’s really hard to get a bounce rate before 40. Another site said that around 50% is average. In general, the consensus seems to be that you want to aim for below 70. But that is for websites in general. I will say that most therapist websites I’ve seen the data for are between 50-70%. I’ve seen some as low as mid 40s or as high as 80%. My best suggestion is to know what the “average” is for your website. When your website seems to be performing worse than usual, re-evaluate and make changes.

Picture of Google Analytics Top of Page. Begin SEO Consulting Services for Therapist Private Practice Owners

This is an example of some of the basic data you’ll see first when you open Google Analytics. You’ll notice that the bounce rate is right at the top.

Which Pages on my Site Need Editing?

Near the bottom of the main page you can click on “pages report.” I love this feature! It allows a small business owner to see some great information about specific pages on your website. As counseling practice owners, our home page will typically be the most visited.

The next most popular on a counseling website is generally the “Our Team” page or the owner’s “About Me” page. But there’s a LOT of great data if you click on the actual page report. Some of the things I like to check out include which of my therapists pages do people go to the most and stay on the longest? Do any of my therapist’s “about” pages have high bounce rates? If one page people stay on shorter times and tend to exit off of, I look at if we need to change the picture, add more text, personalize the page with a favorite quote, etc.

Similarly, I look at my service pages….if one has a higher exit rate or people spend less time on the page, I look at that page to see if I can make it more informative, more inviting, add more internal links directing them to other pages, etc. I see my service pages as some of the most important on our site, because they’re our way of really communicating to potential clients that we understand their specific concerns and really winning them over. Therefore, I pay closer attention to the statistics on these pages compared to others.

Don’t worry about a high bounce rate on your “contact” page or rates page. After looking at these pages, people have often found the information they need and are either going to

1) Decide they can’t afford you

2) Call your office

3) Fill out and submit the contact form to get ahold of you.

Looking for Help Using this Data to Improve Your Counseling Website SEO?

As a group psychotherapy practice owner myself, I understand the importance of having a well ranking website. One that consistently brings in new clients. I love helping other therapy practice owners. Helping them to experience the excitement of an increase in phone calls once their website is ranking well! My SEO consulting services can help your counseling practice in several different ways. One way is, I have a secret Facebook group for my SEO Consulting clients.

Practice owners who have purchased an SEO package (whether DFY or DIY) have access to this group on Facebook. This is where I do Facebook lives, share how-to videos and post random SEO tips. For almost two weeks recently I did a mini series on Google Analytics to help people learn how to use Google Analytics data to make a plan of action for improving search engine rankings. It has sparked some good conversation in the group with practice owners even sharing specific tips with one another about their unique website platforms (GoDaddy vs. Weebly vs. Square Space, etc).

If you are a group practice owner ready to really focus on getting your website found, book a free consultation to discuss how my SEO services might be able to help!

I provide SEO Consulting services to therapists and other small business owners interested in optimizing their websites for search engines. I offer monthly SEO packages where I provide work on your website for you (keyword research, adding alt text to photos, meta descriptions, headings/subheadings, etc.). Or, I offer SEO Training services where I “teach a man to fish” and teach you the skills you’ll need to keep your website ranking well for years to come! If you’re ready to get started, book a free 30 minute SEO consultation over Zoom video chat. We’ll discuss your business and which SEO services would help you reach your goals!

May 5, 2019/0 Comments/by Jessica