Local SEO for therapists

This lesson is for a therapist with a practice website, or about to have one, who wants to show up when someone nearby searches for a counselor. It sticks to what Google says on its own pages: the three things that drive local results, how to set up and verify a Google Business Profile, what your service pages need, how to handle reviews inside a licensed profession, the minimum structured data, and what a directory listing does and does not do. The video above is Google Search Central's introduction to its own channel. It is about search in general, not local search, and I include it because it is Google's voice rather than a marketer's.

What Google says drives local results

Google's help page on local ranking names three factors. Relevance is "how well a Business Profile matches what someone is searching for." Distance is how far the business is from the person searching, or from where Google thinks they are. Prominence is how well known the business is, and Google says this is "based on info like how many websites link to your business and how many reviews you have." The page's summary line calls the third factor popularity; the section heading calls it prominence. Same thing.

The page also says: "There's no way to request or pay for a better local ranking on Google." I quote it because a therapist will be pitched exactly that, by email, more than once.

For a practice, the three factors translate simply. Relevance is whether your profile and site say what you do, in the words a person would type. Distance is your office address, which you cannot change and should not fake. Prominence is the slow one: reviews, ratings, and links.

Set up and verify a Google Business Profile

The Business Profile is the panel with the map, hours and reviews that appears for a local search. Google's getting-started page sets three conditions. You need a Google Account. Only businesses that make face-to-face contact with customers are eligible; an online-only business, one with no location customers can visit and that does not visit customers, is not. And you must verify the profile before your changes appear on Search and Maps. A telehealth-only practice sits close to that line, and I cannot tell you which side; read Google's eligibility guidelines, linked from that page, before you claim anything.

1. Sign in with the Google Account you want to own the profile. Google suggests linking your practice email to it.
2. Search for your practice name on Google Maps. If a profile already exists, claim it; if someone else has verified it, request ownership.
3. Enter the name, address, phone, website, category and hours exactly as they appear on your site.
4. Complete verification through whichever method Google offers. Edits stay hidden until this is done.
5. Add real photos of the office and yourself. Google's ranking page recommends photos and video, and stock imagery of an empty couch tells a person nothing.

Google's improvement tips are short: verify, keep the address, hours, category and attributes complete and accurate, respond to reviews, add photos. The checklist attached to this lesson walks through the same steps in order.

Service pages on your own site

Google's SEO Starter Guide (last updated December 2025) says a good title "is unique to the page, clear and concise, and accurately describes the contents of the page," and a good meta description "is short, unique to one particular page, and includes the most relevant points of the page." On content, it asks you to "write content naturally and make sure the content is well written, easy to follow, and free of spelling and grammatical mistakes," and not to copy anyone else's.

The practical version: one page per thing you actually offer, each with its own title and description, written for the person reading it. A page called "Couples counseling in Bend" that says what a first session looks like, who you work with, and what it costs is relevant to that search in the plain sense Google means. Five pages that repeat the same paragraph with a different city swapped in fail the "unique" test on both counts. What goes on the site itself is covered in therapy website essentials.

Reviews, and the limits of a licensed profession

Google counts reviews and ratings toward prominence and recommends replying to them. That is where Google's advice ends and your profession's rules begin. Your licensing board's rules and your professional association's code of ethics may limit or prohibit soliciting testimonials from clients, current or former. The board's rule is stricter than anything in a marketing guide. Before you ask anyone for a review, read your board's rule on testimonials and, if it is unclear, ask the board in writing.

Reviews will still arrive on their own, and you can reply. My rule for replies is to never confirm that the reviewer is or was a client and to say nothing that refers to them. A general thank-you is enough; for a negative review, one calm sentence inviting them to contact you directly. A reply that says "I'm glad our sessions helped" has just disclosed a clinical relationship in public.

Do not buy reviews, trade for them, or post your own. Google's line on prominence rewards the real thing, and a profession built on trust has more to lose from a fake review than a restaurant does.

Structured data: the minimum that counts

Structured data is a block of code on a page that tells search engines, in a fixed format, what the page is about. Google's LocalBusiness structured data documentation (last updated September 8, 2026) requires only two properties: the business name and a full postal address (street, city, state, postal code, country). Telephone, website, opening hours and map coordinates are recommended, not required. If your website builder offers a "local business" schema setting, fill in those two and the recommended ones you have. If it does not, name and address in plain text on the page still let Google read them; the code just removes the guesswork.

Name, address, phone: the same everywhere

Local SEO people call this NAP, for name, address and phone written the same way everywhere. Google does not use the term, and I only use it here so you recognize it when you see it. Google's ranking page does ask that the listed information be complete and accurate, and my reasoning from there is simple: if your site says "Suite 100," your Business Profile says "Ste. 100," and a directory says "#100," you are asking a machine to decide whether those are one practice or three. Settle on one spelling of your practice name and one form of the address, and paste them rather than retyping. Recheck every listing after a move, a new number, or a rename. And do not put a home address on a public profile if you would not want a client to show up there.

What a directory listing does

A directory profile does two things for search and one for you. For search, it is one more place where your name, address and phone appear consistently and can be crawled, and it links to your website, which Google says is part of prominence, though I will not claim how much one listing counts. For you, it puts a page in front of a person who is already looking for a therapist, which is the part that produces a phone call. What a listing does not do is rank your own site for you. Treat it as a citation and a referral source, not as SEO on its own. The wider question of which directories are worth the fee is in directories and referral networks.

This is what I do for my own site and what Google's linked pages say, not marketing or legal advice; your licensing board gets the final word on anything involving client reviews.

Further reading

• Google Business Profile Help: How to improve your local ranking on Google. Relevance, distance and prominence, in Google's own words, with the line that ranking cannot be bought.
• Google Business Profile Help: Get started with Business Profile. Eligibility, the Google Account requirement, and the verification step.
• Google Search Central: SEO Starter Guide. The titles, descriptions and content sections apply to every service page you write.
• Google Search Central: Local business structured data. The required and recommended properties, with a code sample you can hand to whoever builds your site.