How to Set Up Your Google Business Profile (Step by Step)

There is a small, particular feeling that happens the first time you sit down to make your practice visible on Google. Like you are standing up in a room and saying your name. Even if no one is watching yet, the act of declaring yourself in public has its own quiet weight.

If that is where you are, breathe. The work of setting up a Google Business Profile is much smaller than it looks from the outside. An hour, maybe two if you are deciding things as you go, and you have a piece of marketing that will quietly do its work for years.

Here is what to actually do, in the order I would do it.

Before you begin

You will need a Google account. If you have a Gmail address, you have one. If you would rather keep your practice email separate from your personal one (most practitioners I know do), you can use the Google account tied to your practice domain, or make a fresh one for the practice. Either is fine. The only thing to avoid is using a Google account you might lose access to later.

You will also want to make one decision before you start typing: whether you want clients to see your address, or whether you would rather keep your office private and list a service area instead.

The shorthand:

• Public-facing office, walk-in welcome: show your address.
• Private office, clients arrive only by appointment: hide the address, list the cities or regions you serve.
• Telehealth or fully mobile practice: no address, just a service area covering the regions you work in.

You can change this later. But knowing which one you are before you start saves a small amount of friction.

Step 1: Find or create your listing

Go to google.com/business and sign in. (It will quietly redirect you to business.google.com; either URL is fine.)

The first thing it does is ask the name of your practice. Type it in.

One of two things will happen. Google might already have a listing for you, generated automatically from public records, an old review, or a directory it scraped years ago. If a match appears in the dropdown, click it and follow the prompts to claim the listing. If nothing appears, choose Add your business to Google and Google will create a new one.

Either path lands you in the same setup wizard.

A small but real detail: the name you enter here becomes the public name of your practice on Google. If you usually go by Calming Connections Counseling, PLLC but you would rather just be Calming Connections Counseling, this is the moment to leave the legal suffix off. Whatever you choose, make it match the name you use on your website and your other public-facing materials. Verification tends to move faster when those line up.

Step 2: Pick your category, carefully

Google will ask what kind of business this is. The list is enormous and a little oddly organized. The rule that matters: pick the most specific category that genuinely applies to you, not the most general.

For practitioners in private practice, that usually means:

• A therapist might choose Psychotherapist, Marriage or family counselor, Mental health service, or Counselor.
• A massage therapist might choose Massage therapist, Sports massage therapist, or a specialty like Prenatal massage.
• A photographer might choose Portrait studio, Wedding photographer, Family photographer, or Photographer.

Specific beats general almost every time. Portrait studio will pull you up in searches for "portrait studio near me" in a way that photographer will not.

You can add additional categories later (Google currently allows up to ten, one primary and nine secondary), but the primary category is the one Google uses to decide which searches you appear in. Pick the one that most closely names what you actually do most of the time.

Step 3: Address or service area

If you are showing your address, type it in. Google will plot the pin and ask you to confirm it is in the right spot.

If you are hiding it, the wizard will ask a follow-up question, something close to do you serve customers at their location?, and then let you list cities, zip codes, or regions instead.

A good rule: list the places you actually work with, not every city in your state. A short list of real service areas is more credible to Google than a long list of aspirational ones. (Google currently caps service areas at twenty, but you almost never need that many.)

You can also do both: show the address and list a service area. This is what most appointment-based practitioners end up doing. The address shows up on the map, and the service area extends your search visibility into nearby towns.

Step 4: Add your phone and website

Two simple fields, but worth taking a second on.

The phone number should be the one you actually answer. If you use a separate practice line, use that. If clients reach you through a contact form rather than a phone, you can still leave the phone field blank, Google does not require it.

The website should be the page you most want a new client to land on. Usually that is your homepage. If you have a dedicated contact or new client page, and your homepage is heavier than that page is, the contact page is sometimes the better choice. The link is the door. Pick the door that is easiest to walk through.

Step 5: Verify

This is the part that takes the longest, but it is mostly waiting. Google needs to confirm that you are who you say you are, and they offer a few methods. Which methods are available depends on your category, location, and a few things only Google knows.

The common ones:

• Postcard. Google mails a postcard with a five-digit verification code to your business address. It usually takes about five business days, sometimes up to fourteen. You enter the code on the dashboard when it arrives.
• Phone or text. For some categories Google will offer to call or text the verification code. Faster, when it is available.
• Email. Occasionally offered, usually when Google already has an email address associated with the listing.
• Video recording. A short, unedited recording that shows three things in one continuous take: the outside of your office (with signage or a street number visible), the inside of the space, and proof that you actually operate the business, keys to the door, a piece of mail addressed to the practice, or your equipment. Google reviews the video, usually within a few business days.
• Live video call. Newer. A Google reviewer schedules a brief video call and you walk them through the same things you would show in a recorded video.

You cannot publish your profile until you are verified. The profile is created and reserved while you wait, but it does not appear in search until the code clears.

If you are offered the postcard method and that is all, take it. The postcard does arrive. It just takes a beat.

Step 6: While you wait, write the description

The description is 750 characters of free text Google gives you to introduce your practice. It is the single highest-leverage field on the entire profile, and the one most practitioners write in twenty seconds and never revisit.

Do not write a mission statement. Do not list every modality or technique you have ever trained in. Write the short, specific version of what you do and who you do it for.

A useful frame: imagine writing a note to a colleague who is referring someone to you. Something like:

I work with women in their thirties navigating major life transitions, particularly the grief and identity shifts that come up around motherhood and career change. My approach is somatic and trauma-informed. Currently accepting new clients in WA and OR via telehealth, and in person in Snohomish.

Or:

Portrait photographer based in Bellingham, working with families, newborns, and high school seniors. Sessions are unhurried and shot mostly outdoors. Booking spring and summer 2026.

That kind of specificity is more useful, both to a prospective client and to Google's algorithm, than three paragraphs of compassionate, client-centered language. Keep it in your voice. The same voice you use when a colleague asks what kind of work you are doing these days.

Step 7: Add photos and hours

Photos are the part most practitioners skip and the part that matters more than they realize. You do not need a brand photoshoot. You need a few real photos:

• The exterior or entry. The front of your building, or whatever a client would look for from the sidewalk. The door, the sign, the porch, whatever is true.
• The interior. The waiting area, if you have one. The room where the work actually happens, with the natural light and the chair and whatever you have on the wall. Not staged. The room as it actually is.
• One photo of you. The headshot you already have is fine.

Upload them through the dashboard under Photos. You can also set a logo and a cover photo, which is the wide image at the top of your profile. The cover photo is usually best as a clean, in-context shot of the space, rather than a logo.

The point of these photos is not aesthetic. The point is that someone arriving for a first session has already, on some quiet level, walked into the space before they showed up. They know what door to look for. The room is not a surprise. That small familiarity reduces the activation energy of an unfamiliar appointment by more than you might expect.

For hours, just be honest. The hours you actually keep, including which days you do not see clients. If you change your hours seasonally, update them seasonally. If you take the last week of August off every year, set those as special hours when the time comes. Google does not punish you for being closed. It does quietly punish you for showing up as open when you are not.

You are done. Now what?

Once you are verified and the basics are filled in, the profile is live. People can find you. You will start to see a small trickle of activity in the dashboard, searches, clicks, calls, direction requests. That trickle is the marketing already working.

The thing that turns a verified profile into a real marketing channel is what happens next: a regular cadence of posts. Even one a week, in your voice, about something honest you would tell a colleague. Not promotional, not effortful, just present. I am taking a few new clients for fall. Here is a small thing I have been thinking about lately. The studio is open through Labor Day weekend.

A profile that is posted to, regularly, signals to Google that the practice is active. Google rewards that signal. And the woman at the end of her long day, scrolling through three names on a map, will land on the one whose practice feels alive.

If you want help with that part, the weekly posting, the social posts, the steady cadence of something to say, that is the part Ariadne is built for. The setup, though, is on you. And the setup is the hardest part.

You have done the hard part. From here, the rest is just tending.

Ariadne writes weekly Google Business Profile posts, social posts, and a monthly blog in your voice, for therapists, massage therapists, and photographers in solo practice. If you are curious what that looks like, start your free week.