Are you curious about the practitioner listings and how they can benefit various professionals, from lawyers to fitness trainers? Practitioner listings offer a tailored approach to online business directories, allowing individual professionals to showcase their skills and connect with potential clients seeking specialized services.

In this article, we explore the pros and cons of practitioner listings and provide insights into how they can improve your online presence. We’ll also look at effective management strategies and show you how BrightLocal’s tools, such as: B. Citation Tracker, can simplify the process. Whether you’re a doctor, legal expert, wellness coach, or beauty expert, this guide will help you harness the power of practitioner lists to reach your audience more effectively.

What are practitioner lists?

A practitioner listing is an individual Google business profile listing aimed at freelance professionals who are part of a larger company but provide independent services, such as lawyers, doctors and hairdressers. It offers them the opportunity to establish their own online presence independent of the main business entity.

Practitioner listings offer a tailored approach to online business directories, allowing individual professionals to highlight their expertise and connect with potential clients seeking specialized services.

Imagine a scenario where your local dentist employs four dentists, each with their own specialty. One dentist specializes in teeth whitening while another specializes in Invisalign braces. That’s exactly what a practitioner list is for: it allows each dentist to create a personalized list that highlights their unique expertise and offerings.

What types of companies are eligible for practitioner registration?

• Medical and Healthcare Professionals: Doctors, dentists, chiropractors and other medical professionals.
• Therapists and psychotherapists: Psychologists, counselors, therapists and mental health professionals.
• Legal experts: Lawyers, advocates and legal advisors.
• Wellness and fitness specialists: Yoga teachers, personal trainers, nutritionists and wellness coaches.
• Beauty and Aesthetics Professionals: Hairdressers, makeup artists, tattoo artists, skin care specialists and other beauty experts.
• Educational tutors and coaches: Academic tutors, life coaches, career advisors and mentors.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of practitioner lists?

Listing practitioners can offer various advantages and disadvantages.

Advantages

• Increased visibility: Practitioner listings can increase the online visibility of individual professionals within a larger corporate organization.
• Self-marketing: Practitioner lists allow professionals to build and promote their personal brand, which can be critical to building trust and credibility with clients. Professionals can retain this entry even if they change companies/practice, thereby maintaining their brand regardless of their current business.
• Adjustment: Each doctor can customize their listing with individual information such as hours of operation, services offered, and customer reviews, showcasing their specific expertise and services.
• Benefits of Local SEO: Separate practitioner listings can improve local SEO for the business and increase the likelihood of appearing in local search results.

Disadvantages

• Management complexity: Maintaining multiple practitioner lists can be time-consuming and complex, especially for larger organizations with numerous professionals. Ensuring consistency of information across entries can be challenging.
• Risk of confusion: Customers may be confused if there are multiple listings for a single company, each representing a different doctor. This confusion can lead to misunderstandings or miscommunication.
• Risk of negative reviews: Practitioners’ listings may receive negative reviews, which may negatively impact the company’s overall reputation. It becomes important to manage and respond to these reviews.
• Dependence on individual practitioners: If a doctor leaves or moves, their record may need to be updated or removed, which can be a hassle.

Effective management can help mitigate some of the disadvantages associated with physician listing. Let’s look at how some of BrightLocal’s tools can be used to efficiently monitor physician listings and address certain associated challenges.

How to use BrightLocal to manage physician listings

Quote tracker

Citation Tracker can help you by automating the process of finding and reviewing your citations. This allows you to quickly see where a company is listed, what data is displayed about the company, and where competitors are listed but your company is not. This will help you eliminate the challenge of ensuring consistency of information across all entries.

First, create a Citation Tracker report for the company. Once the report is set up, go to the Live Citations tab and use the Site Type column to filter the Citations Found table to get a list of niche directories.

The goal is to ensure that the most important existing niche listings for the business are accurate and up to date. You can do this by clicking the blue arrow in the Actions column. This will take you to the quote, where you can check that it contains the correct information and make any changes.

Next, go to the Competitor Citations tab and use the Site Type column to filter the table to get a list of niche directories.

If you notice that there are quotes that your competitors have but you don’t, then it’s a good idea to pursue them and level the playing field. You can do this by clicking the plus button in the Actions column. This will take you to the website where you can claim your listing.

If you have a lot of citations that need to be claimed/created, you can save time by ordering a Citation Builder campaign and we’ll do the hard work for you.

The report should also have identified any existing practitioner listings (e.g. GBPs and niche listings); these are also displayed in the Live Citations tab. As previously mentioned, customers may be confused if there are multiple listings for a single company, each representing a different doctor.

If the report lists practitioners, now is a good time to look at how they can be empowered and any confusion minimized.

For example, if the company has many practitioners who specialize in different aspects, it might be a good idea to strengthen each individual listing to improve the company’s visibility for different search terms.

For example, in a law firm there might be someone who specializes in criminal law and another who specializes in family law. Updating their practitioner listings to reflect these areas of expertise not only reduces confusion, but also improves the ranking of these listings for more specific searches.

If there are multiple practitioners, it might be worth creating Citation Tracker reports for each of them to gain deeper insight into existing niche citations and further improve search visibility.

Google Business Profile Review

By setting up a Google Business Profile Audit report for the company, you can better understand what main categories competitors are using for your chosen search terms.

A tab will appear at the top of the table for each search term/keyword you entered when setting up the report. The table in each keyword tab shows you the top 10 companies ranking for each search term and where your company ranks on that list. It will also show you the primary business category that each of your competitors uses in their Google Business Profile (GBP).

If the majority of competitors use the same category, but you have something different and want to rank for the search term, you should consider updating the main category in your GBP.

This is also a good place to see if individual practitioners’ GBPs are appearing in the top 10 local search results and whether they could potentially be improved by updating their GBP category. Just like you did before, now is a good time to see how you can strengthen them and minimize any confusion.

For example, updating GBP categories for practitioners to reflect their areas of expertise will not only minimize confusion, but also help them rank better for more specific searches.

Local search grid

To dig a little deeper and further increase the company’s and practitioner’s GBPs, you can create a local search grid report for each search term and see what secondary categories competitors are using.

Similar to GBP Audit, look at what primary and secondary categories your competitors are using and see how your company and any practitioners fit together.

Diploma

Practitioner Lists provide a unique opportunity for professionals from various fields to showcase their expertise and engage with potential clients in a personalized way. Although they present both benefits and challenges, effective management can help realize their full potential.

Citation Tracker, Google Business Profile Audit, and Local Search Grid provide powerful solutions to streamline practitioner listing management and ensure accuracy, consistency, and improved visibility in local search results.

By using these tools, you can not only improve your online presence but also provide a seamless experience for customers looking for specialized services. Practitioner listings are a valuable addition to any professional’s digital marketing strategy and, with the right management approach, can be instrumental in effectively reaching a target audience and building a strong online reputation.

Kate is responsible for managing BrightLocal’s educational content, ensuring we create valuable resources and courses that educate the local SEO community to become experts in local marketing and using BrightLocal products.