Local SEO audit for therapists: score your profile against the map pack

A local SEO audit for a therapy practice measures your Google Business Profile, your directory listings and your website against the practices that already show up in the map for the search you want, not against a generic checklist. Score each check below: 10 points for yes, 5 for partly, 0 for no. The total is out of 100.

Before you start, run one search in a private browser window: the search a new client would type for your main specialty and your city. Write down the three practices in the map results. They are your comparison for checks 1 to 4.

Check 10 is where this audit parts ways with the others. It does not score how many reviews you have or how fast new ones arrive. It scores whether you are handling them in a way your license allows.

The score tells you how complete your listings are next to the practices you are competing with. It does not predict a ranking, and no audit can. Google says local results are based mainly on relevance, distance and how well known a business is, and distance is the one you cannot change: a practice closer to the person searching can outrank a more complete profile.

• 80 to 100. Your listings are as complete as the practices in the map pack. What remains is distance, which you cannot change, and prominence, which grows slowly with a practice's reputation and its presence on the web.
• 50 to 75. There are gaps the map-pack practices do not have. Start with any 0 or 5 in checks 1 to 3.
• Under 50. The profile is probably not being matched to the searches you want. Categories and services first, then hours and photos.

A low score on check 10 is not a ranking problem. It is a licensing problem, and it comes first regardless of the rest.

Most local SEO audits check a profile against a fixed list: is the category set, are there photos, are the hours filled in. That tells you whether a field is empty. It does not tell you whether you are listed the way the practices Google already shows for your search are listed.

The comparison is what turns a checklist into a decision. If the three practices in the map pack all list a service you also offer and you do not, that is the first thing to add. If none of them lists a category you picked, it is worth asking whether it describes your work.

For a deeper walk through each profile field, see our Google Business Profile setup guide for therapists.

Reviews are the clearest example. Whitespark's Local Search Ranking Factors survey of local search specialists ranks Google Business Profile signals and review signals among the most important groups for the map pack. The local SEO audits that rank for this search score review count and how fast new reviews arrive, and tell the owner to ask customers for more. For a dentist or a plumber that is ordinary advice. For a licensed therapist it is not.

APA Standard 5.05 says psychologists do not solicit testimonials from current therapy clients or from other people who, because of their circumstances, are vulnerable to undue influence. ACA Code C.3.b goes further for counselors: no soliciting testimonials from current clients, former clients, or anyone else who may be vulnerable to undue influence. Treat a Google review as a public testimonial.

Google has its own rule that catches the workaround. Google's Maps content policy prohibits offering incentives for reviews and selectively asking only happy customers for them. So an audit that rewards a "review funnel" is recommending something that breaks both your ethics code and Google's policy.

Replies carry a second risk. A reply that thanks someone for "our sessions together," or that answers a complaint with details, confirms that the reviewer is a client. A safe reply is short, generic and the same whether the review is good or bad. Our guide to Google reviews for therapists covers what each ethics code says and how to word a reply.

WebsiteTherapy's Google Business Profile audit is built for therapists. It compares your categories, services, hours and photos against the practices that hold the map pack. It never recommends asking clients for reviews (APA 5.05, ACA C.3.b), and it drafts review replies that never confirm the reviewer is a client.

Four parts of the worksheet exist because a therapy practice is not a storefront.

The primary category should describe what you are licensed to do, not what you would like to be found for. A counselor and a psychologist are different categories for a reason. Specialties such as anxiety, couples work or trauma belong in services, each with a plain one-line description, not crammed into the business name.

If you see clients only by video, or you work from a home office you do not want published, read Google's own guidelines on eligibility and service areas before you build the profile around an address. An audit that assumes every business has a storefront will score you on things that do not apply. On this worksheet, score check 4 on recent photos of you rather than an office, and score check 6 on your name and phone, counting the address only where you publish one.

People and AI engines both read your directory profiles. An old fee or a specialty you stopped offering on Psychology Today is an error that gets repeated. Ask ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google what they know about your practice and note anything wrong. Our guide to updating a Psychology Today profile for AI search walks through the fixes, and how your Google profile feeds AI search explains why the two connect.

Google's LocalBusiness structured data documentation requires a name and an address and recommends properties such as telephone, url and opening hours. Google recommends its review and rating properties only for sites that capture reviews about other local businesses, so star ratings a practice marks up about itself fall outside that guidance.

1. Check 10, if it scored below 10. Bring your review handling in line with the testimonial rules above, and rewrite any reply that confirms someone is a client.
2. Checks 1 to 3. Categories and services decide which searches the profile can be matched to at all.
3. Checks 5 and 6. Hours, name, address and phone. Mismatches are small to fix and easy to miss.
4. Checks 7 and 8. Directories and AI answers. Correct the source, then check again in a few weeks.
5. Checks 4 and 9. Photos and structured data. Real photos of your office, and structured data that matches the profile.

Re-run the audit once a month with the same search. The practices in the map pack change, and the comparison is only useful when it is current.

WebsiteTherapy runs this comparison every month for the practices on our platform, as part of Growth at $99 a month: it checks the profile against the practices that hold the map results, drafts a Google post for you to approve and post, and drafts a fix for any AI answer (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI) that has your practice wrong. You decide what goes live.

For the website half, our free AI search audit checks a practice website's structured data, AI crawler access and sitemap in a few seconds, with no sign-up. Plans are on the pricing page.

• Google Business Profile Help: Tips to improve your local ranking on Google
• Google Maps user contributed content policy: prohibited and restricted content
• APA Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct (2017), Standard 5.05 Testimonials
• ACA Code of Ethics (2014), C.3.b Testimonials
• Google Search Central: Local business (LocalBusiness) structured data
• Whitespark: Local Search Ranking Factors
• Google Business Profile Help: Guidelines for representing your business on Google