A second location doubles more than the lease. It also doubles the number of places a patient can get confused: two addresses, two sets of hours, two phone numbers, two lots of reviews. A clinic that marketed one site well can still stumble when a second opens, usually because everything gets merged into one set of pages and one profile.
The simple rule is to treat each location as its own local business that shares a brand. This guide covers the main pieces: the Google profile, the web page, the booking, the reviews and the reporting.
One Google profile per location
Google’s guidelines say a business can have one Business Profile per real-world location, with a precise address, and that you shouldn’t duplicate profiles for the same place. Each profile needs a genuine, staffed location that receives patients, so a virtual office or a mailbox doesn’t qualify. Read the details in Google’s guidelines for representing your business before you create anything.
Some practical points:
- Use the same business name across locations, as Google’s chain guidance asks. Don’t add town names or keywords to the name field to try to rank. That breaks Google’s rules and risks suspension.
- Give each profile its own phone number, address, hours and photos. Photos of the actual front door and reception of that site help patients know they have the right place.
- Keep categories consistent where the locations offer the same services.
- Don’t create a profile for a site you don’t yet staff, and don’t keep a profile for one you have closed.
- Group them under one account so you can manage them together. Google supports managing several locations from one place.
If you are not sure about the rules for a particular arrangement, such as sharing a site with another practice, check Google’s help pages again rather than guessing. Our Google Business Profile checklist covers the fields worth getting right at each site.
A location page for each site
On your website, give each location its own page. A single “Locations” page with two addresses isn’t enough. Each page should answer the questions a patient has about that specific clinic:
- Address, map, and how to find the entrance.
- Parking and public transit.
- Hours, and holiday hours.
- A phone number for that clinic, and a booking button for that clinic.
- Who works there, with a short introduction for each practitioner.
- Services offered at that site, if they differ.
- Photos of that building, not just the first one.
- Direct billing or insurance details if they vary.
Write each page in your own words, from knowledge of the place. Copying one page and swapping the town name creates thin pages that help nobody. Search engines may treat them as near-duplicates, so make each one useful. Our guide to service pages SEO explains what makes a page worth finding, and our local SEO service builds location pages for clinics.
Link the Google profile for each site to its own location page, not the homepage. That way, the patient who finds the Vaughan clinic lands on the Vaughan page.
Booking by location
A patient shouldn’t have to guess which schedule they are booking into. Check that:
- The booking system separates locations in both the settings and the patient view. In Jane and Cliniko, you can set up multiple locations or businesses, so check your vendor’s help pages for how it works on your plan.
- Each location page links to that location’s booking, ideally to a pre-filtered schedule.
- Practitioners who work at both sites are clear about which days are where. If a practitioner is at one clinic on Mondays and another on Thursdays, show that.
- Confirmations and reminders carry the right address. A message with the wrong site is one of the commonest second-location mistakes. Test it by booking in each one. See our guide to reducing patient no-shows.
- The front desk knows the answer when someone calls the wrong clinic. A short script for redirecting calls helps; adapt our front desk phone script.
Our online booking service covers multi-site setups in Jane and Cliniko.
Local reviews, one location at a time
Reviews belong to a profile, so reviews for the new clinic start at zero. That’s normal. Keep these in mind:
- Ask for reviews at each site, with a link to that location’s review page. A patient at the new clinic who is sent a link to the first clinic’s profile will leave the review in the wrong place.
- Don’t move or merge reviews between locations. Google handles reviews at the profile level and you shouldn’t try to game it.
- Reply to each review from the right location.
- Follow your regulator’s advertising rules on reviews and testimonials. See health advertising rules for clinics.
- Be patient. A new profile takes time to build, and expecting the same star count and volume as the first site in the first month isn’t realistic.
Our reviews service can help with a review process for each site.
Reporting by location
If you only look at combined numbers, the stronger site hides the weaker one. Report each location separately:
- Profile views, calls and direction requests from each Google profile.
- Website visits to each location page.
- Online bookings by location, using your booking software’s reports.
- New patients by location and by source, as you record them at the desk.
- Reviews gained per month per site.
- Ad spend and results by location, if you advertise.
Use the same measures for both sites so the comparison is fair, and review them monthly. A pattern such as “lots of profile views at the new site, few bookings” points to a booking or page problem, not a visibility problem. Our reporting service can set up one view with each site separated.
Keep the brand shared, the details local
Patients should recognise both clinics as one name with one look, while finding the right hours, the right door and the right booking page for their own site. That balance is what a good second-location launch looks like. See clinic branding, name, logo and photos for the shared side.
A launch checklist
- Claim and verify a profile for the new location, with its own phone, hours and photos.
- Build its page on your site and link the profile to it.
- Set up its schedule in the booking software and test a booking.
- Check confirmations and reminders for the correct address.
- Start review requests on day one.
- Set up reporting that separates the sites.
If you are planning a second clinic and want to be sure every piece is in place before the doors open, claim your marketing audit and we will go through your current setup with you.