Category Does Not Exist

[seoWest]

My client has been offering attorney billing software and services for decades (e.g. like medical billing services).

I am trying to specify a category in GMB, but the closest fit would be Legal Services - which implies they offer legal
advice or council - they do not. I realize the category selection tool is driven by search query data, but the last thing I want to do, is make these guys show-up for visitors looking for legal advise.

Any ideas?

 

[Linda Buquet]

This is one of the cases where adding a descriptor might be wise. Not for ranking purposes but to help cut out unwanted calls.

How to word kinda depends on the existing name and if it's descriptive at all.
But maybe add "Billing Service" or something after the name? But depending on how long the name already is, it might get cut off in search.

And then of course explain in the description too. BUT we know many will never see that part and the primary concern is just how it shows up in search.

 

[seoWest]

This is one of the cases where adding a descriptor might be wise. Not for ranking purposes but to help cut out unwanted calls.

How to word kinda depends on the existing name and if it's descriptive at all.
But maybe add "Billing Service" or something after the name? But depending on how long the name already is, it might get cut off in search.

And then of course explain in the description too. BUT we know many will never see that part and the primary concern is just how it shows up in search.

Hi Linda,

So you suggest to bite the bullet and accept the "Legal Services" category? I am pretty sure the client will kill me. They already get a ton of inquiries from folks looking for legal advise that apparently don't read - anything ;-)

I see they offer "Medical Billing Services," maybe the description could be, "Oops! We really meant Attorney Billing Services." LOL

Do you suppose pleading my case (no pun intended) to G might produce anything worthy?

Thanks, Linda! Have a great day!

 

[Linda Buquet]

The other possible category - slightly off - could be bookkeeping service. They still might get some wrong calls, but probably not as many as they would for legal services.

However in either case it's likely that Google will change the cat back to legal services anyway OR even if not a cat, they'll still rank for it due to content on their site and citations that have legal KWs.

You could plead your case at the G forum - but my feeling is these very niche businesses, where it's not a major category, I don't think they can take the time to add them all.

And like I said above even if you could select the right cat, they still might rank for legal service type KWs just because the legal KWs are likely all over their site.

 

[Michael S. Doran]

I would probably use Legal Services, because they do supply services to teh legal industry, but then use the description with bullet points to be more clear. I like to make bullet points to specific pages to share categories that Google doesn't offer.

 

[seoWest]

Hey Michael,

Thanks for the suggestions. I went with Legal Services and added a Legal Billing descriptor to the name, and further substantiated in the description. At the end of the day, I truly believe visitors will only focus on the Legal Services aspect and the client will receive additional unqualified inquiries. We shall see ;-)

 

[Phil Rozek]

Hey Dino,

The trouble is that "attorney billing software" as a keyword and as a business isn't really "local" - in that when I type that in I don't see the Google Places results. Sure, you'll want to rank in the local-organic results. But your Google Places category has no bearing on that. In your client's case, the only real use of the Google Places page is to have it show up when people search for your client by name.

I wouldn't sweat the category.