A counsellor building a private practice in Kumasi found that most new clients arrived the same way: someone searched Google late at night, looked at the profile for a minute, then sent a message on WhatsApp asking whether an appointment was possible that week. Almost none of them called the office number listed on her old flyers, and after a while she stopped printing them.
Reviews and referrals still open the door
Word of mouth remains a strong force in Ghana, and a personal recommendation shared over WhatsApp often carries more weight than an ad ever could. A Google Business Profile doesn't replace that, it backs it up. When a friend mentions a counsellor or physiotherapist by name, the first thing many people do is search that name on Google to check the reviews before reaching out. A profile with no reviews, or with an unanswered complaint sitting at the top, undercuts a recommendation that was otherwise a sure thing. Asking a satisfied client, gently and without pressure, to leave a short review after their visit is a reasonable way to build that trust up over time.
Claiming one clear listing per practitioner
In towns like Takoradi and Tamale, several practitioners sharing a single clinic building is common, and it's easy for the building itself to end up with one shared, vague Google listing instead of individual ones. A counsellor, a chiropractor, and a massage therapist working from the same address are each better represented by their own profile under their own practice name, so a client searching for counselling specifically doesn't land on a page that doesn't mention it. Sorting this out while the practice is still small is far easier than trying to untangle three overlapping listings once each practitioner has built up their own set of reviews under the wrong name.
The category is doing more work than it looks like
Labelling a practice as a general health service instead of counsellor, chiropractor, or nutritionist quietly limits who ever sees the listing. The more specific option should be used whenever it exists, since that's exactly what a person typing a treatment-specific search is looking for. It takes a couple of minutes to change and doesn't require re-verifying the whole profile, so there's little reason to leave it set to the vague default once the correct option is known.
What the photo gallery should and shouldn't include
Photos of the consultation room, the reception area, and the practitioner or team working give a prospective client a real sense of the place before their first visit. Equipment shots work well too where relevant. Clients themselves should never appear, even if a particular client offered to be pictured after a positive session, since that kind of consent in the moment doesn't hold up as a lasting decision about an image staying public. A handful of clear photos, updated whenever the space changes, matters more than a large gallery that hasn't been touched in years.
Hours, a full calendar, and replying to reviews with care
If new client appointments are running a few weeks out, the profile should say so rather than list hours that suggest same-day availability. And when a review references a specific session or outcome, the public reply needs to stay general: a thank you, an acknowledgement, nothing that confirms or adds detail about what was actually discussed or treated, regardless of what the client chose to write themselves.
Where a listing needs to stay consistent
GhanaYello functions much like a digital Yellow Pages here and still gets checked by people who want a second source beyond Google. Hotfrog's Ghana section and GhanaBusinessWeb round out where a serious local practice is worth appearing. All of it depends on the name, address, and phone number matching exactly what's on Google, since a WhatsApp number that's current on one listing and outdated on another is a quiet way to lose a client who never bothers to ask why the message didn't go through. A quick check across all three every few months catches that kind of drift before it costs anything.
Kaptor's role in this
Kaptor sets up the Google Business Profile correctly, with the right category and a visible way for clients to message the practice, and checks it periodically for the gaps that matter most: missing hours, reviews left unanswered, details that no longer match GhanaYello or Hotfrog. See also the full guide to Google Business Profiles for health and wellness practices and what this looks like for practices in the United Kingdom.