Secondary categories are where you add modality detail. Used well, they expand the searches you can appear for. Used carelessly, they dilute your relevance and can make you look like a different kind of business entirely.
What secondary categories do
Each secondary category adds an additional way for the profile to be considered relevant, carrying less weight than the primary. Think of the primary as what you are and the secondaries as what else you do.
The key property is that they are additive but not free. A long list of loosely related categories can blur your profile, and any category implying a service you do not truly provide is a policy problem.
The modality problem
Here is the frustration every interventional practice hits: Google largely has no categories for these treatments. There is generally no ketamine clinic category, no SPRAVATO category, and TMS is not reliably represented as its own entry.
Because the category list is fixed, you cannot request one. So modality signalling has to come from elsewhere. The categories carry the general shape of your practice, and the specific treatment detail lives in:
- The services list, which does accept custom entries and is your main modality lever.
- The business description.
- Your website, especially a dedicated page per treatment.
- Posts and Q&A.
Practices that expect categories to do this work leave the services list empty and wonder why they never surface for modality searches. The services list is the answer, not the categories.
Choosing sensible secondaries
Pick from what genuinely applies:
- Psychiatrist, if your primary is Mental health clinic, and vice versa.
- Mental health clinic or mental health service, where accurate.
- Psychologist or counselor, only if you employ clinicians in those roles.
- Addiction treatment center, only if you genuinely provide that service.
- Medical clinic, where a broader medical offering exists.
Three to five accurate secondaries is a healthy range for most practices. Beyond that you are usually reaching.
What not to add
- Categories for services you do not provide, hoping to catch stray searches. This is a misrepresentation risk and a reliable route to enforcement.
- Wellness, spa, or alternative medicine categories, which pull your profile toward an entirely different market and can undermine clinical credibility.
- Hospital or urgent care, unless you actually are one.
- Ten categories on the theory that more is better. It is not.
A workable configuration
For a physician-led clinic offering several interventional treatments, a sound setup looks like:
- Primary: Psychiatrist.
- Secondary: Mental health clinic, mental health service, and any other genuinely applicable role such as psychologist.
- Services: A specific entry for each treatment you provide, each with a short factual description of what the appointment involves.
- Website: A dedicated page per treatment, linked from the profile services where supported.
That configuration keeps your categories honest and puts the modality detail where the platform actually accepts it. Verification comes next, and healthcare listings get more scrutiny than most.