Key points at a glance
- For local searches, Google first shows the map with usually three practices – what counts most here is the Google Business Profile.
- Your website provides the content: one page per important service, with the town and district or neighbourhood in the page title.
- Name, address and phone number must be identical everywhere – on your website, Google, DocFinder, Jameda and in directories.
- For health topics, Google pays particular attention to expertise and trustworthiness – show who is behind the content.
- With the free Google preview, you can check your page titles and descriptions in seconds.
This post is general information and does not replace legal or tax advice. Rules change – check details with your chamber, your professional association or your tax adviser.
How local search works
For searches with a local reference – explicit (“Hautarzt Salzburg”, “Hautarzt Leipzig”, i.e. dermatologist plus city) or implicit (“Hautarzt” on a phone) – Google shows two kinds of results: at the top, the map with practices from the business profiles, below it the classic search results with websites. According to Google, local results are assessed mainly on three factors:
- Relevance: do your profile and website match what is being searched for?
- Distance: how close is your practice to the search location or to the person searching?
- Prominence: how well known is the practice – measured, for example, by reviews, links and mentions on the web?
You have no influence over distance, and according to Google you cannot buy a better position either. But you do have influence over relevance and prominence – and that is exactly what the following seven steps are about. They also apply to the AI answers in Google Search: according to Google, websites don’t need any special treatment for them, just the same basics as for regular search.
Get found more easily in 7 steps
Complete your Google Business Profile
The most precise primary category, opening hours including public holidays, photos, services and the link to your website. The step-by-step guide is in the guide to the Google profile.
Write meaningful page titles
The page title (title tag) is the blue headline in the search result. It should contain the service, location and practice name, e.g. “Physiotherapy in Graz-Lend – Praxis Muster” or “GP in Hamburg-Eimsbüttel – Praxis Dr. Muster”. Google shortens long titles; with around 50–60 characters you are usually on the safe side.
One page per important service
Instead of a single “Services” page, each important service gets its own page: “sports physiotherapy”, “lymphatic drainage”, “jaw joint”. That way Google can match each page to the right search. Which content belongs on each page is shown in the guide to the content of a practice website.
Name your location and surroundings
Mention the town, district or neighbourhood and landmarks naturally in the text – “in the 7th district, five minutes from the U3 Neubaugasse station” or “in Schwabing, two minutes from the Münchner Freiheit underground station”. No lists of 20 place names: to Google, that looks like spam.
The same contact details everywhere
Name, address and phone number (NAP for short) should be identical on your website, Google and all directories – right down to how the street is spelled. Which directories count in your country is shown in the table below.
Fast and mobile-friendly
Compressed images, few scripts, good hosting. Google’s free tool PageSpeed Insights shows whether your site is fast enough, using the Core Web Vitals: the largest piece of content should load within 2.5 seconds at most.
Add structured data
With structured data (schema.org), you tell Google in machine-readable form that your page is a medical, physiotherapy or psychotherapy practice, where it is located and when it is open. This is invisible to visitors but helps Google classify the page correctly.
| Austria | Germany | |
|---|---|---|
| Maps & search | Google Business Profile, Apple Maps, Bing Places | Google Business Profile, Apple Maps, Bing Places |
| Review portals | DocFinder | Jameda |
| Directories | Herold, doctor search of the Ärztekammern (medical chambers) | Das Örtliche, Gelbe Seiten, doctor search of the Kassenärztliche Vereinigungen (associations of statutory health insurance physicians) |
| Online booking | e.g. Doctolib, Latido | e.g. Doctolib |
Page title and description: your shop window on Google
The title and description determine whether someone clicks on your result. Good titles are specific, name the location and sound like a human wrote them, not like a list of keywords. The description (meta description) is not a ranking factor, but it is your chance to say in two sentences why your practice in particular is the right fit.
How to get it right
- “GP in Vienna-Mariahilf – Praxis Dr. Muster”
- “Psychotherapy for anxiety and depression in Linz | Mag. Muster”
- “Paediatric physiotherapy in Cologne-Nippes – Praxis Muster”
- A description with a benefit: “All health insurance funds, online appointments, accessible entrance.”
Better not
- “Startseite” or “Home”
- “Doctor Vienna doctor Mariahilf GP Vienna best doctor”
- The same title on every page
- Superlatives or promises of a cure in the title – advertising law speaks against them too
How your practice looks on Google
Enter a title and description and instantly see what your search result looks like on desktop and mobile – including pixel measurement to show whether anything gets cut off.
Health content: why trust counts with Google
For Google, health is one of the topics where wrong information can harm people. For such content, its ranking systems put particular weight on experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness – “E-E-A-T” in SEO jargon. For practices, that is an advantage: you have exactly what health advice portals often lack.
- Show who is writing: name, professional title and qualifications on specialist texts, linked to the team page.
- Write from your practice: concrete processes, typical questions from your patients, honest limits of a treatment.
- Keep texts up to date: a “last reviewed” date on medical content, remove outdated information.
- Link to reputable sources: professional societies, official health portals, clinical guidelines.
- Explain health insurance and costs: in Austria, patients want to know whether you are a Kassenärzt:in (with a health insurance contract) or a Wahlärzt:in (without one); in Germany, whether you treat people with statutory insurance or run a private practice.
Multilingual practices should offer each language at its own address (e.g. /en/ or /tr/) and link the versions to each other. Google expressly recommends separate URLs per language rather than switching via cookies or browser settings – otherwise it may not find the translations at all.
The 30-minute check for your practice
Take half an hour and check:
- Search for your most important service plus your location in a private browser window: where do you appear?
- Is your Google profile verified, with a primary category, opening hours and photos?
- Does every page of your website have its own meaningful title?
- Do important services have their own page?
- Are your name, address and phone number identical everywhere?
- Does the home page load on a phone in under three seconds?
- Is your website registered in the free Google Search Console? There you can see which search terms patients use to find you.
- Have you received new reviews in the last three months?
- Do your chamber, professional association, hospitals or partner practices link to your website?
What doesn’t help – or even does harm
- Bought links or reviews: they breach Google’s guidelines and are problematic under professional law for healthcare professions.
- Keyword stuffing: today, Google tends to rank texts written for machines rather than people lower.
- Several Google profiles for the same address to get more space on the map – only profiles for individual practitioners are allowed.
- Keywords in the practice name on Google (“Praxis Muster – Physiotherapie Graz billig”, i.e. “cheap physiotherapy Graz”): this can get your profile suspended.
- Promises of the top spot within a week: no one can guarantee results from serious SEO work.
And if you want to give things a boost with ads: Google Ads and social media advertising also fall under the advertising rules of your profession. What is allowed is covered in the guides for doctors in Austria and in Germany, for physiotherapy in Austria and in Germany, for psychology in Austria and in Germany, and for psychotherapy in Austria and in Germany.
Would you rather not take care of this yourself? Our websites already come with page titles, structured data and fast loading times – and with the local SEO add-on, we look after your Google profile on an ongoing basis. You will find all modules under Add-ons.
Sources
- Google – Tips to improve your local ranking
- Google Search Central – Title links in search results
- Google Search Central – Structured data for local businesses
- Google Search Central – Creating helpful, reliable content (E-E-A-T)
- Google Search Central – AI features and your website
- Google Search Central – Managing multilingual websites
- Google PageSpeed Insights
