Verify the search foundations your psychology practice can actually prove

This checklist is for solo psychologists, psychology group practices, and the staff or developers responsible for a practice website that is already live or being prepared for launch. It is designed for implementation, not diagnosis: each check should end with evidence you can save, a pass or fail decision, a severity, a named owner, a corrective action, and a validation result.

If you first need to identify what is broken, use the diagnostic overview in the SEO audit guide. Once the gaps are known, return here and convert each finding into a testable task rather than a vague recommendation.

Scope boundary: The checklist focuses on discoverability, local entity consistency, content usefulness, technical access, structured data, and privacy-aware publishing. It can support work on local search visibility and prospective-client discovery, but it does not establish legal or professional compliance and it does not promise rankings, inquiries, or clinical outcomes. Market competition, practitioner availability, genuine locations, website history, and the quality of existing information can all change what should be prioritized.

1. Verify the Google Business Profile. Evidence required: an owner or manager view of the profile plus the public listing. Pass: the profile represents the real practice or eligible practitioner, the public name and contact details match the business as operated, hours are current, and categories describe the actual service. Fail: ownership is unresolved, details conflict with the practice, or the profile represents a location that is not genuine. Severity: high for ownership or identity errors. Owner: practice administrator. Corrective action: verify access and reconcile business facts. Validation: compare the public profile with the practice website and operational records after changes publish.
2. Reconcile NAP and practitioner identity data. Evidence required: a comparison sheet covering the website, Google Business Profile, Psychology Today, TherapyDen, and any other profile the practice actively maintains. Pass: the practice name, genuine address where applicable, phone, practitioner names, and other core facts agree or have an explained reason to differ. Fail: stale addresses, disconnected numbers, duplicate identities, or inconsistent practitioner details remain live. Severity: medium to high depending on the conflict. Owner: practice administrator. Corrective action: update controlled profiles and document third-party corrections. Validation: re-check the public records rather than relying only on dashboard edits.
3. Audit LocalBusiness and ProfessionalService structured data. Evidence required: the rendered source or generated JSON-LD and the visible page facts it describes. Pass: the markup is syntactically valid, uses appropriate vocabulary, and does not assert credentials, locations, reviews, services, or relationships that the visible page cannot support. Fail: the markup conflicts with the page, invents facts, duplicates unrelated entities, or is technically invalid. Severity: medium. Owner: developer or SEO implementer. Corrective action: remove unsupported properties and align markup with visible facts. Validation: test the deployed page and inspect the final rendered markup.
4. Confirm HTTPS, mobile usability, and practical load behavior. Evidence required: browser checks across key templates plus PageSpeed Insights or equivalent diagnostics. Pass: important pages load over HTTPS without mixed-content failures, primary content and navigation work on mobile, and material performance problems have an owner. Fail: insecure resources, broken mobile interactions, inaccessible content, or unresolved performance failures block normal use. Severity: high when access or form use is impaired. Owner: developer. Corrective action: repair the technical cause rather than chasing a score in isolation. Validation: repeat the same tests on production.
5. Set up search measurement. Evidence required: verified Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools access, submitted or discovered site URLs, and a recorded baseline for indexing or crawl issues. Pass: the responsible owner can inspect coverage, queries, pages, and technical messages. Fail: nobody can access the properties or the properties represent the wrong host. Severity: medium. Owner: SEO lead or site owner. Corrective action: verify the correct properties and document ownership. Validation: confirm fresh data is arriving for the intended site.

A psychology practice should create or retain a dedicated service page only when the service is genuinely offered and the page can provide materially useful information. Do not manufacture thin location or modality pages just to create more search targets. A prospective client searching for trauma support or anxiety therapy in a real service area should reach a page that accurately explains the practice's offering, who provides it, logistical considerations, and how to contact the practice.

For each genuine specialty page, verify the following:

• Search-facing title and description. Evidence required: the page title, main heading, search snippet fields, and visible opening copy. Pass: they describe the actual service in natural language and use a location only when that location is genuine and useful. Fail: titles rely on jargon, overstate credentials, or target a place where the practice has no meaningful location-specific information. Severity: medium. Owner: content editor. Corrective action: rewrite around the real service and audience. Validation: inspect the rendered page and final metadata.
• Useful service explanation. Evidence required: the visible body copy and clinician or practice review notes. Pass: roughly 200-300 words or the amount genuinely needed to explain the service, appointment context, practitioner fit, limitations, and next steps without diagnosing the reader or promising outcomes. Fail: the page is generic, copied across services, clinically misleading, or too thin to answer basic decision questions. Severity: high for misleading health claims, otherwise medium. Owner: qualified content reviewer and editor. Corrective action: replace unsupported or generic claims with practice-specific, reviewable information. Validation: perform editorial and professional review before publication.
• Reader questions. Evidence required: 4-6 questions actually visible on the page and supported by practice policy or service information. Pass: answers are useful, accurate, non-promotional, and consistent with the rest of the page. Fail: answers conflict with booking, insurance, privacy, availability, or service information. Severity: medium. Owner: content editor with practice review. Corrective action: reconcile the answers with current policy. Validation: compare the live copy with operational information. FAQ content can help readers, but do not claim FAQPage markup can produce a Google FAQ rich result.
• Contact and scheduling path. Evidence required: working phone, contact, or booking actions tested on desktop and mobile. Pass: a prospective client can understand how to contact the practice without exposing unnecessary sensitive information. Fail: links break, the next step is hidden, or forms request information without an appropriate privacy and security review. Severity: high when contact is blocked or privacy risk is material. Owner: operations and developer. Corrective action: repair the path and review data collection. Validation: complete a safe test submission using non-sensitive test data.
• Insurance, fees, and availability statements. Evidence required: current practice policy and the live page. Pass: published statements match current operations and clearly distinguish what is accepted, reimbursable, estimated, or subject to confirmation. Fail: stale or absolute statements could mislead prospective clients. Severity: medium to high. Owner: practice administrator. Corrective action: update the copy from current policy. Validation: compare the live page with the source-of-truth policy.

The goal is not to produce more pages. It is to make each real service page independently verifiable, useful, and safe to maintain.

Regulatory boundary: This checklist is educational and cannot determine whether HIPAA, state privacy law, psychology-board advertising rules, or another requirement applies to a specific practice or communication. The source text references 45 CFR §164, but this page does not contain the supporting legal source URL, so that citation should be reconciled by responsible legal or compliance reviewers before it is relied on.

Testimonials. Evidence required: the exact testimonial, the documented basis for permission or authorization where required, the publication context, and the practice's applicable privacy review. Pass: a qualified reviewer confirms the publication is permitted and the public wording does not disclose information beyond what is authorized. Fail: the practice cannot document the basis for publication, or the testimonial exposes sensitive information that should not be public. Severity: critical where protected or confidential information may be disclosed. Owner: practice privacy or compliance lead with legal review as needed. Corrective action: do not publish, or remove the content until the required review and documentation are complete. Validation: record the approval decision and re-check the final public version.

A statement such as "I felt listened to" can still identify someone as connected with a psychology practice depending on context, so wording alone should never be treated as a universal compliance test. Likewise, a statement describing depression for 10 years can reveal highly sensitive information and requires more than an SEO editor's judgment.

For review responses: Evidence required: the proposed reply and the public review thread. Pass: the response is neutral, does not confirm that the reviewer is or was a patient, does not discuss care, and follows the practice's approved response policy. Fail: the reply confirms a relationship, references a condition, disputes treatment facts, or invites sensitive details into a public channel. Severity: high. Owner: trained practice administrator. Corrective action: replace the reply with an approved neutral response or do not respond. Validation: have the designated reviewer approve the final text before posting.

Review solicitation: ask eligible people consistently for honest feedback when the practice's legal and professional reviewers approve doing so. Do not offer incentives, discourage negative feedback, select only satisfied people, or use review gating. Validation: audit the request process and templates for consistent eligibility criteria.

Forms and tracking: Evidence required: the fields collected, transmission path, storage destination, analytics and advertising tags, vendor agreements where applicable, and retention settings. Pass: responsible reviewers have approved the data flow for the practice's obligations and the site collects no more sensitive information than operationally necessary. Fail: unknown third parties receive sensitive fields, access is uncontrolled, or nobody can explain the data flow. Severity: critical. Owner: privacy lead and developer. Corrective action: suspend or redesign the data flow until reviewed. Validation: repeat a non-sensitive test and inspect actual network and storage behavior.

Prospective clients may search by a problem they want help with, by a therapy approach, or by a local need. The SEO task is to map those searches to services the practice genuinely offers, not to force every phrase into a page.

Keyword targeting checklist:

• Prioritize actual specialties. Evidence required: service records and clinician-approved website scope for the top 3-5 specialties being promoted. Pass: every target corresponds to a real, current service and appropriate practitioner context. Fail: a keyword is targeted only because it has volume. Severity: high for misleading clinical scope. Owner: practice lead and SEO editor. Corrective action: remove or reframe unsupported targets. Validation: compare the target map with current service availability.
• Map one primary intent to each useful page. Evidence required: the keyword-to-URL map and the live pages. Pass: pages have distinct purposes and are not near-duplicates created for nominal markets. Fail: multiple pages compete for the same intent or location pages contain no genuine location-specific value. Severity: medium. Owner: SEO lead. Corrective action: consolidate, redirect, or rewrite based on real service and location differences. Validation: re-crawl the final URL set and review internal links.
• Use observed query data. Evidence required: Google Search Console query and page reports. Pass: optimization decisions are based on relevant impressions, clicks, page context, and business fit rather than volume alone. Fail: unrelated or clinically inappropriate queries are being chased. Severity: medium. Owner: SEO analyst. Corrective action: update the map and page emphasis. Validation: monitor the same page-query pairs after re-crawl.
• Check title, H1, and opening copy together. Evidence required: rendered page elements. Pass: they describe the same real service and genuine location context in natural language. Fail: they conflict, repeat keywords mechanically, or imply qualifications the practitioner does not hold. Severity: medium to high. Owner: editor. Corrective action: rewrite for consistency and accuracy. Validation: inspect the live HTML after deployment.
• Reject keyword stuffing. Evidence required: editorial review of the final page. Pass: terminology is readable, specific, and clinically reviewed where necessary. Fail: awkward repetition degrades meaning or suggests services beyond scope. Severity: medium. Owner: editor. Corrective action: remove repetition and restore plain language. Validation: final human review.

The source previously described local plus therapy-type pages as consistently outperforming generic terms, but no supporting source URL is included here. Treat that as a historical operating observation requiring source reconciliation, not as a verified causal rule or ranking guarantee.

Structured data is a machine-readable description of page entities and content. It should mirror visible, supportable information. It is not a substitute for useful content, and adding markup does not guarantee rankings, rich results, local visibility, or inclusion in Google AI Overviews or other Google AI features.

1. LocalBusiness + ProfessionalService

Evidence required: the generated markup, the visible contact and practice information, and the source-of-truth business records. Pass: the type and properties accurately describe the real practice or practitioner context. Fail: the markup invents a location, service, credential, review, or relationship. Severity: high for false professional claims, otherwise medium. Owner: developer and practice reviewer. Corrective action: remove unsupported properties. Validation: inspect the rendered source and re-test the deployed page.

<script type="application/ld+json"> { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "ProfessionalService", "name": "Your Practice Name", "address": { "@type": "PostalAddress", "streetAddress": "123 Main St", "addressLocality": "Portland", "addressRegion": "OR", "postalCode": "97201" }, "telephone": "+15035551234", "areaServed": "Portland, OR", "credential": "Licensed Clinical Psychologist, Oregon Board #12345", "availableService": "Anxiety Therapy, Trauma Therapy, Depression Treatment" } </script>

2. FAQ Schema

If a page visibly answers 4-6 useful reader questions, the content itself may be valuable. Evidence required: visible questions and answers plus any corresponding markup. Pass: the markup matches the visible text and current structured-data guidance. Fail: hidden, contradictory, or unsupported FAQ content is marked up. Severity: low to medium. Owner: developer and editor. Corrective action: align or remove the markup. Validation: compare rendered copy with JSON-LD. FAQ content may help readers, but do not claim FAQPage markup can earn a Google FAQ rich result.

3. Review/AggregateRating Schema

Evidence required: the exact visible review content, rating source, eligibility under current search documentation, and corresponding markup. Pass: a responsible implementer has confirmed that the page and entity qualify and that every marked-up value is visible and supportable. Fail: ratings are copied from another platform without an appropriate basis, self-serving review markup is used where not eligible, or the values do not match visible content. Severity: medium to high. Owner: SEO implementer and reviewer. Corrective action: remove unsupported review properties. Validation: test the final page and inspect any search enhancement separately from ranking performance.

Implementation: If code is managed directly, add JSON-LD only after the source facts are approved. If a plugin such as Yoast SEO or Rank Math generates markup, inspect its output rather than assuming defaults are correct. Use Google's Rich Results Test where applicable for syntax and eligibility checks, while remembering that a passing test is not a visibility guarantee.

If you only have 5 hours this week, use the time to close verifiable gaps rather than publish more pages:

1. Verify the Google Business Profile. (30 minutes) Review ownership, public name, genuine address or service configuration, phone, hours, categories, practitioner context, and the evidence supporting each field. Use google.com/business to access the profile. Review 5-10 existing photos for accuracy and privacy before keeping or replacing them. Pass: public details match the practice. Owner: administrator. Validation: compare the public profile with the website after edits appear.
2. Reconcile public identity data. (45 minutes) Compare the website with active profiles on Psychology Today, TherapyDen, Healthgrades, and other maintained directories. Pass: core business and practitioner facts are current or differences are intentional and documented. Owner: administrator. Validation: re-open the public profiles after changes publish.
3. Repair one important service page. (2 hours) Select a genuine service that matters to the practice. Review 250-350 words or the amount needed to explain the service accurately, remove unsupported outcome claims, clarify practitioner and location context, test the contact path, and add 3-4 useful reader questions only if the practice can answer them accurately. Pass: the page is specific, supportable, useful, and operationally current. Owner: editor with practice review. Validation: inspect the live page on desktop and mobile.
4. Verify credential and practitioner statements. (30 minutes) Compare homepage and About-page claims with current licensure or professional records maintained by the practice. Do not publish a license number, specialty, certification, or board claim merely because it appears in an old draft. Pass: every public claim is current and supportable. Owner: practice lead. Validation: retain the source used for review.
5. Confirm Search Console access and baseline issues. (15 minutes) Verify the intended property, inspect indexing and page reports, and record the issues that require action. Pass: the responsible owner can see current data for the correct site. Owner: SEO lead. Validation: confirm new data continues to arrive after the setup change.