Audit what your treatment center can prove, fix, and validate

This 47-point checklist is for admissions leaders, marketing teams, operators, editors, developers, and agencies responsible for a rehab center website. Use it when launching a site, reviewing an established organic program, or recovering from poor SEO work. Each checkpoint should produce a saved evidence artifact, a pass or fail decision, a severity, an owner, a corrective action, and a validation result so the audit becomes an implementation queue rather than a list of opinions.

The checklist assumes the facility can verify its real programs, locations, public contact details, staff information, licensing or accreditation statements, and operational policies. Where information cannot be supported, the SEO task is to remove, qualify, or route the claim for review instead of optimizing it more aggressively.

Boundary: These 47 checks are educational and cannot guarantee compliance. Responsible legal, medical, or regulatory reviewers remain required for privacy, advertising, licensure, testimonial, data-handling, and clinical-content questions that fall within their remit.

Technical checks establish whether search systems and prospective patients can reliably reach, render, understand, and use the site. Complete these before treating content volume as the primary problem.

Core technical checklist

• Site speed on mobile and desktop. Evidence required: PageSpeed Insights results plus direct tests on the homepage, a treatment page, a location page, and the main contact path. Pass: key pages remain usable while loading and serious performance diagnostics have an assigned remediation. A score of 75 can be retained as the source's operating reference, not as a ranking guarantee. Fail: users cannot reach essential content or submit an inquiry because performance failures interrupt normal use. Severity: high when access is impaired, otherwise medium. Owner: developer. Corrective action: optimize the actual bottleneck, such as oversized media, blocking scripts, cache configuration, or server response. Validation: repeat the same production tests after deployment.
• Mobile responsiveness. Evidence required: manual checks across representative phone widths and the live forms, buttons, menus, accordions, and phone actions. Pass: content is readable and every essential action works without horizontal scrolling or hidden controls. Fail: navigation, treatment information, or contact actions break on a mobile viewport. Severity: high when an admissions path is blocked. Owner: developer and QA reviewer. Corrective action: repair the affected template or component. Validation: retest the live site on multiple mobile browsers.
• HTTPS coverage. Evidence required: browser security checks and a crawl of canonical public URLs. Pass: public pages and contact paths load securely without mixed-content errors. Fail: insecure requests, certificate problems, or redirects expose an inconsistent protocol. Severity: critical for sensitive submission paths, otherwise high. Owner: developer or infrastructure owner. Corrective action: repair certificates, redirects, mixed resources, and canonical references. Validation: crawl again and test the live form path.
• XML sitemap. Evidence required: the generated sitemap and Google Search Console submission status. Pass: the sitemap contains canonical, intended-to-index public pages and excludes administrative, duplicate, or non-public URLs. Fail: important pages are absent or non-indexable and duplicate URLs are submitted. Severity: medium. Owner: SEO lead or developer. Corrective action: repair sitemap generation and resubmit. Validation: compare the refreshed sitemap with the intended indexable URL inventory.
• Robots directives. Evidence required: robots.txt, page-level robots directives, and crawler tests for priority templates. Pass: important public pages are crawlable and intentionally excluded areas are documented. Fail: treatment, location, staff, or contact pages are accidentally blocked, or sensitive non-public areas are exposed for crawling. Severity: high for accidental blocking or exposure. Owner: developer and SEO lead. Corrective action: correct the directive at its source. Validation: retest representative URLs with the deployed configuration.
• Structured data alignment with schema.org vocabulary. Evidence required: rendered JSON-LD or equivalent markup and the visible facts it describes. Pass: entity type, name, address, phone, services, staff, credentials, and other properties are present only when the page supports them. Fail: markup invents accreditations, outcomes, services, ratings, locations, or relationships. Severity: high for false health or credential claims, otherwise medium. Owner: developer and content reviewer. Corrective action: remove unsupported properties and align the markup with visible facts. Validation: inspect the rendered production markup and current search testing tools.
• Core Web Vitals diagnostics. Evidence required: field or lab diagnostics for key templates and a record of material issues. Pass: the team can identify whether loading, responsiveness, or visual stability problems affect important pages and has owners for material defects. Fail: repeated usability problems are ignored because a single aggregate score looks acceptable. Severity: medium to high depending on user impact. Owner: developer. Corrective action: fix the component causing the problem rather than optimizing a metric in isolation. Validation: compare post-change field and lab behavior.
• International or language targeting. Evidence required: the actual language or country variants, canonical tags, and hreflang implementation where relevant. Pass: hreflang is used only for genuine alternate language or regional versions and points to valid reciprocal pages. Fail: it is used merely because a facility markets across states, or tags point to duplicates and invalid destinations. Severity: medium. Owner: SEO lead and developer. Corrective action: remove unnecessary annotations or rebuild the alternate set correctly. Validation: crawl the final annotations and inspect indexable alternates.
• Internal linking. Evidence required: a crawl showing links among relevant program, condition, location, staff, resource, and contact pages. Pass: important pages receive descriptive links from contextually related pages without implying services the facility does not offer. Fail: orphaned pages, generic anchors, or misleading clinical relationships distort the site structure. Severity: medium. Owner: SEO editor. Corrective action: add or revise links based on real user journeys and content relationships. Validation: recrawl and inspect priority paths.
• Duplicate URL control. Evidence required: crawler exports, canonical tags, redirect rules, and host or protocol variants. Pass: materially duplicate versions resolve to the intended canonical URL. Fail: tracking parameters, host variants, or copied location pages remain indexable without a clear reason. Severity: medium. Owner: developer and SEO lead. Corrective action: consolidate, canonicalize, redirect, or remove duplicates based on their purpose. Validation: recrawl the affected patterns.
• Crawl and indexing errors. Evidence required: Google Search Console page reports plus a crawler export. Pass: intended pages return the expected status and known exclusions are documented. Fail: important URLs return 404, redirects form chains, or soft 404 behavior leaves search systems without a reliable destination. Severity: high when core treatment or contact pages are affected. Owner: SEO lead and developer. Corrective action: restore, redirect, or deliberately retire each affected URL. Validation: verify the response and re-check the live indexation signal after recrawl.

On-page checks determine whether each treatment, program, location, staff, and informational page accurately answers the searcher's decision need. The objective is not to maximize keyword repetition; it is to make each page specific, supportable, navigable, and consistent with current facility operations.

Content and metadata checklist

• Title tag relevance. Evidence required: the target query, title tag, main heading, and visible service evidence. Pass: the title describes a real program or useful local page and can remain concise enough for practical search display; the source's 50-60 character range is an editorial reference, not a rule. Fail: the title targets a service or market the facility cannot support. Severity: medium to high. Owner: SEO editor. Corrective action: rewrite around the real page purpose. Validation: inspect the rendered title after deployment.
• Meta description usefulness. Evidence required: current snippet copy and page content. Pass: the description accurately summarizes the page and sets a reasonable next step; the source's 120-155 character range can guide editing but does not control search display. Fail: the text promises outcomes, misstates services, or is duplicated across unrelated pages. Severity: medium. Owner: editor. Corrective action: rewrite from the live page facts. Validation: check deployed metadata and page consistency.
• H1 alignment. Evidence required: the visible main heading and page intent. Pass: the main heading clearly describes the real topic without stuffing. Fail: the heading is missing, duplicated as conflicting main headings, or implies a program the center does not provide. Severity: medium. Owner: editor or developer. Corrective action: align the main heading with the page purpose. Validation: inspect the rendered document outline.
• H2 and H3 hierarchy. Evidence required: the page outline. Pass: H2 sections organize major decision topics and H3 subtopics sit beneath the relevant parent without being used only for visual styling. Fail: headings skip logic or repeat keywords mechanically. Severity: low to medium. Owner: editor. Corrective action: rebuild the outline around user questions and program details. Validation: review the rendered hierarchy.
• Natural term coverage. Evidence required: the opening copy, headings, body, and search-query evidence. Pass: the primary topic is clear in the first 100 words where natural and related terminology reflects the actual program. The source's 1-2% density range is an historical editorial heuristic, not an optimization requirement. Fail: repetition makes the copy unnatural or broadens claims beyond the facility's scope. Severity: medium. Owner: editor with clinical review where needed. Corrective action: remove forced repetition and clarify the service. Validation: human review plus query-to-page comparison.
• Content depth. Evidence required: competing result review, the page's decision requirements, and facility-specific source material. Pass: the page contains the information a prospective patient or family needs without padding. The source previously used 1,500-2,500 words as a competitive treatment-page reference; because no supporting source URL is present, treat that range as historical context requiring reconciliation, not a ranking threshold. Fail: the page is thin, duplicated, padded, or clinically unsupported. Severity: high for misleading treatment content, otherwise medium. Owner: editor and qualified reviewer. Corrective action: add only supportable, decision-useful information. Validation: editorial and subject-matter review of the live page.
• Internal anchor text. Evidence required: links into and out of the page. Pass: anchors describe the destination naturally and match real relationships among programs, locations, clinicians, and resources. Fail: anchors are generic, misleading, or over-optimized. Severity: medium. Owner: SEO editor. Corrective action: rewrite anchors and remove irrelevant links. Validation: recrawl and inspect user-facing link context.
• Image alternative text. Evidence required: meaningful images and their alt attributes. Pass: informative images have concise descriptions that serve accessibility and match the image; decorative images are handled appropriately. Fail: alt text is missing where needed, stuffed with search phrases, or describes events and people not shown. Severity: medium. Owner: editor or developer. Corrective action: write accurate descriptions from the actual asset. Validation: inspect the rendered page and accessibility tree.
• Mobile readability. Evidence required: live mobile review of treatment and informational templates. Pass: paragraphs, lists, headings, tables, and calls to action are easy to scan; the source's 2-3 sentence paragraph reference can be used as an editing cue rather than a rigid rule. Fail: dense formatting hides important eligibility, logistics, risk, or contact information. Severity: medium. Owner: editor and designer. Corrective action: restructure the page for readable decision-making. Validation: retest representative mobile views.
• Call-to-action clarity. Evidence required: visible phone, inquiry, insurance-verification, or other approved contact paths and their destination behavior. Pass: the next step is understandable, works on mobile, and does not pressure the user with unsupported urgency or outcome claims. Fail: calls to action are broken, misleading, or ask for unnecessary sensitive information. Severity: high when contact is blocked or privacy risk is material. Owner: operations, compliance reviewer, and developer. Corrective action: repair the path and revise the copy. Validation: test with non-sensitive dummy data.
• Testimonials and outcome-related markup. Evidence required: the visible statement, its source, permission or authorization basis where applicable, substantiation for any objective claim, and the corresponding markup. Pass: responsible reviewers approve the public content and the markup does not add facts not visible on the page. Fail: unverified recovery-rate claims, self-serving ratings, or unsupported testimonial properties are published. Severity: critical for unsupported health or privacy-sensitive claims. Owner: compliance or legal reviewer with developer support. Corrective action: remove or revise unsupported content and markup. Validation: compare approved evidence, live copy, and rendered structured data.
• Outbound authority references. Evidence required: each external reference and the statement it supports. Pass: links go to appropriate primary or authoritative resources such as relevant government, research, licensing, or accrediting sources and directly support the surrounding claim. Fail: citations are promotional, outdated, irrelevant, or presented as proof they do not provide. Severity: medium to high for medical claims. Owner: editor and qualified reviewer. Corrective action: replace weak references or qualify the claim. Validation: open every cited source and verify claim support.
• Content freshness. Evidence required: page revision history and current facility source material. Pass: updates occur when programs, staff, policies, research references, insurance information, or regulations materially change. Fail: the page is changed merely to refresh a date or contains stale operational facts. Severity: medium to high depending on the claim. Owner: content owner. Corrective action: reconcile the page with current source-of-truth information. Validation: retain review notes and inspect the live version.
• Readability and tone. Evidence required: final human review against the intended audience. Pass: the copy is clear, respectful, non-stigmatizing, and separates educational information from facility-specific claims. Fail: jargon, fear, unsupported certainty, or manipulative language obscures the user's decision. Severity: medium to high. Owner: editor and qualified reviewer. Corrective action: rewrite in plain, accurate language. Validation: final editorial review on the live page.
• FAQ content and markup. Evidence required: visible questions, approved answers, and any corresponding structured data. Pass: questions address real patient or family decisions and markup, if retained, matches visible content. Fail: answers conflict with facility policy or markup is hidden, unsupported, or treated as a guaranteed search feature. FAQ content can still help readers, but FAQPage markup should not be presented as a path to a Google FAQ rich result. Severity: low to high depending on the answer. Owner: editor and developer. Corrective action: reconcile the answer and markup. Validation: compare the live text, operational policy, and rendered structured data.

Local checks should establish whether a genuine treatment facility is represented accurately wherever prospective patients and families may encounter it. Do not create a location page or business profile for a nominal market that lacks a genuine eligible presence or useful location-specific information.

Google Business Profile and local checklist

• Google Business Profile ownership and eligibility. Evidence required: owner or manager access, the public profile, and operational proof for the location. Pass: the profile represents the real eligible facility and the team controls it. Fail: access is unresolved, the place is ineligible, or the profile represents a non-genuine location. Severity: high. Owner: facility administrator. Corrective action: resolve ownership or eligibility before optimization. Validation: compare the public profile with facility records.
• Name, address, and phone consistency. Evidence required: the website, business profile, active directories, and source-of-truth facility records. Pass: core facts agree or any differences have a documented operational reason. Fail: stale addresses, disconnected numbers, or conflicting facility names remain public. Severity: high for contact errors, otherwise medium. Owner: operations or local SEO owner. Corrective action: update controlled listings and document external correction requests. Validation: re-open the public records after changes publish.
• Business categories. Evidence required: selected profile categories and current service scope. Pass: categories describe the facility as it actually operates and do not overstate services. Fail: a category is chosen only to chase a query or implies care the center does not provide. Severity: medium to high. Owner: profile manager with operations review. Corrective action: select the closest accurate supported categories. Validation: inspect the public profile after publication.
• Service-area settings. Evidence required: the profile configuration and the real business model. Pass: settings reflect how the facility legitimately serves people and do not fabricate locations. Fail: service areas are used as substitutes for genuine locations or to imply local presence where none exists. Severity: medium. Owner: profile manager. Corrective action: align settings with actual operations. Validation: compare the public profile with the approved facility description.
• Profile updates. Evidence required: current profile fields, images, notices, and any optional posts the center chooses to maintain. Pass: public information is accurate, approved, and useful. Fail: stale or promotional updates contradict the website or operational reality. Severity: medium. Owner: profile manager. Corrective action: remove or update inaccurate material. Validation: review the live profile. Regular posting can be an operating practice, but should not be presented as an official or guaranteed ranking factor.
• Review request and response process. Evidence required: solicitation rules, templates, response policy, and a sample of public reviews. Pass: eligible customers are asked consistently for honest feedback without incentives, suppression of criticism, or review gating, and responses avoid confirming sensitive treatment relationships or discussing care. Fail: the process targets only satisfied people, pressures reviewers, or discloses sensitive information. Severity: critical for privacy-sensitive responses, otherwise high. Owner: compliance-approved operations owner. Corrective action: suspend problematic templates and implement an approved neutral process. Validation: audit future requests and responses. The source's reference to replying within 48 hours and its internal observation that facilities with 30+ verified reviews appeared 2-3 positions higher lack a supporting source URL here, so retain them only as historical context requiring source reconciliation, not as causal or guaranteed ranking guidance.
• SAMHSA listing accuracy. Evidence required: the public listing and facility source-of-truth information. Pass: services, languages, contact details, insurance information, and other published facts are current and supportable. Fail: the listing overstates services or contains stale contact information. Severity: high when patients could be misdirected. Owner: operations. Corrective action: submit corrections through the appropriate process. Validation: re-check the public listing after updates.
• Other directory profiles. Evidence required: profiles the center intentionally maintains, including Psychology Today or Healthgrades where applicable. Pass: modalities, staff, contact, and insurance statements match current facility facts. Fail: profiles are abandoned, duplicated, or inconsistent. Severity: medium. Owner: local SEO or operations owner. Corrective action: update, merge, or retire controlled listings where possible. Validation: inspect the live profile rather than relying only on dashboard status.
• Local structured data. Evidence required: rendered markup plus visible address, phone, hours, and service information. Pass: markup reflects a genuine location and visible supportable facts. Fail: it creates locations, hours, ratings, or services that the page does not support. Severity: high for false facility facts, otherwise medium. Owner: developer and local SEO reviewer. Corrective action: remove unsupported properties and align the entity description. Validation: inspect the live source and structured-data test results.
• Citation audit. Evidence required: an inventory of major public listings and their current values. Pass: duplicates and stale records are documented and corrected where the center has control. Fail: conflicting names, addresses, phones, or closure statuses remain unaddressed. Severity: medium to high. Owner: local SEO owner. Corrective action: prioritize the sources most likely to mislead patients or search systems. Validation: rerun the inventory after publication cycles complete.
• Location-specific pages. Evidence required: a genuine facility, unique operational details, local staff or contact information, and useful location-specific content. Pass: each location page helps a visitor evaluate that actual center. Fail: near-duplicate city pages exist only to target nominal markets. Severity: medium to high. Owner: content and operations. Corrective action: merge thin pages or rebuild them from real location evidence. Validation: review uniqueness, internal links, and canonical behavior.
• Mobile contact path. Evidence required: live phone and form tests from a mobile device using non-sensitive test data. Pass: the user can reach the intended admissions contact path and receives clear confirmation without unnecessary data collection. Fail: forms break, buttons fail, or sensitive information is routed to unreviewed systems. Severity: critical for privacy-sensitive data flow, otherwise high. Owner: operations, privacy reviewer, and developer. Corrective action: repair or suspend the affected path until reviewed. Validation: repeat the production test and inspect the resulting data flow.

Treatment-center SEO intersects with privacy, advertising, credentials, clinical content, and consumer-protection obligations. The SEO team's role is to surface evidence gaps and route them to the appropriate reviewer, not to declare regulated content compliant.

Compliance and authority checklist

• Privacy-sensitive form handling. Evidence required: fields collected, transmission path, storage destination, access controls, vendor involvement, analytics tags, and retention settings. Pass: responsible reviewers approve the data flow and the site collects only information that has a documented operational purpose. Fail: sensitive form data reaches unknown or unreviewed parties, encryption is absent where required, or nobody can explain the flow. Severity: critical. Owner: privacy or compliance lead with developer support. Corrective action: suspend or redesign the risky flow until approved. Validation: perform a non-sensitive test and inspect actual network and storage behavior.
• Testimonials and outcome claims. Evidence required: exact public wording, the underlying record or substantiation, authorization basis where applicable, and approval notes. Pass: claims are supportable, appropriately qualified, and approved for publication. Fail: success statements, patient stories, or comparative claims cannot be substantiated or expose information that should not be public. Severity: critical. Owner: legal or compliance reviewer and qualified clinical reviewer. Corrective action: remove or revise the statement. Validation: compare the live copy with the approved evidence.
• FTC-sensitive endorsement review. Evidence required: the endorsement, material-connection information, substantiation, and approved disclosure language where applicable. Pass: a responsible reviewer confirms the presentation is not deceptive and required disclosures are clear. Fail: the site implies typical results, hides a material connection, or publishes unsupported before-and-after style claims. Severity: critical. Owner: legal or compliance reviewer. Corrective action: remove, qualify, or disclose as directed by the reviewer. Validation: document approval of the final public version.
• LegitScript or other third-party certification claims. Evidence required: current certification status and the issuer's permitted display terms. Pass: the badge or statement is current, applicable, and used according to issuer rules. Fail: expired, inapplicable, or overstated certification is displayed. Severity: high. Owner: compliance or operations. Corrective action: update or remove the representation. Validation: verify status with the issuer. Certification can support user trust, but should not be presented as a guaranteed search-ranking benefit.
• Accreditation and licensing representations. Evidence required: current issuer records and the exact website claim. Pass: logos, names, status, locations, and scope match current documentation. Fail: an old, borrowed, or overly broad accreditation claim remains live. Severity: critical. Owner: compliance or operations. Corrective action: correct the wording or remove the badge. Validation: retain issuer evidence and re-check the live page.
• Privacy policy and retention disclosures. Evidence required: the published policy, actual data practices, vendor inventory, and retention process. Pass: qualified reviewers confirm the policy accurately reflects current collection, use, sharing, retention, and request handling. Fail: the policy is generic, stale, or contradicted by site behavior. Severity: critical. Owner: privacy or legal reviewer. Corrective action: reconcile policy and implementation. Validation: compare approved policy language with observed data flows.
• Terms and urgent-help boundaries. Evidence required: published terms, contact expectations, and facility-approved urgent or emergency guidance. Pass: users can distinguish ordinary website inquiries from urgent help and understand applicable site-use terms. Fail: the site implies immediate clinical response where that service is not actually provided. Severity: high. Owner: legal, clinical, and operations reviewers. Corrective action: align the language with real capabilities. Validation: review the live contact and footer experience.
• Regulatory and public-health resource references. Evidence required: the actual supporting sources and the surrounding claims. Pass: references to SAMHSA.gov, state licensing resources, NIDA, or other authorities are relevant and accurately characterized. Fail: a link is used as generic trust decoration or cited as proof of a claim it does not support. Severity: medium to high. Owner: editor and qualified reviewer. Corrective action: remove weak references or connect them to the specific claim they support. Validation: open and review each retained source.
• Staff credentials and bios. Evidence required: current employment or affiliation records, licensure or certification evidence, role scope, and approved biography. Pass: public credentials are current, verifiable, and presented in the correct facility context. Fail: expired credentials, unsupported specialties, or stale staff listings remain published. Severity: critical for professional misrepresentation. Owner: clinical or compliance reviewer and content owner. Corrective action: update or remove unsupported information. Validation: reconcile the live profile with the current source record.

Not all 47 findings deserve the same queue position. Rank each failed check by user harm or regulatory exposure first, then by whether it blocks crawling, contact, accurate facility representation, or the ability to validate later work.

Quick wins: address correctable metadata, internal links, profile fields, citation errors, and approved content clarifications after higher-risk failures are controlled. The source previously associated some quick wins with movement of 2-5 positions; no supporting source URL is present, so treat that figure as historical internal context requiring source reconciliation rather than a forecast or causal claim.

Foundational stage: resolve indexing access, performance bottlenecks, mobile usability, site architecture, content evidence, privacy-sensitive forms, and review or testimonial governance. The source's 4-6 week observation can be used as a past review window, not as a promise that rankings or inquiries will change within that period.

Competitive stage: improve distinctive program and location information, strengthen expert attribution, earn relevant citations or links through legitimate relationships, and expand only where the facility has real evidence to support the page. The source's 3-4 month window describes a historical review stage, not an expected outcome date.

Longer-horizon stage: reassess market coverage, authority signals, content maintenance, and multi-location consistency after foundational defects are stable. The source's 6+ month observation should remain a planning horizon only; competition, site history, facility changes, and search-system updates can alter timing.

Assign ownership and evidence. Every failed check should have a named owner, severity, saved proof, corrective action, and validation method. Split responsibility across technical, editorial, local, operations, clinical, privacy, and compliance roles as appropriate rather than asking one marketer to approve every issue.

Create a change log. Record the affected URL or profile, the evidence reviewed, what changed, who approved it, and how the live result will be tested. Keep the checklist as a maintained operating record instead of treating completion as permanent.

Validate before expanding. For material page or template changes, use a controlled review window of 2-4 weeks to confirm crawling, indexing, public profile accuracy, technical behavior, and attributable contact-path data before assuming the change worked. This is a validation stage, not a guaranteed SEO result timeline.

Escalate high-risk findings. Unsupported treatment claims, credential errors, sensitive data flows, testimonial concerns, or unclear regulatory obligations should be routed to the responsible professional reviewer before the SEO team republishes or scales them.

Use the 47 findings to brief outside help. When specialist support is needed for migrations, crawl failures, analytics governance, complex structured data, privacy-sensitive integrations, or large-scale content remediation, provide the evidence, pass or fail condition, severity, owner, corrective action, and validation requirement so the scope is testable.