Module 9 · Be found, and keep it working

Be found: your name, your specialty, your city

Your site is live. In this lesson you’ll set it up to be found by the searches a small practice can actually win: your name, your specialty, your city. By the end you’ll have Search Console verified, a clear decision about a Google Business Profile, and your structured data checked.

Two kinds of search, and which one is yours

Someone typing “why can’t I stop worrying” is trying to understand what’s happening to them. Someone typing “anxiety therapist [your city]” has already decided to look for help and is choosing. These are different searches, and different websites win them.

Don’t take this on trust; check it in two minutes. Search a symptom phrase and then a specialty plus your city, and look at who comes back. When this course’s research ran that comparison once, the symptom search returned national publishers and no local practices, and the provider search returned mostly individual practice sites. One search is an illustration, not a study, which is why it’s worth running yourself.

The searches you can win

• Specialty plus city: “perinatal anxiety therapist [city].”
• Who you work with plus city: “therapist for first responders [state].”
• Insurance plus city, if you’re in-network: the insurer’s name written in plain text on your fees page.
• Your own name. A directory listing, a colleague’s referral and a word-of-mouth recommendation all end the same way: when a directory does its job, the very next search is your name. What that search returns is entirely yours to control.

Google Business Profile: only if you have a real office

A Google Business Profile is the free listing that can put a practice on the map in Google’s results. Google names three things that decide where it shows: relevance (how well the profile matches the search), distance (how far the practice is from the person searching) and prominence (how well known it is). Google also says there’s no way to pay for a better local ranking.

The catch is eligibility. Google’s rules require a physical location customers visit, or a business that travels to its customers. Find your row before you create anything.

If you have an office and you’re creating a profile:

• Go to google.com/business and sign in with your practice’s Workspace email, one you’ll keep.
• Search for your practice first. A listing may already exist for you to claim rather than duplicate.
• Use your real name or registered practice name, exactly. Never add a specialty or a city to the name.
• Phone and website: the same number and the same https://www. address as on your site.
• Hours that are true. Photos that are real: your office entrance, the room, your own headshot.
• Description and services: plain, first person, no outcome promises. It’s advertising copy like your site, so run it past the kit’s compliance-check skill before you publish it.

Whatever you decide, write it down so you don’t revisit it every few months. Ask Claude: “Add a line to site-map.md recording my Google Business Profile decision: [claimed / skipped because telehealth only / service-area with the address hidden], and today’s date.”

Search Console: tell Google the site exists

Search Console is Google’s free tool for site owners. It confirms Google can read your pages and shows which searches led people to them.

1. Go to search.google.com/search-console and sign in with your practice’s Workspace account.
2. Add your site and choose a verification method. Google offers several, and the labels change, so check what your screen says.
3. Hand the verification instruction to Claude with the prompt below.
4. Once verified, submit your sitemap, the list of your pages the kit built. It’s at https://www.yourpractice.com/sitemap.xml.
5. Come back once a month and open the Insights view: which pages people read and which searches found them. Look for errors, not a daily number.

I'm verifying my website in Google Search Console. Here is exactly what Google is asking me
to do: [paste the verification instruction from your screen, e.g. the HTML tag or file name].
Please add it to my site the way Google asks, save a snapshot and push it so the live site
updates, then tell me when to click Verify.

What to check: Claude tells you which file or page it changed and confirms the push. Wait a minute, then click Verify in Search Console. If Google says it can’t find the tag, reload your live site first to be sure the change is there.

The trust signals Google describes are boring and free

You’ll hear “E-E-A-T” from anyone selling therapist SEO. It stands for experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trust, and it comes from the guidelines Google gives the human reviewers who check its search quality. Google says plainly that E-E-A-T isn’t a ranking factor on its own, and there’s no score to raise. It also says health topics are held to a higher standard.

What Google’s guidelines describe as trustworthy is exactly what your site already has, if Module 4 went well: a named clinician, your license type and state, a real About page, a real way to reach you, and a byline that links to your bio. No physician reviewer, no special code, nothing to buy.

Structured data: the right label, and the ones to avoid

Structured data is a small block of hidden labels in your page’s code that tells search engines “this is a practice, here is its phone number.” The kit added one in Stage 3. This part checks it and links it to your directory profile.

Please check the MedicalBusiness structured-data block on my homepage against the
frontend-design skill:

1. Use the office shape if practice-profile.md says I have a public office address, or the
   telehealth shape if not. Fill it from practice-profile.md and site-map.md.
2. Make sure it has NO aggregateRating, review, medicalSpecialty or isAcceptingNewPatients,
   no FAQ markup, and that the type is MedicalBusiness, not Physician.
3. Add my Psychology Today profile URL to sameAs: [paste your own profile URL].
4. Check robots.txt allows OAI-SearchBot, and tell me in plain English whether it blocks any
   training crawlers (that's a separate decision I'll make).
5. Show me the finished block, then save a snapshot and push it.

What to check: the type reads MedicalBusiness, your directory profile link is in sameAs, there’s no rating or review in the block, and Claude confirms OAI-SearchBot is allowed. Then paste your live homepage address into Google’s Rich Results Test (search.google.com/test/rich-results). It checks the code’s format, not Google’s policies, which is why stars can pass it and still never show.

AI answer tools: about two hours, not twenty

You’ll be offered “AEO” or “AI SEO” packages. Google’s own documentation says there are no additional requirements and no special optimizations needed to appear in its AI features. What’s worth doing is short:

• Let the search crawler in. OpenAI says sites that block OAI-SearchBot won’t be shown in ChatGPT’s search answers. The prompt above checked it.
• Write clear pages with your real credentials on them. You did that in Modules 2 to 5.
• Be listed accurately in the directories you use. That’s the next lesson.
• Buy nothing sold as special AI optimization.

Watch this step

Search Console, explained by Google. The second video walks through setting up a Google Business Profile, filmed for businesses in general. It argues a physical location ranks better; if you work from home or only online, never publish a home address, and follow Google's own eligibility rules rather than a workaround. The channel sells local search services. It’s from an independent creator — credited below, so go give them a follow.

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