Local SEO for Melbourne Clinics: The Google Business Profile Checklist
When someone in Brunswick searches "physio near me", Google shows a map with three clinics before it shows a single website. That box is the local pack, and for a clinic it matters more than almost anything else on the page. Getting into it has less to do with your website than most people think, and more to do with a free tool most clinics set up once and never touch again.
Where the local pack comes from
Google picks the three from Business Profiles, not websites, using roughly three things:
- Relevance. Does your profile say you do what they searched for? Categories, services and the description.
- Distance. How close you are to the searcher, or to the suburb they typed.
- Prominence. Reviews, how complete and active the profile is, and how consistently the rest of the web agrees about who and where you are.
You can't move your clinic. You can fix the other two.
Claim and verify
If you haven't claimed your profile, do that first. Search your clinic name, click "Own this business?", and follow the verification. Video verification is common now; Google may want a short walk-through showing your signage and premises.
While you're in there, make sure there is exactly one profile for your clinic. Duplicates, old profiles from a previous owner, and a separate profile for each practitioner all split your reviews and confuse Google.
Categories, services and attributes
- Primary category should be the most specific true option: "Physiotherapist", not "Medical clinic". It's the single strongest relevance signal.
- Secondary categories for other things you genuinely do. Don't stuff them.
- Services. List each one with a short description. This is where "dry needling" or "children's dentistry" gets you found for those searches.
- Attributes. Wheelchair access, online appointments, gender-neutral toilets. Fill in everything that's true.
- Hours. Keep them accurate, including public holidays. A profile that says you're open when you're closed loses trust fast, and Google notices when people report it.
Photos that get clicks
Profiles with real photos get more calls and direction requests than those without. Upload:
- The outside of the clinic, so people recognise it when they arrive
- Reception and a treatment room
- The team, with names in the captions if you're comfortable
- Your logo as the profile image and a good cover photo
Add a couple of new photos every month. Activity is a signal.
Reviews: asking properly, replying always
Reviews are the biggest prominence signal you control, and for registered health practitioners there's a rule to respect: you can ask for a review, but you can't ask patients to talk about clinical outcomes, and you shouldn't republish clinical reviews on your own site. Our AHPRA checklist covers the detail.
What works:
- Ask at the right moment, usually at checkout after a good visit, with a card or SMS containing your review link
- Ask everyone, not just the happy ones you're sure of
- Reply to every review, good and bad, within a few days. Replies show up publicly and tell Google the profile is alive.
What doesn't: buying reviews, review gating (only asking people you've pre-screened), or asking staff and family. Google is good at spotting all three.
Your website's job
The website supports the profile rather than the other way round:
- NAP consistency. Name, address and phone number identical everywhere: profile, website footer, directories, Facebook. "St" versus "Street" matters less than it used to, but get it the same anyway.
- LocalBusiness schema. Structured data on your site that states your name, address, hours and category in a form Google can read without guessing. Every website we build ships with it.
- A page per location if you have more than one clinic, each with its own address, hours and profile link.
- Suburb mentions in natural copy. "Serving Brunswick, Coburg and Fitzroy North" on the homepage helps for those suburb searches. A separate page per suburb only makes sense once the profile is strong.
- Speed. A slow site hurts the profile's conversion even if it doesn't hurt the ranking.
Harbour Orthodontics is a good example of the website side done right: a clear location, structured data, and consultation booking parents could use after hours. Consult requests rose 47% after the rebuild.
The fifteen-minute monthly routine
Put it in the calendar:
- Reply to any reviews you missed
- Add two or three new photos
- Post one update: a new service, a team member, a seasonal reminder
- Check hours are right for the coming month, especially public holidays
- Look at the profile's Insights: which searches found you, and how many calls and direction requests came through
- Search your clinic name and make sure no duplicate profile has appeared
That's it. Most clinics that rank in the local pack aren't doing anything clever. They're doing this, every month, while their competitors set the profile up once in 2019 and forgot.
If you'd like the website side sorted, from schema to speed to a suburb-aware homepage, our allied health and dental pages explain how we approach clinic sites.