01Who finds a clinic on Google, and what they see first
Someone with a sick or injured pet searches for a service and a place, and some of those searches happen on a Sunday or late in the evening. The first thing they see is not your website. It is the profile: name, rating, hours, phone number. Google says local ranking rests on relevance, distance and prominence: how well a profile matches the search, how far the business is from the person, and how well known it is. A clinic cannot move its building, so distance stays fixed. Relevance and prominence are yours: complete and accurate information, photos, replies to reviews. Google also says there is no way to request or pay for a better local ranking, so anyone selling you a guaranteed position is selling something Google says cannot be bought.
- Distance is fixed, so do not chase it
- Relevance: a complete, accurate profile and pages that name what you treat
- Prominence: reviews and being known, which take months to build
- No position can be requested or paid for
02After hours: say the same true thing everywhere
Whether the clinic takes emergencies or not, a worried owner needs to know within seconds. Google asks for your regular customer-facing hours and lets you set special hours for particular days, such as holidays. Its own example of 24-hour opening is a coffee shop that really is open all day and night, so mark the profile open 24 hours only if a vet is on site around the clock. If the clinic works with an on-call vet by phone, or sends night cases elsewhere, keep the regular hours in the field and state the arrangement in plain words on the website and in the profile description. Google also asks for a phone number that connects to your location, and a local number rather than a call-centre line where possible. A night number nobody answers does more harm than no number. What counts as an emergency, and what an owner is told, is for the vet to decide. The website only says how to reach you and whom to call when you are closed.
- Regular hours in the hours field, special hours for holidays
- 'Open 24 hours' only if a vet is really there around the clock
- On call or referring night cases: one plain sentence on the site and in the profile saying which
- A phone number that reaches the clinic, never one that rings out
- Emergency criteria and instructions written by the vet, not by us
03A page per species and per service, only for what the vets treat
Owners search for the animal and the job: a cat vaccination, a dog dental clean, a check-up for a rabbit. One 'Services' page cannot answer all of them. Google's SEO guide says a good title is unique to the page, clear and concise, and accurately describes it. So give each species you treat and each main service its own page: what the visit involves, how to book, which vet sees it, and a price or a 'from' price if the clinic publishes prices. List exotic species only if someone on the team really treats them. If you want to publish advice on symptoms or care, the vet writes it and signs it, because a web page is not a diagnosis. On the technical side, schema.org has a type called VeterinaryCare, described as a vet's office, which tells machines what the site is. Google says it does not guarantee that any feature using structured data will appear.
- Dogs, cats and any other species the clinic really treats: one page each
- Vaccination, dental, surgery, imaging, lab: the services you really offer
- On each: the vet, how to book, what to bring, and a price or 'from' price if you publish them
- Health advice written and signed by the vet, never by whoever builds the site
- Nothing about species nobody on the team treats
04Reviews: ask at the end of the visit, and reply without discussing the case
Ask at the desk, without pressure, once the owner has seen how the animal was looked after, with a Google link or a QR code on the receipt or a card at reception. Google says you can ask customers to visit a Google link or scan a QR code. It also says offering free or discounted goods or services in exchange for reviews is strictly prohibited, which rules out the free check-up for five stars. We would ask every owner the same way, not only the ones who left smiling, and the vet or the manager decides when not to ask, for example after an owner has lost a pet. Replies are public. Thank people, answer the question if there is one, and keep the animal's treatment and the owner's details out of it. A harsh review gets a calm reply and an offer to talk by phone.
- Ask at the desk, with the same link or QR code for every owner
- No free check-up, discount or gift in exchange for a review
- The vet or manager decides when not to ask, such as after a loss
- Replies: thank, answer, move the detail to a phone call, no treatment details in public
05Where PROOF48 is the wrong choice for a veterinary clinic
None of the eight builds at /work is a veterinary clinic, and we have not run SEO for one. FOUND, at 297 EUR a month, includes Google Business Profile management, local SEO for 5 target keywords, 2 AI blog posts a month in your voice, schema, a monthly ranking report, and competitor and review monitoring. It fits one clinic in one location. Five keywords will not cover every species and service, so pick the five that matter most; your vets know which. It is the wrong choice if you need new clients this week, because search builds over months and paid ads are faster (ad management is in GROWTH, at 1,497 EUR a month plus ad spend). It is also wrong if emergencies arrive by phone and you want someone to pick up, because none of our plans answers calls. A group of clinics across several locations needs a conversation about scope, and we publish no price for it. With no website yet, the site comes first: up to about five pages, 500 to 2,500 EUR, built in 48 hours and paid for only after the preview. A page for every species and service goes past five pages and is scoped separately, and we give you the number before we build.
- No veterinary clinic among our eight published builds
- FOUND covers 5 target keywords: pick the five that matter most
- Need clients this week: ads first, search later
- Emergencies arrive by phone: our plans do not answer calls
- Posts that touch on pet health need a vet's review before they go live, whoever writes them
Not a clinic: a salon with a page per service and a line of landmarks
None of our eight builds is a veterinary clinic. The closest is SCP Shine & Style, a salon with a street address in Sector 3, Bucharest. It already had a badly built site, so we rebuilt it and redirected every old WordPress URL so nothing already indexed broke. Each service got its own page with its own copy and media, and every page carries a landmarks line for local search around Dristor and Titan. For a clinic the same pattern is a page per species and per service, and a line naming the streets owners know. We do not publish the salon's revenue or booking counts, because we do not measure them, and we have no veterinary results to quote.
See the build: SCP Shine & StyleQuestions, answered
Can I put 'emergency' or 'non-stop' in the profile name?
Only if it is part of the name on your sign. Google's guidelines say the name should reflect your real-world name, as used consistently on the storefront and the website. Opening hours go in the hours field.
Should the profile say we are open 24 hours?
Only if a vet is really at the clinic around the clock. Otherwise list your regular hours, set special hours for holidays, and explain any on-call arrangement in plain words on the site.
Do I need a page for every species?
Only for the species your vets really treat. Each page should say what the visit involves and how to book, and its title should be unique to that page, as Google's SEO guide advises.
Can PROOF48 answer our emergency phone line?
No. None of our plans answers phone calls. A voice assistant is a custom build, and for emergencies the person answering should be yours.
How long before a clinic ranks better?
We promise no position and no date, and Google says nobody can pay for a better local ranking. Our SEO page says technical fixes reach Google within days, while content authority builds over quarters.
Where PROOF48 fits
SEO for a veterinary clinic rests on a profile with its real name, true hours and a phone that gets answered, a page for each species and service the vets really treat, and reviews asked of every owner with nothing offered in return. Nobody can promise a position. PROOF48's FOUND plan, at 297 EUR a month, covers the profile, schema and keyword work, and it is the wrong tool if you need clients this week.
Cosmin Tiu · Founder, PROOF48
Cosmin has worked in online marketing and software development since 2018, and has built with AI every day since January 2023. He still writes code from scratch daily, in Python, React, Rust and C#. PROOF48 ships business websites in 48 hours and invoices afterwards, so every opinion on this blog was paid for in real builds, not in theory.