How we ranked a psychologist above Doctoralia and Top Doctors in her city
A psychologist with a local practice needed to attract patients from her city, but Google’s top positions were held by Doctoralia, Top Doctors and other aggregators with enormous domain authority. The strategy: build a strong entity + E-E-A-T + local SEO until she ranked above those platforms on her main queries.
The challenge
Local SERPs in the psychology sector are dominated by aggregators. Any search along the lines of “psychologist + [city]” or “psychologist + [speciality]” returns Doctoralia, Top Doctors and similar sites first. The client:
- Needed real local patients,not national impressions.
- Had no domain authoritycomparable to the aggregators.
- Did have something the aggregators don’t:a real professional identity, verifiable qualifications and a presence on serious platforms in the sector.
How we approached it
The strategy worked on two fronts at once: building entity and personal authority (E-E-A-T) plus local SEO targeting the head keyword and her services.
Entity and E-E-A-T building
Registration on serious platforms in the psychology sector, correlation with sites Google uses as entity signals, a consistent professional profile (qualifications, professional body, speciality) and Person + medicalSpecialty structured data.
Local SEO
A complete, optimised Google Business Profile, consistent NAP across local directories, a geo-targeted landing page on the site with clear location signals, and LocalBusiness + MedicalBusiness schema.
Reinforcing the head keyword and services
Targeting the head keyword (psychologist + city) and the primary and secondary services (individual therapy, couples therapy, etc.) with dedicated landing pages, topic clusters and well-planned internal linking.
On top of that: a solid technical foundation (crawling, indexing, Core Web Vitals), an initial audit, keyword research, competitor analysis and opportunity benchmarking, thorough monitoring, and contextual backlinks in relevant sector media and portals.
Visual results
Organic traffic and ranking keyword growth over the course of the project (Ahrefs screenshots, client brand anonymised):
After almost a year at flat levels (~500 visits/month), the project accelerates sharply to nearly 11,500 organic visits a month. Ranking keywords reach ~7,000, and here’s what matters: those in the top 20 go from almost zero to ~2,500-3,000 — the ones putting the psychologist above Doctoralia and Top Doctors in her city.
What we achieved
- Local #1 above Doctoralia and Top Doctors.Ranked first in the client’s city for her main keyword, above the major healthcare aggregators.
- A consolidated entity in Google.Recognition as a professional entity with converging signals across the website, GBP, sector platforms and external citations.
- Steady local acquisition.SEO established as a stable source of local patients, reducing dependence on paid campaigns.
Shall we talk about your project?
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