Somewhere on Fiverr right now, someone will build you 500 citations for £20. It sounds like a bargain. It is the wrong purchase, and if you buy it you will spend more money later undoing it than you spent buying it.
Here is what the right approach looks like instead. Kerry opened Arbor Clinic in Stroud after leaving a job as an associate practitioner. Four months later she had a 550% increase in new patients from Google, her weekly revenue had doubled, and she ranked number one for osteopath in her area. A citation build with consistent NAP was a big part of that.
This article covers the five steps in the order we do them for clients. Do them yourself, or use them to brief whoever runs your website.
Why directories nobody uses still decide your ranking
Patients rarely browse directories to find a clinic anymore. They search Google, or increasingly they ask ChatGPT or Gemini.
That does not make directories irrelevant. It changes who they are for.
Google and the AI engines use directory listings to verify that your clinic exists, is established, and (for regulated professions) is who it says it is. Each consistent listing is a vote of confidence, a small piece of evidence that your clinic is real and not a shell.
For a regulated clinician, that verification matters even more. A listing on your professional body’s directory tells Google you are qualified and current, not just present. It is one of the strongest signals a healthcare business can offer, and it costs you nothing but a form.
Think of it less as marketing and more as paperwork that happens to help your ranking. Nobody is choosing you because they found you on 192.com. Google is simply checking that the clinic it wants to rank actually exists where it says it does.
Step 1: Write your canonical NAP and never deviate from it
Before you build a single listing, write down one version of your Name, Address and Phone number. This is your canonical NAP. It should match your Google Business Profile and your website footer exactly.
Then use it character for character, everywhere, forever.
Not “Limited” on one listing and “Ltd” on another. Not “Road” here and “Rd” there. Google reads those as two different businesses until it can prove otherwise, and every inconsistency slows that proof down.
Here is a worked example for a fictional clinic:
Hertford Physio
14 Fore Street
Hertford
SG14 1BY
01992 123456Copy that block into a spreadsheet, a note, or wherever you will paste from. Every directory gets exactly this, with nothing rephrased.
Step 2: Build the three groups that matter (40 to 70 listings, not 500)
You need 40 to 70 quality citations. Not 500. Here is where they come from.
Group 1: core UK directories. Yell.com, Thomson Local, 192.com, FreeIndex, and review platforms like Trustpilot. These are free, and some of them feed sat navs, voice assistants and smaller directories automatically, so getting them right has knock-on value.
Group 2: professional and healthcare directories. This is the one clinic owners skip and shouldn’t. Physios list with CSP or Physio First, dentists with the GDC, aesthetics practitioners with Save Face or JCCP, psychiatrists with the Royal College of Psychiatrists, and GPs or clinics with their CQC provider listing. Doctify applies across most healthcare disciplines. One professional listing is worth ten generic ones.
Group 3: local. Your Chamber of Commerce, town business associations, community websites, and local magazine “best of” pages. These are smaller signals individually, but they anchor you to a specific place, which is exactly what local search is trying to establish.
Step 3: Steal your competitors’ citation list
You do not need to guess where to list your clinic. Your competitors have already told you.
Find the top three clinics in the map pack for your main keyword. Google their name and phone number together in quotation marks. The results are their citation profile, directory by directory.
Now read that list against your own. If a directory lists two or three of your competitors and does not list you, that is a gap, and it goes to the top of your build list. It is proof that particular directory carries weight for your exact market.
This one search usually takes ten minutes and does more for your priority list than any amount of guessing.
Step 4: Audit and fix what already exists
Before you build anything new, find out what is already out there. Run the same quoted search on your own name and phone number. Do it again with any old numbers or addresses if you have moved premises or rebranded.
Expect surprises. Listings you never created. Old addresses that still show up years after you moved. Dead phone numbers. Your clinic name misspelled by whoever entered it. A practitioner who left the clinic two years ago still listed as the main contact.
For each one, you have three moves: claim it, correct it to your canonical NAP, or remove it if it is a duplicate.
Fixing a bad citation is worth more than building a new one. A wrong address actively works against you. A missing listing is neutral. Clear the wrong ones first.
This step is unglamorous and it is easy to skip in favour of building shiny new listings. Resist that urge. A clinic with 30 correct citations will consistently outrank one with 80 that includes a handful of wrong addresses.
Step 5: What to avoid
Not all citations help. Some actively hurt.
The Fiverr-style bulk gigs, hundreds of citations for a few pounds, blast your details onto spam directory farms with no control over formatting. You will end up back at step 4, auditing and fixing the mess, which costs more time than doing it properly the first time.
Watch for dead sites that no longer function, directories based in the wrong country, and be sceptical of any directory that asks you to pay for a listing. A payment does not make a directory more credible.
Use this test before you submit anywhere: would a real patient ever see this listing? If the honest answer is no, it is not worth your clinic’s name and phone number.
How long this takes and what to expect
Be realistic about the timeline, because citations reward patience, not sprinting.
The audit and competitor research can be done in an afternoon. Building out 40 to 70 listings properly is a few hours a week over several weeks, not a single weekend push. Directories take their own time to review and approve submissions, and that is outside your control.
Rankings move over weeks, not days. This work compounds with the Google Business Profile and website work from earlier modules in this course, and it sets up the next module well: content structure, one page per treatment per area, and how a blog fits into that.
Your checklist
- Write your canonical NAP block and save it somewhere you will always copy from
- Match it exactly to your Google Business Profile and website footer
- List Google’s top three competitors for your main keyword
- Run the quoted name-and-phone search for each competitor
- Note every directory that lists two or three competitors but not you
- Run the same quoted search on your own clinic, plus old numbers and addresses
- Claim, correct or remove every existing listing you find
- Build out Group 1 (core UK directories) and Group 2 (professional and healthcare)
- Add Group 3 (local) once the first two groups are done
- Keep a spreadsheet logging directory, listing URL and phone number used
Do it yourself or get it done?
You can do all of this yourself. The video walks through every step, and a spreadsheet is the only tool you actually need.
What you are weighing up is time, not difficulty. Forty to seventy directory forms, each with its own login, its own quirks and its own follow-up if a submission stalls, is tedious in a way that adds up. Some clinic owners are happy to grind through it in evenings. Others would rather spend those hours with patients and hand the forms to someone else.
Watch Part 6 in full here: https://youtu.be/loT6uBXZqRo
Or book a free marketing review and we’ll tell you honestly where your clinic stands: https://broxbourne.marketing/book-a-call/
Frequently asked questions
Do citations still matter now that nobody uses directories?
Yes, but not because patients browse them. Google and AI engines like ChatGPT and Gemini use consistent directory listings to verify your clinic is real, established and, for regulated professions, legitimate. Each accurate listing is a small vote of confidence that feeds into how confidently Google ranks you locally.
How many citations does a clinic actually need?
Aim for 40 to 70 quality listings, not hundreds. A handful of well-chosen professional and healthcare directories, the core UK directories, and a few genuinely local ones will outperform a mass of low-quality submissions every time. Quality and consistency matter more than volume.
Are paid directory listings worth it?
Be sceptical. Paying for a listing does not make a directory more credible to Google or to patients, and plenty of paid directories are ones a real patient would never visit. Apply the test from step 5: would a real patient ever see this listing? If not, skip it regardless of price.
Should I fix old listings or build new ones first?
Fix what already exists first. Old addresses, dead numbers and duplicate listings actively confuse Google, while a missing listing is simply neutral. Audit your name and phone number, correct or remove anything wrong, then move on to building the 40 to 70 you actually want.
