SEO for clinics: patients and referring physicians find you through Google

• A clinic with several specialist departments usually needs several Google Business Profiles – one per location and, where it makes sense, one per department that operates as an independent unit with its own patient access. A single profile for “the clinic” does not reflect how people actually search.
• Referring physicians are a target group in their own right, alongside patients: they have a say in where patients are referred, and they expect different information – admission procedures, contact persons, response times – than a patient looking for treatment.
• The German Medical Advertising Act (Heilmittelwerbegesetz, HWG) applies to clinics just as it does to single practices, but in practice with more pitfalls: several departments, several authors, more offers that can accidentally sound like a promise of success.
• The term “Klinik” (clinic) is itself a legal risk when an outpatient facility uses it without being able to admit patients at least overnight – German courts regard this as misleading.
• For Google Ads, there is no blanket certification requirement for clinics in Germany. Certification is only needed for specific areas such as telemedicine or prescription medicines; Google excludes advertising for speculative or experimental treatments altogether.
• Price: from € 500 a month, hourly rate € 50, SEO audit from € 600, cancellable monthly.

Patient reviews between Jameda and Google – the same limits as in a practice, but more people involved

In a clinic, reviews are spread across more destinations: the central Google profile, the profiles of the individual departments, and Jameda entries for individual chief physicians or departments. Without clear assignment, the effect is diluted – an excellent cardiology review does little if it lands on the wrong profile.

Legally, the same limit applies to clinics as to practices, only with more people who have to observe it:

• Asking for reviews is allowed, offering something in return is not. Discounts, vouchers or gifts in connection with a review are generally prohibited under § 7 of the German Medical Advertising Act (HWG) and also violate Google’s policies – regardless of which department is asking.
• Reply yes, treatment details no. Medical confidentiality also applies to a public reply to a review, even when the department is named.
• No selective solicitation of patients. Deliberately asking only satisfied patients for a review while skipping others is explicitly prohibited by Google in its user contribution policies.
• Several departments need a coordinated approach. Without a shared template for the request and the reply, different departments quickly develop different tones – and patients who visit several departments of the same clinic notice.

Jameda remains relevant alongside this because it often ranks independently for “[specialty] + city”; a well-maintained department or chief physician profile there is additional visibility, not a substitute for the Google profile.

Department pages instead of a single “Services” page

Most clinic websites have a page called “Our departments” with a list of all specialties. For Google, that is a page without a clear topic that is hardly the best answer to any specific search. Patients search in specific medical terms: “hip replacement clinic + city”, “cardiology cardiac catheterisation + city”, “radiology MRI appointment + city”. Each of these searches deserves its own page from the respective department.

The structure that has proven itself in practice for clinics has four page types instead of one overview page:

These pages are not written at a desk alone: the expertise of each department has to go into them, and with several authors from different departments, a uniform review loop is needed before a text goes online.

The legal framework: the same law as for a single practice, but more people and more offers involved

The German Medical Advertising Act (Heilmittelwerbegesetz, HWG) applies to a clinic exactly as it does to a single practice. The difference lies not in the wording of the law but in the number of places where it can bite: several departments, several authors, several offers that come into being independently of one another. I am not a lawyer and this is not conclusive legal advice – for specific wording, I recommend a review by a law firm specialising in medical law.

What becomes a problem particularly often in clinics:

• Misleading efficacy claims (§ 3 HWG). Wording that attributes a certain success to a treatment or suggests an unproven effect is prohibited – the courts apply a strict standard here, and with several departments and different authors, the risk rises that such a sentence slips through somewhere.
• Expert opinions and quotations (§ 6 HWG). Anyone who relies on studies or specialist publications must make clear whether they relate to the advertised treatment itself and must name the author, date and source; quotations from the specialist literature must be verbatim. A frequent mistake: a general study is cited without these details to support a specific service.
• Gifts and rewards (§ 7 HWG). Promotional gifts, free services that are otherwise charged for, or a reward for reviews are generally prohibited; the law allows only narrowly defined exceptions, such as items of negligible value.
• Advertising for remote treatment (§ 9 HWG). Advertising for diagnosis or therapy without personal contact is generally prohibited. Since 2019 there has been an exception for remote treatment via communication media where, according to generally accepted professional standards, no personal contact with a physician is required – the courts interpret this exception narrowly.
• Before-and-after pictures (§ 11 HWG). Generally permitted since the 2012 amendment, as long as they are not abusive, repulsive or misleading. For surgical plastic-surgery procedures without medical necessity they remain prohibited – according to the German Federal Court of Justice (BGH, judgment of 31 July 2025, I ZR 170/24), this also includes injections such as hyaluronic acid fillers.
• The term “Klinik” itself is a risk. Patients expect a “Klinik” to be able to admit them at least overnight; a purely outpatient facility that calls itself one can thereby violate the prohibition of misleading statements under professional and competition law – independently of the HWG. The BGH confirmed this in 2018 for a dental practice without overnight accommodation that advertised as a “Praxisklinik” (decision of 17 October 2018, I ZR 58/18).

Every text I draft goes to the respective department for professional and legal review before publication. Where there are several departments, I set up a uniform review loop for this instead of having each department review separately and inconsistently.

Structured data for an organisation with several departments

A clinic website should tell search engines in machine-readable form that it is a parent organisation with several independent units – not a single practice. In practice, this means a structure with several levels: the clinic as a MedicalOrganization on the home page, each location as an independent Hospital or MedicalClinic with its own address and opening hours, and, where maintained, individual physicians as IndividualPhysician with their qualifications and the practicesAt reference to the clinic.

• Do not expect stars from your own reviews. Reviews that a clinic marks up about itself on its own website (AggregateRating) are not shown by Google as star snippets for organisations and local businesses – not even via embedded review widgets. The stars in local search come from the Google Business Profiles.
• Link every entity unambiguously via stable identifiers (@id) and relationships such as department and parentOrganization, so that location, department and website are clearly attributed to the same clinic – important as soon as several locations exist.
• Mark up only visible content. Structured data may only reflect what visitors can actually read on the page – no additional details hidden only in the markup.

There is no separate, eye-catching rich result for the pure organisational structure – the benefit lies in Google recognising website, profiles and departments beyond doubt as the same clinic, instead of treating them as independent, loosely connected pages.

Frequently asked questions about SEO for clinics