SEO for surveyors and appraisers in Germany: get found by private clients without sounding like a salesperson

Whether SEO pays off for your office depends on the route your jobs take today. I separate three routes. On two of them the job runs through a search. On the third, in my assessment, it hardly does:

For insurers and banks, the third row is my working assumption; I have found no statistics on how they select experts. You can test it against your own numbers. Take your last 20 jobs and write “search”, “referral” or “list” next to each one. If “list” is there 17 times, it is enough to put profile, name search and designation in order once. If “search” and “referral” are there eight or ten times, you are working on a channel worth building up.

Your field belongs in the page title, in the main heading of the matching service page and in the description of your Google profile, in the wording of your appointment. If the designation reads the way it does on the certificate, any client can check it in the chamber’s directory or with the certification body.

For publicly appointed experts (öffentlich bestellte Sachverständige) there is a fixed template. Under § 36 Gewerbeordnung (GewO, the German Trade Regulation Act; the linked text is in German), experts are publicly appointed on application by the bodies that the state government designates or that state law provides for. The conditions: there is a need for the field, the person proves particular expertise, and there are no doubts about their suitability. The Muster-Sachverständigenordnung of the DIHK is the set of model regulations for experts issued by the umbrella organisation of the German chambers of commerce and industry (PDF in German, version of 25 June 2025). In § 13 it prescribes the designation to be used for work in the appointed field: “von der Industrie- und Handelskammer öffentlich bestellter und vereidigter Sachverständiger für …”, in English roughly “expert for …, publicly appointed and sworn in by the chamber of commerce and industry”, with a reference to the responsible IHK. The model regulations contain no duty to put this on the website. I use the wording as a template anyway, because it is unambiguous. What binds you is the Sachverständigenordnung (the regulations for experts) of the chamber that appointed you, and that can differ from the model.

From this I derive three working rules for the website:

1. Write the field out, do not shorten it. “Sachverständiger für Schäden an Gebäuden” (expert for damage to buildings) in the title if that is what the appointment says, and not “Baugutachter für alles rund ums Haus” (building surveyor for everything to do with the house).
2. Mention the appointment only where it applies. § 13 (3) of the model regulations says, in my translation, that for expert work in other fields the expert may not point to the public appointment, or have others point to it, in a way that breaches competition law. So I put the reference on the profile page and on the pages of the appointed field, and not as a line in the header that sits above every service. Where the line runs in a particular case is something your chamber will tell you.
3. Link the proof. Under § 8 of the model regulations, the IHK publishes the appointment and the contact details in the directory of experts for as long as the appointment lasts. A link from your profile page to that entry lets anyone check what you write. Under § 2 (4) the appointment is limited to five years, and for a first appointment the period can be shorter. Put the end date in your calendar. When the appointment lapses, § 22 (3) ends the right to use the certificate, the ID card and the round stamp, and without a renewal I take the designation off the website on the same day.

If you are certified, approved by an association or work without any of these, there is no prescribed formula, but the yardstick is the same. § 5 of the Gesetz gegen den unlauteren Wettbewerb (UWG, the German Act against Unfair Competition; linked text in German) counts untrue statements, and statements likely to deceive, about a trader’s qualifications, status, approval, affiliations and awards among misleading commercial practices. So for every qualification on the website I write down the body that granted it, the field and the period it is valid for. A membership of an association I call a membership. Whether a particular wording is permissible is for your lawyer or your association to judge; I advise you on being found, not on the law.

Titles and headings are part of on-page optimisation; for an expert’s office I write them with the certificate of appointment or the certification as the template.

On the map, your office appears with one Google Business Profile, and it stays at one even if you work in three fields. Google’s guidelines for representing your business say about individual practitioners: “A practitioner shouldn’t have multiple Business Profiles to cover all of their specializations.” An expert for vehicle damage and for vehicle valuation therefore runs one profile and separates the fields on the website, not on the map.

Three more points from the same guidelines matter particularly for an expert’s office:

• You travel to the property or the vehicle. If you do not receive clients at your office, you hide the address and state a service area. How that works and how large the area may be is covered in the service area section on the trades page.
• The profile name is your name or the name of your office, the way you use it on your letterhead and your website. Google does not allow the town or the service as an addition to the name; they belong in the description, the service area and the services. Google allows titles only in the profile of an individual practitioner and gives abbreviations such as Dr. as examples. I therefore put “öffentlich bestellt” in the description and not in the name.
• An office with several experts. Google allows an individual practitioner a profile of their own if they work in a public-facing role and can be contacted directly at the verified location during the stated hours; the office keeps its own profile alongside. Whether that applies to you depends on whether you can be reached at the office at fixed times. There is an example on the page SEO for real estate agents.

Google sets the order on the map. Its help page on local ranking says: “Local results are mainly based on relevance, distance, and popularity.” And on money: “There’s no way to request or pay for a better local ranking on Google.” You cannot change where your office is. The third factor can be worked on, because according to the same help page it is also based on how many websites link to your business.

For an expert, those are first of all the entries that exist anyway: the chamber’s directory, the association’s list of members, the page of the office in which you are a partner. If name, address and phone number are the same there as in the profile, and the entry leads to your website, the first part of the link work is done. I do not buy hidden links or listings. I only plan paid placements that the publishing site labels visibly as advertising, and only for reach, not as a way to improve rankings; how I go about link work is described under link building and link audit. If only the Google profile needs work, have a look at local SEO consulting.