Posts and Q&A are the two most neglected parts of a clinic profile. Neither is a strong ranking lever, so treat them as conversion and clarity tools: they answer the questions that decide whether someone calls.
What Posts are for
Posts are short updates appearing on your profile. They are time-limited and they do not meaningfully move rankings, so ignore anyone selling a weekly posting programme as an SEO service.
What they do well is answer practical questions at the moment of decision. Good subjects for a clinic:
- Current availability, such as whether you are accepting new patients and typical wait time.
- Insurance changes, such as a newly accepted plan.
- Holiday hours and closures.
- A new treatment or service now available.
- A new clinician joining, with credentials.
- Practical logistics, such as parking changes or a new suite.
- Educational explainers about what an appointment involves.
Write plainly and put the useful fact in the first line, because posts get truncated.
What not to post
- Efficacy or outcome claims of any kind.
- Patient stories or testimonials, even anonymised. This is both a privacy and an advertising problem.
- Before-and-after framing of any sort.
- Promotional urgency around a clinical treatment, such as limited-time offers on a course of care.
- Anything implying casual availability of a restricted product.
- Superlatives about being the best or leading provider.
A useful filter: if you would not put the sentence on a printed leaflet in your waiting room, do not post it.
Q&A is riskier and more valuable
Q&A is a public question and answer section on your profile. The critical thing to understand is that anyone can answer, including strangers, competitors, and people who are simply wrong. An unmanaged Q&A section is a place where incorrect information about your practice sits in public, and assistants may read it.
So it must be monitored. Check it at least monthly.
Seeding your own questions
You are permitted to post questions and answer them yourself, and for a clinic this is genuinely valuable. It lets you occupy the space with accurate answers before someone else fills it with guesses. Seed the questions patients actually ask on the phone:
- Do I need a referral?
- Which insurance plans do you accept?
- How long does an appointment take, including monitoring?
- Will I be able to drive myself home?
- Where do I park, and which entrance do I use?
- Are you accepting new patients?
- What happens at the first evaluation?
- Do you offer virtual appointments?
Answer factually, in your practice voice, and keep answers to process and access. Never answer a clinical question about an individual, never discuss whether someone is a candidate, and never confirm that a specific person is a patient. If a question invites clinical detail, reply with what happens at an evaluation and an invitation to call.
Managing what others post
- Answer new questions promptly, since the highest-voted answer surfaces most prominently.
- Where someone else has answered incorrectly, add your own correct answer rather than arguing.
- Report answers that are abusive, promotional, or contain someone personal information.
- Watch for questions that themselves reveal patient information, and report those, because the person may not realise they have disclosed something about themselves in public.
Both surfaces reward modest, consistent attention rather than a campaign. The last lesson in this chapter covers structuring profiles for multiple offices and clinicians.