Healthcare Directories for Doctors, Clinics and Practices

Most of the large sites in this set give a nofollow link, which carries no ranking credit. That includes Healthgrades, WebMD Physician Directory, Zocdoc, Vitals, RateMDs, Psychology Today and Yelp Healthcare. Their value is patients who read your profile and book.

The dofollow entries, which can pass ranking credit, are mostly smaller doctor finders such as Wellness.com, FindATopDoc and MD.com, all three rated High and Easy. NPPES NPI Registry and HRSA Health Center Finder are also listed as dofollow, but you cannot add yourself to either the way you would to a directory.

Use the same practice name, address and phone number on every profile, written exactly as they appear on your website. Small differences between listings make it harder for search engines to be sure they are all the same practice.

Start with the doctor finders patients already use, and treat reviews as the main goal.

Healthgrades, WebMD Physician Directory, Zocdoc, Vitals, RateMDs and Yelp Healthcare are all rated High by our partner and all nofollow. They will not do much for your rankings directly, but a complete profile with recent reviews is often what a patient reads just before they call.

Search for your practice on each one first. Claim what exists, correct anything wrong, and only then create profiles on the sites where you have none. Afterwards, add the smaller dofollow finders, Wellness.com, FindATopDoc and MD.com, which are rated High and Easy and can pass ranking credit.

Psychology Today is the one to do first, and HealthProfs is a reasonable second.

Psychology Today is rated High, carries one of the largest traffic figures in the set, and is listed as a free tier, so read what the free option includes before you commit to anything paid. HealthProfs is dofollow, Easy and rated Medium.

Write your profile for the person reading it rather than for a search engine. Say who you work with, how sessions run and whether you see people online or in person. That is what someone choosing a therapist is trying to find out.

Check the official records before you build anything new.

NPPES NPI Registry, Medicare Care Compare and HRSA Health Center Finder are not places you submit to. They are records, and other sites can draw on provider information like this. If your address or details are out of date in an official record, that mistake can show up elsewhere.

Look yourself up in each one that applies to you and compare it with your website. If something is wrong, correct it through that body's own process. It is one of the more useful hours you can spend before starting on the doctor finders.

Expect to find profiles you did not create. On the large doctor finders, claiming and correcting an existing page is often the first step, and it can involve confirming who you are before the site lets you edit.

Expect most of the work to be Easy. Nineteen of the 27 entries are rated Easy, and the other eight are Moderate, so this is a few evenings of careful form filling rather than a project.

Expect patients, not rankings. The sites with the most traffic here are nofollow, and the honest upside is a patient who reads your reviews and books.

Expect to answer reviews with care. In the US, patient privacy rules mean a public reply should not confirm that the reviewer is your patient or discuss their care, so keep replies general and take anything specific offline.

Expect the table to change. None of these entries has been checked yet, so some details will be corrected once they are.

Skip this set if you sell health products online rather than see patients. Every entry here asks for a business address and is built around a provider people visit or book, so an online store gets more from the ecommerce page.

Skip the US registries if you are not a US provider. NPPES, Medicare Care Compare and HRSA only cover US providers, and most of the doctor finders in this set lean towards the US as well. Practo is the clear exception.

Skip the specialist sites that do not match your field. RealSelf is for cosmetic and aesthetic treatments, Psychology Today and HealthProfs are for mental health, and NAFC Clinic Finder is for free and charitable clinics.

And skip any upgrade until your free profiles are complete and have a few reviews on them. Without that, you have no way to judge what a paid option would add.