A physiotherapy network fixed the citation mess that was quietly costing it calls

Representative examplesEvery case study in this library is an illustrative composite of the kind of engagement we deliver — written to show our method and standards, not to name clients.

Where they started

Physiotherapy runs on local trust and repeat referrals, and this seven-location network had grown by acquisition over a decade — each clinic listed, claimed, renamed, and relisted as owners and branding changed. Nobody maintained the residue. Half the citations carried a defunct address, three directories still advertised a clinic that closed two years ago, and the network's own website contradicted its profiles in two suburbs. A part-time marketing manager owns the work alongside everything else she does for the network.

What it was costing

Seven locations had been listed, claimed, renamed, and relisted over a decade across dozens of directories. Half the citations carried an old address, three listed a closed location, and the clinic's own site contradicted the profiles.

What they could see

• Three directories still listed a clinic that had closed two years earlier, complete with its old phone.
• Patients called numbers on old listings and reached disconnected lines or stranger businesses.
• The website's opening hours contradicted the profiles' hours in two suburbs — both could not be true.
• The marketing manager fielded complaints about listings she could not edit because nobody controlled them.

The constraints we worked inside

• Healthcare listings demanded extra care — wrong hours or addresses are patient harm, not SEO noise.
• Several directories required claim verification with slow postal processes.
• The network's marketing manager owned the work alongside everything else.

What had been tried before

The network paid a listing service to sync every location across its directory network.

The sync propagated the network's own unverified master record everywhere it reached; automation distributed a decade of errors at subscription prices.

Each clinic manager was asked to check and correct their own listings in spare time.

Claim disputes and verification loops are unpaid nobody's-job work; two managers tried, hit password walls on renamed listings, and stopped without telling anyone.

What we proposed

We proposed building the canonical record first: one verified fact sheet per location — name, address, phone, hours, practitioners — signed off by each clinic, becoming the single source every correction cites. Corrections would then run in value order, directories triaged by the referral traffic they actually send, so the highest-impact fixes carried accurate hours first. Slow or unclaimable directories would be tracked with status and follow-up dates rather than quietly abandoned: the cleanup documented, not declared done.

Just as important is what we ruled out, and why:

• A higher-tier sync subscription with better data coverage — Sync propagates whatever master exists; without a verified record underneath, a bigger sync distributes wrong hours faster — the exact failure the first subscription produced.
• A one-shot claiming blitz across every directory at once — Postal-verification directories set the pace; a blitz leaves half-claimed, unverified listings in worse limbo than a value-ordered queue with documented status.
• Offshore admin support for volume submissions — Healthcare accuracy needs the canonical record and named accountability; volume submissions without verification recreate the decade that caused the mess.

How the work ran

Delivered by the growth pod — local authority specialist over 6 weeks, with working increments reviewed with the client every week.

The stack, and the reasoning

Citation audit

A decade of churn meant nobody knew the true state; the audit enumerated every listing per location with its specific error, giving the work a denominator.

Claim verification

Renamed and relisted locations had lost ownership of their own profiles; recovering claim control mattered more than editing duplicates we did not control.

NAP consistency

Wrong hours or addresses in healthcare are patient harm, not noise; the fact sheet made every correction cite one verified source and ended internal contradiction.

Referral tracking

Correction order followed the directories that demonstrably send patients; effort went where calls come from instead of working alphabetically through the residue.

What went wrong

How we worked together

Cadence

A weekly 25-minute call with the marketing manager; the citation tracker updated continuously between calls with statuses and follow-up dates.

Client side

The marketing manager approved every correction and owned the tracker; each clinic's lead physiotherapist confirmed its facts and hours.

Decisions

Any fact change — hours, practitioners, phone — was confirmed by the clinic before submission; directory spend above a set amount was decided on the weekly call.

They provided

Registration documents and lease addresses for the fact sheets, existing listing credentials where they survived, and the manager's few weekly hours.

What changed

The headline: accurate citations per location across the highest-value directories, over 6 weeks — 22 → 68, read from Citation audit tracker. A second check: listings still showing the closed location at 0.

Patients reach a clinic that exists, with hours that are true, from every directory that matters. The marketing manager answers fewer angry calls and can see every listing's status on one screen instead of discovering errors through complaints. New locations now onboard with a fact sheet from day one, which means the decade of drift does not start again with clinic number eight.

The result was read from Citation audit tracker against the pre-engagement baseline over the stated window, with a guardrail check on listings still showing the closed location. Where platform-reported numbers and business outcomes differ, this record says which layer it is quoting.

What they own now

• The verified fact sheet for each of the seven locations
• The citation tracker with statuses and follow-up dates per directory
• Claimed-profile credentials, held in the network's password vault
• The referral-value directory shortlist driving correction order
• A new-location listing checklist for future acquisitions