Real case: website and SEO for a psychology practice in Vigo

How we rebuilt Arantxa Vidal Psicología's website without losing rankings: Astro, privacy, service pages and real Search Console data from the first weeks.

Arantxa Vidal Psicología is a psychology practice in Vigo (Spain) with several therapists: adults, children and teens, neurodivergence, EMDR, online therapy. It had a slow, template-based WordPress site with outdated content. We launched the new one in October 2026.

This post covers what we did, why, and what real Google data says about the first weeks. What worked and what didn't.

Starting point

The old site had three typical template problems:

Template demo pages indexed on Google: /our-team, /pricing-plans, a shop… in English and never theirs.
Keyword-stuffed articles: closing blocks of "psychologist psychologist Vigo Vigo…", penalised by Google for years.
Services without their own page: anxiety, neurodivergence or EMDR were mentioned, but there was no page Google could show for those searches.

What we did

1. Keep what already ranked

Before touching anything we recovered the old site's full inventory from the Internet Archive: 22 URLs. 17 were kept exactly the same, trailing slash included. The other 5 got 301 redirects to their equivalent.

Search Console then revealed some twenty more URLs the archive couldn't see: the template's demo pages. They were redirected too. A 404 isn't wrong, but Google takes months to forget a dead URL and a 301 retires it faster.

2. A fast static site, no WordPress

The new site is built with Astro: plain HTML, no database, no plugins to update.

0.4 s Load time

</div>
<div class="stat-callout">
    <span class="stat-value">1.1 MB</span>
    <span class="stat-label">Whole site</span>
    
</div>
<div class="stat-callout">
    <span class="stat-value">100</span>
    <span class="stat-label">Accessibility, best practices and SEO</span>
    
</div>
<div class="stat-callout">
    <span class="stat-value">0</span>
    <span class="stat-label">Layout shift (CLS)</span>
    
</div></div>

We didn't chase a perfect performance score at any cost: the missing points are Speed Index, which Google doesn't use for ranking. The metrics that count (LCP, CLS, INP) are green.

3. Real privacy, because it's a health site

Someone looking for psychological help leaves a sensitive trace just by visiting. So:

Fonts are self-hosted: no visitor IP is sent to Google Fonts.
Google Maps and the Doctoralia booking widget load only on click.
Analytics only with cookie consent.

4. The notice no other site had

We reviewed five psychology sites in Vigo and none mentioned 024, Spain's suicide prevention line. Here it sits in the footer of every page and at the end of every article. Two lines that bother no one who doesn't need them.

5. One page per service

Neurodivergence, depression, EMDR, emotional management and online therapy got their own pages, written for what people actually search.

Data from the first weeks

The site launched on 9 October 2026. Search Console data for the first 28 days:

79 Clicks from Google

</div>
<div class="stat-callout">
    <span class="stat-value">1,640</span>
    <span class="stat-label">Impressions</span>
    
</div>
<div class="stat-callout">
    <span class="stat-value">4.7</span>
    <span class="stat-label">Neurodivergence page position</span>
    
</div>
<div class="stat-callout">
    <span class="stat-value">26%</span>
    <span class="stat-label">That page's CTR</span>
    
</div></div>

Service pages work. The neurodivergence screening page sits at position 4.7 and one in four people who see it clicks.
Mobile and desktop are different games. Average position is 9.9 on mobile and 27.4 on desktop. On mobile the map pack rules, and it comes from the Google Business Profile.
What a website can't win. For "psicólogos Vigo" it sits around position 30, behind practices with hundreds of reviews and years of links. That's won with reviews and local links, not code.

What's next

Searches for anxiety in Vigo add up to 143 impressions at positions 40-54 with no page answering them: that's the next service page. And reviews, concentrated on Google, which feeds the map.

I'll update this post with data from the coming months.

If you run a practice and this starting point sounds familiar, I follow the same playbook in SEO for therapists and, if you're in the area, in SEO and web design in Vigo.

Website not showing on Google? I'll do a free SEO audit and tell you what it's missing

Frequently asked questions

How long until a new website shows up on Google?

Here, the site got clicks from new searches within the first two weeks. Technical improvements show quickly; competitive searches take months and depend mostly on reviews and links.

Do you lose rankings when you change websites?

Not if you keep the URLs that already rank and 301-redirect the ones that change. Here 17 of 22 URLs were kept and the rest redirected, plus the old template pages.

Why not WordPress?

For a site this size, a static site is faster, more secure (no admin panel or plugins to attack) and cheaper to maintain.