In order for your medical practice to stand out amongst competitors, your online presence needs to be optimized for local search results. Here’s how you can properly implement SEO for doctors to help bring in more patients.
What Is SEO for Doctors?
SEO for doctors, or medical SEO, is the process of optimizing your medical practice’s online visibility in order to rank higher in search engine results. Through a range of SEO strategies both on and off your website, you can help search engines understand your practice’s content as they crawl, index, and rank it. Implementing these strategies will help your practice be found under relevant searches.
Why Is SEO for Doctors Important?
Since 46% of people use Google to find a new doctor, SEO for doctors is key to significantly increasing your practice’s visibility with prospective patients. Local SEO strategies help small businesses (e.g., rural physicians’ offices) stay competitive in the industry, as the higher you rank in local search results, the more likely potential patients are to choose your medical practice over others in the area. By drawing in more patients through organic search, medical SEO can boost your return on investment for your marketing efforts.
SEO Strategies for Doctors
It’s best to take a well-rounded approach to healthcare SEO if you want sustainable, long-term results that enhance your online presence and continually attract new patients. Cherrypicking SEO tips here and there or not consistently maintaining your online presence won’t achieve your goals. While your individual SEO strategy should be tailored to your medical practice’s needs, here are a few broad medical SEO best practices to get you started.
Implement Medical SEO Keywords
Thoroughly research keywords that relate to your services and target audience for effective doctor SEO. Keywords are specific words and phrases that reflect what people search online, so utilizing them in your written copy (including your website’s headers, post titles, title tags, and meta descriptions) can help search engines understand the relevance of your content and show your content for those queries.
Create a list of different types of SEO keywords to incorporate, including:
- Main keywords: Broad keywords that are relevant to the types of services you offer (e.g., “pediatric care”)
- Geo-targeted keywords: Keywords that relate to a specific geographic area (e.g., “doctor’s office near me” or “dermatologist in Omaha”)
- User intent phrases: Keywords that focus on the searcher’s intent, often in the form of questions they’re looking to answer (e.g., “how much do sports physicals cost” or “what are the symptoms of COVID-19”)
To help create your list of keywords, there are a few different SEO tools and strategies you can use:
- Research the keywords competitors use so you can identify any gaps in your approach
- Get ideas from Google’s auto-complete function when you type in a search query, and consult the People Also Ask section on Google’s results page
- Use top keyword research tools like KeywordsFX, Mangools’ KWFinder, Moz, and Semrush
Manage Your Google Business Profile
Considering more than 90% of consumers use online searches to find local businesses, claiming your Google Business Profile (GBP) is crucial to your medical practice appearing in local search results. Without claiming your GBP, you’re not eligible to appear in the Google Maps Pack, a feature towards the top of Google search results pages that display three businesses and drive the majority of clicks.
You also have no control of how your business details appear to searchers if you don’t claim your Google listing, which can cause an inaccurate and frustrating experience for potential patients. To get the most out of your Google listing, you should do more than just claim it—also:
- Include up-to-date information about your business’ name, address, phone number (NAP), and hours
- Write a business description that incorporates target medical SEO keywords
- Choose the right business categories
- Use quality photos that will help people recognize your office and medical staff
- Answer frequently asked questions about the services you provide
List on Major Medical Directories
Your Google listing isn’t the only local directory you need to create as part of your local SEO strategy for doctors. Listing on major medical directories, like Doximity or WebMD, as well as more general directories, will help your practice appear on more online platforms where patients are searching for healthcare providers.
When you create your listings on a medical directory, use the same NAP data from your Google Business Profile. Search engines prioritize consistency across platforms, and it makes it easier for patients to find and trust your business if your information is the same across all channels. Here are some of the top directories where you should be listed:
General Directories:
Medical Directories:
Get Positive Reviews
Every successful doctor SEO strategy leverages testimonials in some way because they heavily influence potential patients’ decisions. In fact, 90% of patients use online reviews to help them evaluate a new physician, and almost 45% would choose an out-of-network provider with better reviews over an in-network option.
Collecting reviews also helps to establish trust in your business—and since trusting a doctor is such a vulnerable decision, having that rapport early on is essential in this industry. Even responding to negative reviews will show potential patients how you communicate and deal with conflict and that you care about their feedback.
Your listings on directories usually provide a space for patients to leave reviews on their own, but you can also actively encourage your current clients to leave a positive review when they’ve had a good experience in person. Those reviews will, of course, be used to convince people searching on directories to choose your medical practice, but can also be repurposed on your website and other marketing materials as social proof. And if patient confidentiality is a reason why you’ve chosen not to use reviews in the past, just know that you can first obtain written consent, remove details that could potentially identify them (like their name, age, location, date of service, or specific medical conditions or treatments), and focus on general experiences with your healthcare providers.
Optimize Your Medical Website
Optimizing both your site’s off-page and on-page SEO is important to improving your Core Web Vitals and user experience, which can help you rank in Google search results. Since the majority of organic searches are made on mobile devices, all your web development decisions should be optimized for mobile devices.
Here are a few tips for mobile optimization, boosting site speed, and ensuring your web content is accessible:
- Secure an SSL certificate to ensure that your website is safe and trustworthy to potential patients
- Optimize images on your website for search engines by using the WebP file format
- Simplify site navigation with easy-to-use buttons and menus
- Disallow pop-ups and avoid using Flash
- Vary your written content with bullets and images to avoid large chunks of text
- Don’t bury information more than three folders deep so users and crawlers can easily find content
- Use header tag structure to keep your page content organized and easy to navigate
- Optimize content for voice search
Build Medical Service, About, & Location Pages
In addition to having pages for patients to schedule appointments and handle billing, creating separate about, service, and location pages can greatly improve user experience and your SEO, giving you more opportunities to rank in relevant search terms.
An optimized location page has:
- Clear and concise copy
- Your practice’s NAP data and business hours
- Calls to action in the form of buttons and internal links that guide users through your site
- High-quality photos of both your office and staff to increase trust and familiarity
Your service pages’ design should include key features of the service and how that service can help your patient, plus relevant keywords. Information you might provide includes what conditions the service is for, how long a consultation would take, cost, and what about your practice makes it the best option for patients in your area.
Ceating an “About Us” page humanizes your practice and fosters trust and credibility more than anything. An about page might include:
- Your practice’s values and mission statement
- What you do to make your patients feel welcome
- Bios for your healthcare staff, with their qualifications and specialties clearly listed
Don’t Forget Social Media
When you create profiles on the top social media platforms for your office and post useful, engaging content consistently, you can:
- Increase brand awareness
- Build trust and rapport with patients
- Gather testimonials from patients
- Promote the content of your blog and drive organic traffic
Relevant social media content like “day in the life” videos, office and staff photos, infographics about symptoms of various conditions, public health reminders (e.g., updating vaccines), interviews with staff, and even user-generated content can help you stay top-of-mind with your patients and also attract new people to your site.
Create Useful Healthcare Blog Content
Creating a blog for your business is a fantastic opportunity to establish topical authority, boost brand awareness, and bring more users to your site. Ensuring your content is optimized for Google E-E-A-T guidelines also improves your content’s chances of ranking well in search results.
There are many evergreen blog content ideas for the medical industry that can help your healthcare SEO strategy, like:
- Guide-style “how to” posts (e.g., “What Goes into a Healthy Diet?”)
- List-style posts (e.g., “Tips For Staying Healthy This Winter”)
- Industry news and trends (e.g., “New Treatment Available for X Condition: Here’s What You Need to Know”)
- News about your practice (e.g. new services you’re offering)
- Case studies to show your successes
- Interviews with doctors and medical experts
- Medical FAQ pages
- Infographics to help explain complex conditions, treatments, and other in-depth topics
- Medical and local resources (e.g., “Top Classes for New Parents in Your City”)
Build Backlinks
Backlinks, or inbound links, are links from other websites that lead to a page on your site. When other reputable sources link to your medical practice’s site, this builds up your website’s authority in the eyes of search engines and patients alike, which can positively impact your search rankings. There are a number of link-building strategies that can help you earn healthcare backlinks through a mix of active and passive approaches, including:
- Reaching out to other practices, research institutes, and businesses to build relationships
- Writing guest posts and generating expert quotes to form a mutual partnership
- Speaking at medical conferences and medical seminars to network with other professionals
- Posting your practice on trusted medical directories
- Creating valuable medical blog content that is informative and authoritative
Tracking SEO Success
Consistently conducting website SEO audits and tracking key performance indicators will help you understand how effective your medical SEO strategies are. Knowing these important site metrics will tell you which SEO strategies are working and which ones aren’t, allowing you to adjust your approach as needed. We recommend you track:
- Backlinks to your site
- Bounce rate
- Click-through rates
- Conversions
- Engagement
- Impressions
- Keyword rankings
- Page Load Speed
There are many free SEO tools that can help you can monitor your SEO strategy’s success, including Google Analytics, Bing Webmaster Tools, and Yoast.
Cost of Medical SEO
The cost of SEO and local SEO for medical practices can vary widely depending on the type and scope of SEO services. Generally, it will cost less to keep your basic SEO efforts in-house, but there are many reasons to consider hiring a digital marketing agency or a freelance SEO expert if you need a more comprehensive or expert SEO package. Here’s a quick look at the average cost of SEO from both freelancers and medical SEO companies:
Freelance SEO Expert:
- General SEO: $20 to $150 per hour, $100 to $750 per month, or $500 to $3,000 per project
- Local SEO: $100 to $250 per project or $50 to $150 per hour
Medical SEO Company:
- General SEO: $75 to $250 per hour, $500 to $2,000 per month, or $2,000 to $5,000 per project
- Local SEO: $300 to $5,000 per project or $300 to $2,000 per month
Looking to boost your medical SEO strategies? Hurrdat Marketing provides SEO services that can help you attract new patients. Contact us today!
