Attract More Patients With Highly Targeted
Medical Practice SEO
Explore Our Medical Practice SEO Resources
This Medical Practice SEO Guide Has Been Comprehensively Updated for 2023
Due to consistent algorithm updates, the relatively recent Helpful Content Update in late 2022, we’ve updated the written content that already existed on the page. We’ve written new content. And we’ve filmed new video content. Everything is up-to-date, fresh, and helpful for your medical practices to dominate Google for 2023.
Check Out the Results of One of Our Medical Practice SEO Clients
Pacific Clinic of Natural Medicine
Pacific Clinic of Natural Medicine is a medical practice located in Portland, OR. They specialize in alternative medicine.
Their SEO Growth
Before working together, they weren’t ranking in the maps area for target keywords like “naturopath Portland.” Now, they’re ranking really well.
Before working together, they were only ranking for 246 keywords on Google. Now, they’re ranking for 1,119 keywords on Google
Before working together, only 10% of new patients found them on Google. Now, over 60% of new patients find them on Google.
How We Help Medical Practices Grow Their Business & See A
5.7x ROI on Their Monthly SEO Investment
Increase Google Rankings
Get your medical practice website ranking on Google for high-value keywords that potential patients are searching for.
More High-Quality Web Traffic
Get more interested patients coming to your website each month.
Increased Leads & Phone Calls
Get more motivated patients calling your medical practice to schedule an appointment.
You Get Your Time Back
Stop having your receptionist or assistant writing blog content or trying to figure out digital marketing on their own.
Here's What You Want To See With Your Medical Practice Website & SEO
When Someone Types into Google "Medical Practices Near Me", You Show Up Here...
When Someone Types into Google "Medical Practices Near Me", You Show Up Here...
Think about the way people search for medical practices. They’re probably wrestling with the decision of making a doctor’s appointment, analyzing their own symptoms, and ultimately pull out their smartphone.
They go to Google and type in something like “Medical Practices Near Me” – the FIRST thing to show up is the Maps area of Google called the Google Local Pack. The medical practices that show up here “win” and get the most phone calls.
When Someone Types into Google "Best Medical Practices in [City]", You Show Up Here...
When those in need of a new doctor are looking for medical practices, they often use the language of “best medical practice near me” or “best medical practices in [city]”.
The medical practices that rank in the Maps area for these keywords get the most website visitors and phone calls.
When Someone Types Queries into Google like "What Type of Doctor Treats Skin Problems?", You Show Up Here..
When Someone Types Queries into Google like "What Type of Doctor Treats Skin Problems?", You Show Up Here..
People ask tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of medical-related questions into Google each day. Questions like…
- “How long should you be sick before going to the doctor?”
- “Is a general practitioner the same as a family doctor?”
- “Do I have to be referred to a specialist?”
Ranking for these keywords in Google proves that your website has “authority” and can be trusted.
People Are Searching Differently For Medical Practices Than They Used To
Just take a look and see the increase in people searching for “medical practice near me” over the last five years.
This screenshot above comes from a tool called Google Trends (a tool created by Google itself). You can see the steady increase in the number of people searching for “medical practice near me.”
See The Common Theme? You Want To Increase Your Medical Practice's Digital Presence Online To Be Found By Motivated Patients.
This is what it comes down to: You want more people in your city to know that you exist. Whenever they do a Google search online around medical practices, you want to show up over your competitors.
How Do You Get Tangible Results With Medical Practice SEO Services?
Step 1: Comprehensive SEO Audit
Most SEO companies fail to do this step. And this is the most important one!
How can you strengthen your SEO strategy if you don’t know where it is now?
We recommend doing a comprehensive SEO audit to determine your:
- Current SEO performance
- Current SEO errors
- What your local competitors are doing
- Technical SEO performance
- And more
Step 2: Local SEO Visibility Audit
The goal for medical practice SEO is to increase your “local visibility,” as we call it.
We use robust and powerful third-party tools to run an “SEO visibility test” on your business. This allows us to see where you are, or rather, how visible your business is on Google.
The report looks like this:
Step 3: Create a Roadmap Based on Data
We now have a lot of data from the SEO audit and the local SEO visibility audit.
SEO for medical practices should be strategized based on data. Most other SEO companies fail to do this and end up going off of a “hunch” that something will work.
We recommend creating a comprehensive roadmap based on the data. If the data shows that Google can’t index your site (which makes it hard for you to show up in search results), you should probably focus on fixing that first!
Step 4: Implement Highest Priority Changes First
Here’s where it gets fun:
Not all SEO activities are going to help your website in the same way.
Adding internal links on a blog post from 2015 won’t have as much of an impact as improving the content on your homepage.
So, according to the data, you should be targeting the “low hanging fruit” opportunities first.
You don’t have a Services page? You should probably build that first before worrying about the images on your About page. You don’t have a Google Business Profile set up for your medical practice? You should probably create one!
Step 5: Local SEO Best Practices & Content Creation at Scale
Local SEO for medical practices comes down to:
- Accurate information
- Authority
- Consistent information that Google trusts
If your medical practice has a different phone number on your website than what’s on your Facebook page, that sends up red flags for Google.
Google won’t want to rank your business because they can’t trust that a user will be able to get through if they try to call.
Having consistent NAPs on high-authority directories across the internet is vital.
Now, in regards to “authority,” that’s where content comes in. If you create content that answers your target audience’s questions, Google will see your medical practice as more authoritative than another one that doesn’t have much content on their site.
Step 6: Meticulously Track Data
The goal of SEO is to have a tangible impact on your medical practice. To increase your website visitors and phone calls. And to ultimately have those activities lead to increased revenue.
To ensure your SEO campaign is performing well, you have to track data. Build a comprehensive dashboard that gives insights into your:
- keyword rankings
- website visitors
- phone calls
- and other important KPIs
Medical Practice SEO Services Shouldn't Be 
Cutter - Everything Is 100% Customized To Your Business
Medical practice SEO isn’t the same as other types of SEO. Unfortunately, many other SEO companies don’t make the distinction. They use the same strategies that they use in other industries, thinking it’ll work the same way for medical practices. That’s not the best way.
We take an individualized and unique approach to each individual industry (such as medical practices), to your specific city (Tallahassee might be different than a smaller town in Kansas), and your specific website (is your website built on WordPress or Webflow).
5 Tactical Local SEO Strategies for Medical Practices
Strategy 1: Google Business Profile Optimizations
This is an example of a medical practices’s Google Business Profile:
This is the part of a Google Business Profile that a Google searcher can see on the front-end.
Now, let’s back up for a minute:
Why do Google Business Profile matter for medical practices? Google Business Profiles are relevant and important ranking factors in order to rank in the Google Local Pack. If you forgot what the Google Local Pack is, here’s a refresher:
Properly optimizing your Google Business Profiles helps you get found there ☝️
And when you show up in the Google Local Pack, you get more phone calls and website visitors. You WIN.
So, how do you optimize your Google Business Profile so that you get found in the Google Local Pack?
One word: Comprehensiveness.
You need to provide as comprehensive information as possible in your Google Business Profile. There are many sections in which you can provide comprehensive information, such as:
- Your categories
- Your main description
- Your products
- Your services
- Your photos
Here’s a quick example that explains the difference between being comprehensive and not being comprehensive:
For your main description, you might just write a sentence like… “We are a team of medical professionals that are dedicated to your health and wellness.”
That sounds great, but it’s just one sentence… Google allows 750 characters for the main description. Use them to provide as much information as possible. Do you offer surgeries? Do you practice a type of medical specialty? Do you allow walk-ins?
Answering EVERY possible question is how you can be more comprehensive.
Strategy 2: On-Page SEO for Your Homepage and Location Pages
On-page SEO for medical practices is just a fancy way of talking about the content on your website.
This includes:
- Your title tags
- Your meta description
- Your header tags (H1, H2, H3)
- Your images
- Internal and external links
- And anything else that you can put on a webpage
Why does on-page SEO for medical practices matter? Simple: Google cares about it.
For single-location medical practices, the most important page on your website, from a local SEO perspective, is the homepage. For multilocation medical practices, the most important pages on your website are your location pages.
When doing on-page SEO for these pages, you want to implement SEO-friendliness through keywords while also providing as comprehensive information as possible to the user (and Google).
For example, instead of a title tag like “Spring Canyon Medical – 503.111.2222” you can provide more context to Google by writing something like “Trusted Medical Practice in Portland – Spring Canyon Medical.”
Strategy 3: Website Architecture Best Practices
This is an underrated SEO strategy for medical practices. Your sitemap and your website architecture are intimately connected.
Google crawls your sitemap to understand your website architecture, which in turn allows Google to understand what your website is about.
Here’s an example of what a sitemap might look like to Google:
That might look a little foreign, but don’t worry about it too much. Just know that when Google looks at a sitemap like this, it’s putting together what your website is about (which is SUPER important for local SEO).
Essentially, your website structure needs to make sense hierarchically. Let’s use two of the main services that medical practices offer – 1) immunizations and 2) wellness checks.
Where should these important pages live on your site? First, you should probably have a “Services” page that has the URL structure similar to .com/services/
Any services that you offer (such as immunizations and wellness checks) should live UNDER this main services page. See below:
- .com/services/immunizations
- .com/services/wellness-checks
This seems obvious, but many websites don’t do this correctly. They have no vertical architecture. Instead, every page lives directly under the homepage, like this:
- .com/services/
- .com/immunizations/
- .com/wellness-checks/
- .com/sports-physical/
With this structure, it’s not clear to Google that “Wellness Checks” is a service that you offer. It’s just another page on your site!
Strategy 4: Content Creation at Scale
This part is fun. People search for thousands of medical-related questions into Google every day.
Some are very local:
- best internist in Portland
- family medicine near Portland
Some are generic:
- Is my diet causing my eczema?
- What are the most common symptoms of strep throat?
- Do I need to see an ENT for vertigo?
- How do I transfer my medical records to a new doctor?
If you answer these types of questions through comprehensive blog articles on your website, it will do 2 things for you:
1. You may rank in Google for these keywords that people are searching, which drives traffic.
2. Google will take notice and see your website as an authority over your competitors. Google will think, “Wow, they’re thoroughly answering all of these medical-related questions that users have. Therefore, their website is more valuable than local competitors who haven’t answered any questions.”
Strategy 5: User Experience is a Bigger Deal Than You Think - Stop the Keyword Stuffing!
Old SEO strategies are gone. Keyword stuffing… PBN link building… all the stuff that used to work.
Google’s figuring it out and is starting to understand that a user’s experience on a website is important.
What does this mean for you as a medical practice?
- Make it easy for users to find what they’re looking for. They shouldn’t have to spend 5 minutes figuring out what types of insurance you accept.
- Make it easy for users to contact you. Your phone number should be clickable on a mobile device. You should consider an online schedule so someone can easily make an appointment. Anything to make the user’s experience very easy.
- When writing content, you should actually offer value to the reader. You can get away with outsourcing writers who produce vague, keyword-stuffed articles anymore. Your content should thoroughly answer the user’s questions and add value to them.
On Average, Our Medical Practice SEO Services Cost
31% Less Than Other SEO Companies
Compared to Other SEO Companies That Average Between $1.5k and $3k Per Month.
FAQs About Medical Practice SEO Services
Here are the most common questions we’ve heard.
What is Medical Practice SEO?
Medical practice SEO is a form of digital marketing that helps medical practices increase their visibility in search engines, particularly Google.
The specific SEO strategies that are used for medical practices vary greatly (which is why all medical practice SEO is NOT created equal).
Strategies include:
- keyword research
- on-page SEO
- off-page SEO
- local SEO
- Google Maps optimizations
- landing page creation
- content creation
- PR
- and more
Why is Medical Practice SEO Important?
Medical practice SEO is important because it allows you to get in front of your target audience (the people looking RIGHT NOW for a new doctor).
Think about how social media marketing for medical practices works: People are scrolling through Instagram or Facebook and stumble upon an advertisement for a medical practice in their city. They might be actively looking for a doctor or general medical practice, but it’s fairly unlikely.
On the other hand, SEO puts you in front of motivated people looking for what you have to offer:
SEO for medical practices allows you to show up in Google for people actively looking for a medical practice. People searching for “best medical practice near me” or “medical practice in Beaverton.” Ranking for those keywords has a MUCH higher conversion than people scrolling on Instagram.
How Long Does SEO for Medical Practices Take To Work?
Medical practice SEO can take 1 week – 6 months for you to start seeing results. It depends on a variety of things:
- How big of a city you’re in
- How high your website’s “domain authority” is
- How long your website has been around for
- How your current SEO is performing
- And much more
Some of our clients have seen 2x – 3x the phone calls within a month after starting their SEO campaign. Other clients don’t see noticeable increases in phone calls for 2-3 months.
Think about this, though:
If everyone could make a couple of tweaks on their website and rank overnight for the HIGHEST value keywords out there, like “best medical practice in San Francisco” then the internet would go crazy.
These things don’t happen overnight. Google built their algorithms that way on purpose.
What Medical Practice SEO KPIs Should We Track?
Medical Practice SEO should be meticulously tracked.
You want to be absolutely certain that the money you’re investing in SEO is working for your medical practice.
Because of that, you need to track certain metrics to ensure that the campaign is working:
- Keyword rankings: Are you ranking on Page 1 of Google for your most important keywords? How are your keyword rankings changing from week to week? Month to month?
- Organic website traffic: Is your organic website traffic from Google increasing or decreasing? Which keywords are driving the most traffic to your site?
- Online lead submissions: Are you seeing more online leads? How are they changing from one month to the next?
- Phone calls: Are you getting more phone calls from people searching on Google? How are phone calls changing over time?
What Type of Content Should Medical Practice Websites Have?
Medical Practice SEO needs to include content that your target audience is searching for on Google:
How do we know what keywords/content your target audience is searching for? We use advanced software and tools that give us insider information and data. We, for example, know that 8100 people per month (on average) search for “medical doctors near me”.
So, with that being said, we do extensive keyword research to find the topics/questions that potential patients have.
Questions like:
- “Can advanced practice nurse prescribe medication?”
- “What happens to medical records when a practice closes?”
- “What type of medical practice should I visit for fluid in my ears?”
If you create content that answers these questions, then you can potentially rank in Google when people search for these.
Also, Google will favor your site more than competitors because Google will have more trust in your site.
What are the Most Valuable Medical Practice Keywords for SEO?
How To Work With Us
First of all – we don’t work with all medical practices.
We only work with medical practices that:
- Are ambitious and motivated about growing their business
- Have the bandwidth to take the growth that will come from working with us
- Treat their employees and their customers well
Step 2
Check Your Email
In less than 24 hours, one of our talented SEO specialists will send you a 3-5 minute customized video analysis. It will explain opportunities for you to outperform competitors.
Step 3
Sit Back And Watch Your SEO Skyrocket
Just look at our case studies of the success that other Portland businesses have seen. You can have the same results.
If you’re looking for Portland SEO services, we can help. Give us a call today to learn more about our pricing and availability.
Let's Take Your Medical Practice From the "best kept secret" to the "most sought after brand"
