With Google processing around 99,000 searches every second, boosting visibility and seeking exposure has become a cutthroat game for businesses and site owners, who often play against each other and always against Google’s algorithm. Well, the situation isn’t quite that dire, but landing a high-ranking spot in SERPs has become a complex and intricate craft.
SEO for medical practices is no exception. To excel in your niche, as a medical professional, you also need to work on your digital presence continuously and run a website that meets the standards of current and future patients. How to master SEO for doctors? We asked some of the most competent experts on the subject in the article below.
Table of Contents
Why Do You Need Healthcare SEO?
Medical SEO uses different strategies to optimize your practice’s online presence, build awareness, and increase site and premises visits by leveraging your search engine visibility. But why is SEO worth it for doctors? Implementing effective SEO means that you will consistently attract qualified and relevant leads.
How does healthcare SEO differ from traditional optimization practices and why does it matter so much for doctors? Healthcare optimization isn’t just about optimizing content and site performance. It’s also about addressing the unique regulations, sensitivities, and audience needs that are pivotal for the healthcare industry.
The way you write and market content must also adhere to rigorous accuracy and ethical standards, as misinformation can cost dearly both you and your readers. Regarding content, traditional SEO strategies heavily favor backlinking and keyword-dense optimization.
Healthcare SEO focuses more on balancing all the above with patient privacy considerations, healthcare law compliance, and authoritative content. The content should often be informative and empathetic to reassure the patient instead of raising concerns or even panic.
What are the main benefits you get from medical SEO? The following points make a pretty compelling case.
- Better online visibility: One of the main reasons brands hire an SEO expert in the first place is to help increase visibility to users online. In the case of medical practices, this is a priority, and SEO strategies are geared toward leveraging website usability and high-quality content to boost search engine visibility.
- Better patient engagement: SEO can help you create content that meets the concerns and needs of your audience. From useful service pages to blog posts and informative FAQs, you can engage potential patients with the help of offering support and valuable information.
- Build better trust and credibility: High-ranking websites are also usually viewed as more trustworthy, authoritative, and credible. Appearing high in SERPs as a provider, you can reinforce your reputation and industry, increasing the likelihood of users scheduling an appointment with your practice.
Healthcare SEO in Three Crucial Steps
The basics of SEO are more or less universal and applicable to most websites, industries, and brands. Still, this doesn’t mean that optimizing your site and content for search engines is easy. For the best results, we encourage you to partner with an SEO agency or a niche-specific digital marketing firm to get the most out of this endeavor.
Nonetheless, there are three crucial pillars to get your SEO campaign off the ground:
- On-page medical SEO
- Off-page medical SEO
- Local medical SEO
On-Page Medical SEO
As the name suggests, on-page efforts focus on optimizing your site and your pages to improve your rankings on search engines. It covers everything on your site, from technicalities such as code and loading speed to images, text, copy, and more.
Keyword Research
Every solid SEO strategy contains keyword research. It identifies the search words and phrases your audiences are using to find out more about healthcare services or conditions on the web. By identifying these phrases and words, you can create optimized content that will naturally rank as relevant content as it contains these phrases and addresses the concerns and questions related to them.
Content Optimization
Once you’ve identified the most crucial keywords for your area of expertise, you can move forward with optimizing your content. This means enhancing your current and future content with all these relevant phrases where they fit.
However, content optimization isn’t just about implementing keywords. There are also other, more structural optimization processes that experts also address. These include:
- Title tags: Optimizing the headlines that people see when they click on your page on Google. The title should be accurate, attention-grabbing, and have at least one targeted keyword (for example Pediatrician Practice in Miami, Florida).
- Meta descriptions: Metas are short summaries of the page’s content that show up in SERPs below your title tags. These should also contain targeted keywords.
- Alt tags: These are HTML attributes that describe images, helping Google understand them.
- Anchor text links: Anchor text is clickable underlined text that describes the page they’re linking to.
- Header tags: Subheadings help Google understand what your page and content are about.
- Text formatting: Italic and bold formatting, short and easy-to-read paragraphs, bullet points, and lists help Google understand what’s relevant in the text and make it easier for readers to skim your content.
Content Marketing
Content marketing in the healthcare industry goes far beyond crafting compelling blog posts or sharing engaging infographics. While optimizing your content for search engines is an essential piece of the puzzle, developing a comprehensive strategy requires meeting stringent standards in accuracy, compliance, and authority.
Jonathan JB Floyd, President of LeadValets likens content creation in healthcare to preparing a carefully crafted meal. He emphasizes that your content must meet the highest standards, much like a chef meticulously checks ingredients for allergens before serving a dish.
"You must ensure your content is accurate and compliant with regulations like HIPAA. This means verifying all medical information with trusted sources and safeguarding patient data privacy," he explains.
Floyd continues the metaphor, highlighting the critical role of credibility in content marketing. Just as a chef’s reputation can make or break a restaurant, he notes, “Your practice's credibility is crucial. Ensure your content demonstrates expertise and authority and is trustworthy. This involves having qualified professionals review your content and display their credentials prominently.”
Building on this,Ufuk Yalvaç, CEO of Digipeak.org, stresses the need for factually accurate, evidence-based content. He advises prioritizing material that adheres to relevant regulations and is either created or reviewed by qualified medical professionals.
Yalvaç explains, "Any medical claims must be substantiated by credible sources. This builds trust and showcases expertise." He also underscores the importance of transparency, urging businesses to clearly state that their website content is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice.
By ensuring your content is compliant, authoritative, and backed by trusted professionals, you not only enhance your brand’s credibility but also foster trust with your audience.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO addresses several aspects of your website, ensuring it meets the latest standards both in the eyes of Google and your users. By optimizing the technical and navigational aspects of your site, you ensure that Google’s job when crawling it is easy, while allowing users to quickly find the information they’re looking for.
There are several aspects of technical SEO you should keep an eye on:
- Optimized sitemaps: Optimizing your XML sitemaps helps with search engine indexing and crawling, boosting the visibility of deeply buried pages and providing valuable data for Google to understand your site better.
- Footer: Optimizing the section at the bottom of your web pages with crucial practice information such as contact details, social widgets, and other important links can help you improve user experience for users by improving navigation. This is also crucial for search engines.
- Responsiveness: Google has a mobile-first indexing philosophy, favoring sites primarily focusing on mobile traffic. Ensuring that your site is mobile-friendly and loads perfectly on every screen is a must if you want to rank high.
- Aesthetic and functional design: Your website should combine good looks with functionality. This means that apart from the aesthetics, the website should provide easy navigation and high security, make good use of whitespace, and offer useful features and online gadgets (like calculators, relevant online tests, assessments, and more) to ensure visitors have a pleasant experience.
- Fast-loading pages: Google also prioritizes speed when ranking websites. As a rule of thumb, your pages should load under three seconds to rank high and keep bounce rates optimal.
Off-Page Medical SEO
Off-page SEO refers to the processes and actions that take place outside of your site but also help its rankings on Google. The main idea behind off-page practices is to get other websites and portals to link back to your website. Each time this happens, Google treats it as proof of your credibility, trustworthiness, and reputation, helping you rank higher. These efforts can also help you drive more traffic.
But how to get started with off-page SEO? Finding the right experts is a good start, as is identifying the right type of links that are relevant to your business. This means you should focus on healthcare-related websites and other relevant directories.
Presence in Healthcare Directories
Listing your healthcare practice on directories like Healthgrades or Doximity is more than just a box to check — it’s a strategic move that can enhance your SEO efforts and drive direct traffic. These platforms are often the go-to for patients searching for healthcare providers, making them invaluable tools for visibility.
As Floyd explains, patient-generated content forms the backbone of a robust SEO strategy. "Patient-generated content, like reviews and testimonials, is the lifeblood of a medical practice’s SEO strategy," he says.
Floyd likens reviews to a "choir of voices" that shape your practice’s online perception. Positive reviews, he notes, act as "spotlights on a stage," helping your practice stand out in a crowded healthcare landscape. Search engines reward frequent, positive reviews, treating them as fresh and relevant content that improves your site’s visibility.
Alexandra Baciu, SEO Manager at Avid Panda, underscores the importance of building a strong reputation through patient reviews. Drawing from her experience, she shares, “Reviews will always be impactful and even more so within a medical context. A defining factor in securing the top three positions for one of my medical clinics’ sites was to build a strong reputation on Google.”
Baciu recounts how the clinic, which operates multiple locations, achieved nearly perfect five-star scores across all listings, significantly boosting its rankings.
Press Releases and Online Citations
Press releases and other relevant citations, for instance, in your local community, can help you boost your visibility greatly, especially in your relevant local neighborhood.
Baciu emphasizes the importance of incorporating these strategies into your link-building efforts. “Link building for medical practices should focus on securing mentions in publications that highlight the expertise of the doctors, the excellence of the clinic, and the positive impact on local communities,” she explains.
Baciu also points out the growing trend of doctors contributing their insights on medical topics. This not only positions them as thought leaders but also provides an opportunity to build natural and authoritative links. By leveraging their knowledge in articles, interviews, or commentary, practices can gain citations that boost both credibility and search engine rankings.
Being Active on Social Media
Having active social profiles can also improve your reputation and engagement efforts with your potential and existing patients. Active online community management can help you humanize your practice, build a more personal relationship with your patients, and give them a more convenient way to interact with you and your experts.
Finally, a substantial social following can boost your brand authority, which can also have a positive impact on your SEO.
Local Medical SEO
For the most part, healthcare facilities are local businesses, meaning that local SEO is a crucial aspect of their optimization approach and a pillar of their entire digital marketing strategy. One of the most important things to do when focusing on local optimization is to create and organize your Google My Business (GMB) profile.
Google My Business
A well-organized GMB profile enables your practice to show up on Google Maps. Together with your accurate, up-to-date, and detailed information, you can also improve your rankings. Google looks at relevance when determining local ranks, so listing all your services is essential.
Distance is another factor you can’t do anything about. However, there’s also prominence, which is how other users rate your practice. We talked about the importance of reviews as an off-page SEO factor, but they also play a crucial role in local optimization.
Be Consistent
Local directories and other relevant local sites are quintessential in your quest for local SEO dominance. Ensure that every detail about your practice is consistent across your site, GMB profile, all directories, and even social media channels.
Adhere to Local Best Practices
As Yalvaç points out, general local SEO best practices can also go a long way in the case of healthcare practices. He also highlights the usage of localized content that addresses the needs of the local community and using location-specific keywords that target your city, neighborhood, or county.
SEO for Doctors: Conclusion
Optimizing your practice’s online visibility takes time, experience, and knowledge, but it’s an investment that certainly pays off in the long run, as it can drive traffic to your website and establish you and your team as respectable experts in your local area. It can boost your practice’s brand authority, which is also a major driving force in differentiating you from your competition.
Just don’t forget that SEO requires expertise, patience, knowledge, and time. That said, consider partnering with an expert who can dedicate their time to bringing the most out of your practice’s online presence. This way, your digital ecosystem will grow, while you can focus on what matters the most: your patients.
Healthcare SEO FAQs
1. What are the main components of SEO?
For the most part, SEO consists of off-page, on-page, and local optimization processes that all aim to boost your site’s visibility.
2. What’s the most important aspect of healthcare SEO?
Writing expert, accurate, and patient-sensitive content that adheres to all pertaining ethical guidelines and regulations. Content is king in digital marketing, but in the case of healthcare SEO, this gets an even more profound meaning.
3. Can you exclude local SEO from your strategy?
Yes, you aren’t forced to optimize for local search, but if you are tied to a particular area (as most practices are), local optimization is your best approach to drive quality site traffic and schedule real-life appointments.
