Essential SEO Strategies for Doctors

The digital footprint of a medical practice is not just an extension of its physical presence; it’s often the first point of contact between doctors and potential patients. With a growing number of patients turning to the internet to seek medical advice, research symptoms, and find local healthcare providers, search engine optimization (SEO) isn’t just a beneficial tool but a fundamental necessity for doctors and healthcare providers aiming to connect with their community and beyond.

Below, we’ll delve into why SEO is crucial for healthcare providers — exploring patient search behaviors and the impact of local SEO — and provide practical tips for optimizing your online presence.

Why SEO Is Crucial for Healthcare Providers

Healthcare marketing has undergone a seismic shift in recent years. Now, more than ever, a solid online presence is not just beneficial; it’s a vital component of a practice’s survival and growth. 

Understanding Patient Search Behavior

Many healthcare seekers turn to the internet to find answers to their health-related queries, scout for local practitioners, and seek solutions to their medical needs. This quest for health information isn’t a trend — it’s now a staple in how patients interact with the healthcare system.

Understanding this behavior is critical. Most patients don’t scroll past the first page of search results, making high search engine rankings pivotal. Practices at the top of search engine results pages (SERPs) are more likely to be clicked on, visited, and ultimately chosen by prospective patients. Therefore, understanding and aligning your SEO strategy with how patients search for healthcare services online is essential. This involves identifying the right keywords, understanding the intent behind searches, and crafting content that meets these needs.

Local SEO: Connecting with Community Patients

For healthcare providers, local SEO is the cornerstone of their digital strategy. It’s about more than just being found online; it’s about being found by the right people – those in your vicinity who are your potential patients. Optimizing for local SEO means that when someone in your area searches for a healthcare provider, your practice appears prominently in search results.

The impact of local SEO is profound. It can significantly enhance the visibility of your practice in local search queries, such as “doctors near me” or “best pediatrician in [Your City].” 

Local SEO leverages elements like localized keywords, Google Business Profile listings, and local backlinks, making your practice more accessible and visible to those most likely to visit. This targeted approach not only boosts your online presence but also drives foot traffic, leading to an increase in patient consultations and community trust.

Critical Components of SEO for Doctors

For healthcare providers looking to enhance their online presence through SEO, getting started might seem daunting. However, by breaking it down into manageable steps, you can methodically improve your website’s search engine rankings and attract more patients. Here’s how to begin.

1. Conduct a Website Audit

The first step in any SEO strategy is to understand where you currently stand. Conducting a comprehensive website audit allows you to assess the strengths and weaknesses of your existing online presence. This audit should cover website structure, content quality, mobile friendliness, page loading speed, keyword optimization, backlink profile, and more.

Learn more about how to run an SEO audit here. Not sure which tools you’ll need? Check out our list of audit tools.

2. Set Realistic SEO Goals

Once you understand your website’s current state, you can set realistic and measurable SEO goals. These goals should be SMART — specific, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. Examples might include improving the ranking for certain keywords, increasing organic traffic by a certain percentage, or enhancing local search visibility.

It’s important to remember that SEO is a long-term strategy. Immediate results are rare, so setting realistic timelines and being patient is key. Regularly monitor your progress and adjust your strategy as needed. This might involve refining your keywords, updating content, or improving technical aspects of your website.

Check out our tips for SMART SEO goals here.

3. Build an Effective SEO Plan

With your goals in place, you can start building a comprehensive SEO plan. This plan should include a variety of tactics, such as content creation, keyword optimization, improving website user experience, and building backlinks. Practices that offer services at a particular location should also incorporate local SEO tactics into their plans.

Research Keywords & Optimize Pages

The foundation of a successful SEO strategy lies in keyword optimization. For healthcare providers, this means identifying and targeting keywords specific to the medical field and their services. 

First, you’ll need to do keyword research to understand what terms and phrases potential patients are searching for when looking for healthcare services.

Keywords can range from general terms like “family doctor” or “pediatrician” to more specific ones like “diabetes treatment in [Location]” or “emergency dental care.” We offer keyword research tips here.

Once you identify terms that align with your services, you should map them to particular pages and strategically integrate them into the page titles, descriptions, headers, and content, ensuring you use them naturally and contextually. This not only helps search engines understand the relevance of your site to specific queries but also makes it more likely that your site will appear in search results when potential patients are looking for the services you offer.

Create New Content

If you don’t have pages for each of your locations or services, you’ll want to create new content to make it easier for people to find your practice. Each page should have its own keyword theme. For example, if you offer allergy testing and help people with snoring issues, you should have two pages: one focused on keywords related to allergy testing services and one about snoring. 

The heart of a good content strategy lies in its patient-centric approach. Content should be designed to address the needs, concerns, and questions of your patients. This involves producing articles, blog posts, and other forms of content that provide valuable information about various health conditions, treatments, preventive care, and wellness tips.

Such content should be easy to understand, avoiding medical jargon that could confuse laypersons. Including patient testimonials, case studies, and frequently asked questions (FAQs) can also add value, giving potential patients a glimpse into the care and services you offer. Additionally, it’s important to keep this content updated, reflecting the latest advancements and trends in healthcare.

To highlight your expertise, we recommend regularly publishing blog posts for potential patients. These posts should relate to your primary services in some way and link back to that page. An allergist could create content about common allergens, how to get rid of dust mites, and how to manage seasonal allergies. These posts could then link to their allergy testing page. This type of layout is known as the hub and spoke content model.

Establish a Healthcare Provider Business Profile

Google allows individual doctors and other medical professionals to maintain a Business Profile. Medical practices may also have a business profile. Creating a Google Business Profile is essential for improving online visibility for local searches and patient engagement. It’s a critical component of a local SEO strategy.

Creating a Google Business Profile for a Medical Practice

Google the name of your practice in Chrome while signed into the Gmail account you want associated with your Profile. If a profile shows up for your practice, click “Claim profile.” You can also do this on Google Maps. You should now be able to edit the profile.

If someone else has already claimed your profile, you can ask them to add you as a user.

If no profile exists, you can create one by signing in to Google Business Profile Manager with the google account you want associated with it. 

Click “Add your business to Google” and enter your medical practice’s name. If it appears in the dropdown, select it; otherwise, continue adding new information.

Once you have access to the profile, select the most appropriate category for your medical practice to help Google match your business with relevant searches.

Indicate whether you have a physical location patients can visit. If so, provide the address. If not, select “No.”

If you have a physical location, you can also specify service areas if you offer services at the patient’s location.

Add contact details. Provide your business phone number and website URL. When asked, include business hours and services.

Lastly, choose a verification method to confirm ownership of the business. The most common method is by postcard.

Learn more about setting up and optimize a Google Business Profile.

For information about adding multiple locations at once or further guidance from Google, see here.

Creating a Google Business Profile for Individual Practitioners

Individual practitioners (e.g., doctors, therapists) should create their own profiles if they operate within a medical practice, ensuring patients can find them specifically.

Follow the same steps outlined above. When customizing your profile, in addition to the practice’s services, highlight specific services you offer. Include professional headshots and any personal branding elements.

Regularly update your profile with any changes. Encourage patients to leave reviews based on their experiences with you specifically.

Additional Tips for Individual Practitioners

• Distinct Profiles: If you work at multiple locations, you can have a profile for each location. Ensure the information is specific to each practice location.
• Practice and Practitioner Profiles: If a practice has a profile, individual practitioners within the practice can also have their profiles. This helps patients find both the practice and individual providers.
• Name Consistency: Use the same name format across all profiles to maintain consistency and avoid confusion among patients.

Build Local Backlinks

Backlinks, which are links from other websites to yours, play a significant role in SEO. They act as a vote of confidence from one site to another, indicating to Google that your content is valuable and credible. 

For healthcare providers, building a strong backlink profile can involve getting featured in local healthcare directories, collaborating with other medical professionals or institutions for guest posts, and participating in community events that might lead to online mentions.

Quality is key when it comes to backlinks. Links from reputable, authoritative websites in the healthcare industry can significantly boost your site’s authority and rankings. 

Understanding YMYL for Healthcare SEO

Google holds Your Money Your Life (YMYL) pages to a higher standard. Inaccurate content on these pages is believed to impact searchers’ money (financial decisions, investments, etc.) or life (healthcare, wellness, etc.). Thus it’s critical to showcase your expertise and authority to rank in these industries.

Given the sensitive nature of healthcare information, almost all content on healthcare providers’ websites falls into this category. Understanding how search engines evaluate these pages is essential for creating an effective SEO strategy that prioritizes patient trust and information accuracy.

The Importance of E-E-A-T in YMYL Pages

E-E-A-T, standing for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness, is a set of criteria Google uses to assess the quality of pages. It plays an outsized role in YMYL pages. For healthcare providers, this means that your website’s content must be created or reviewed by professionals with verifiable credentials in the medical field. This ensures the information is accurate, reliable, and trustworthy from a patient’s perspective.

Improving the E-E-A-T of your website involves several strategies:

• Showcasing Credentials: Clearly display the qualifications of your healthcare professionals and authors of the content.
• Citing Reputable Sources: Reference authoritative sources, such as peer-reviewed medical journals or government health sites, to substantiate the information provided.
• Maintaining Up-to-Date Information: Regularly review and update content to reflect the latest healthcare research and guidelines.

Enhancing Trust Through Transparent Communication

Transparency is key for YMYL content. This includes providing clear contact information, privacy policies, and disclaimers where necessary. It’s also important to offer patients an easy way to verify the information through citations and links to authoritative sources.

Feedback mechanisms, such as comment sections or contact forms, can also enhance trustworthiness by showing that you value patient engagement and are open to addressing concerns or questions about the content.

Mitigating Risks With Quality Content

Given the heightened scrutiny applied to YMYL pages, healthcare providers must be diligent in creating high-quality content. This means avoiding sensationalist or alarmist tones and focusing on providing balanced, well-researched information. Content should help patients make informed decisions about their health without inducing unnecessary fear or anxiety.

Additionally, avoid any SEO practices that could be perceived as manipulative or deceptive. This not only risks penalization by search engines but could also undermine patient trust in your practice.

Incorporating an understanding of YMYL pages and the importance of E-E-A-T in your SEO strategy is not just about improving search rankings; it’s about fulfilling a responsibility to provide accurate, helpful, and trustworthy information to patients. As healthcare providers, the impact of your online content extends far beyond search engine performance to the very well-being of the individuals you aim to serve.

Partnering With SEO Professionals

Marketing is essential for getting your practice local visibility, but it shouldn’t take away time for your patients. Partner with a healthcare SEO agency experienced in helping medical professionals increase their local and regional visibility.

Schedule a free SEO consultation or check out the following SEO case studies for more information about how we partner with medical organizations to drive growth.

• Blink Health
• Eden Health
• Citron Hennessey