SEO for Doctors: How to Attract More Patients with a Smarter Search Strategy

In today’s digital-first world, patients turn to Google for doctor referrals more frequently than they rely on word-of-mouth referrals. In fact, 75% of patients now search for doctors, dentists, and other healthcare providers online first. 

Considering search engines are the first stop on the patient journey, your doctor’s practice must be visible and ranking on Google and other search engines. This is only possible with search engine optimization (SEO).

SEO is a critical part of your digital front door strategy that involves improving your medical practice’s online presence to boost ranking on search engine results pages and ensure you appear before the right people at the right time. A strong SEO strategy will attract new patients, drive appointment requests, and drive measurable practice growth.

Below, we get into everything you need to know about SEO for doctors to build a trustworthy digital reputation. 

Why do doctors need SEO?

SEO allows you to appear organically on search results, ensuring you stand out to potential patients and giving you an edge over competitors. It helps you appear before patients looking for a nearby clinic, comparing doctors, or researching symptoms. 

There are many advantages of SEO for doctors’ practices, among them:

• It allows people in need of healthcare services and searching for keywords like “[city name] hospital” or “doctor in [your city]” to find you easily. 
• It levels the playing field for smaller practices to compete with big hospitals and franchises.
• It builds your trust and reputation online to results in a better ranking.
• It allows you to grow your practice in a smart and sustainable way.
• It encourages more visitors to book appointments and increases conversions. 
• It boosts your brand awareness and makes your doctors’ practice more relatable. 
• It drives measurable results, such as more site traffic and appointment bookings.

Top 10 SEO techniques for doctors

Having a well-designed website for your doctor’s practice is just the first step to being found online. The following SEO best practices will help you whether you’re launching a new practice, looking to grow your patient volume, or promoting niche services. 

1. Optimize for local search optimization

Local SEO involves optimizing your healthcare practice to appear on more local searches, such as “pediatrician near me” or “emergency medical center now.” It also ensures you appear in the Google “Local-3 Pack,” which is the first three businesses patients see when they search for “doctors near me” or doctor in [specific location]”.

Optimizing for Local SEO is essential today because “near me” searches have increased by over 500% in the past few years. Additionally, there has been a 200% increase in mobile searches that open with keyword phrases like “open near me now.”

Optimizing your doctor’s website for local SEO typically involves:

• Claim your Google Business Profile (GBP): Claiming and verifying your GBP helps you gain access to local patient acquisition opportunities. It involves displaying consistent name, address, and phone (NAP) details and updated office hours, services, images, and patient reviews. 
• Encouraging and managing online reviews: Reviews influence your GBP’s listing placement, with businesses with higher star ratings and more reviews getting the top spots. They also act as a vote of confidence in your practice. 
• Optimize for voice search: Considering 55% of consumers use voice search to find local businesses, your website should be voice search optimized. One way to do this is to use more conversational language, such as “Who’s the best cardiologist near [city]?” instead of “Best cardiologist near [city]?”
• Localize your site content: It helps to have dedicated website pages for your different service areas and include your city, county, and region throughout your site. 

2. Use medical SEO keywords strategically

When you’re creating new content, it’s important that you focus on one topic per page. That keeps your pages laser-focused, so people only read about what they want to know.

Each page on your medical website should focus on a keyword, or a search term that’s relevant to the people you want to attract. 

For example, if you want to attract patients who are close to your practice, you could create a page focused on the keyword “doctor’s office in [your town].” Then, when someone near you wants to find a doctor’s office, they’ll see your page pop up. That page could then discuss the area you serve, why you operate in that area, and how you help the people around you.

You also need service pages that target specific keywords. For instance, if your run a dermatology practice, you need different service pages targeting different keywords, such as general dermatology services, acne treatment, skin cancer screening, mole checks, eczema, and cosmetic dermatology.

With these keywords incorporated strategically throughout your website, patients looking for solutions to the different conditions can find them right on your website. Besides, when you create this kind of informative content, Google and other search engines have a better idea of what your page discusses, and they can rank it more accurately.

Aside from the body text, you should also use your keywords in the title tag, meta description, and headings of your page. The title tag and meta description show up on Google whenever your page ranks for a specific search. These are the first elements a user sees about your page.

3. Create localized, service-focused content

Part of attracting new patients online is creating a full, robust website that offers something to readers.

That means offering information based on your expertise. For example, you can write about how to avoid getting sick during flu season, how parents can recognize illnesses in a child, or why it’s important to schedule regular checkups with your doctor.

Creating online content, whether blog posts, articles, infographics, or videos, establishes you as a knowledgeable authority on health issues. After all, if you earned your medical degree, you know more than most people about how to stay healthy, and sharing will help you reach new potential patients. 

An effective content marketing strategy for your medical practice that improves your SEO should:

• Answer common patient questions such as “Is it strep or a cold?” or “What kind of doctor treats migraines?”
• Create educational content that supports Google’s E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) guidelines.
• Incorporate local SEO terms in your content, such as “We provide pediatric care in [City]”.
• Use a variety of content formats, including comprehensive guides, short and long-form videos, or graphic social media posts.
• Create content for patients at different points of their journeys, including those researching symptoms, comparing providers, or ready to make an appointment. 
• Include clear calls to action (CTAs) to gently nudge patients towards the next steps, such as calling your office or booking an appointment 

4. Implement on-page SEO best practices

On-page SEO involves various practices to ensure your website is visible on search engines and valuable to potential patients. It gives you direct control over how the content on your website appears to improve user experience.

Some on-page SEO best practices that’ll help you increase search engine rankings and patient acquisition include:

• Use keyword-rich page titles and meta descriptions to increase click-through rates to your website.
• Optimize your headers with keywords and location keywords to help people understand your page structure.
• Avoid keyword stuffing because it makes your pages unreadable and negates the user experience.
• Use internal links to connect related pages on your website, such as the homepage of your pediatric website to main service pages, such as immunizations or adolescent medicine.
• Add clear CTAs like “Request your telehealth consultation” or “Call now to book your consultation.”

5. Earn backlinks from reputable health sites

If you want search engines to perceive your website as a high-quality, reputable, and relevant website, you need to get other websites to link to you. Links from other websites act as votes of confidence, and the more sites vouch for you, the better Google will rank you in search results.

The reasoning behind this is that you must’ve created something unique, informative, helpful, or otherwise great to earn a link from another site. But it’s important to only get links from other reputable websites. Too many links from spam sites, and Google may actually demote you in rankings.

Focus on getting backlinks to reputable and authoritative health sites, organizations, and medical directories. It also helps your local SEO if you get backlinks from local healthcare-specific sites such as your city’s chamber of commerce and websites for local businesses you partner with or other organizations whose events you sponsor. 

The secondary reason this is important is that links from other sites drive traffic to your front door. So, if someone clicks a link to your site from somewhere else, you have the chance to turn them into paying patients.

6. Fix technical website issues

As Sarah says, technical SEO is like peanut butter in a peanut butter and jelly sandwich! Without technical SEO, all your SEO efforts will go unnoticed because your site won’t rank high on search engines, and neither will it deliver a good user experience.

Technical SEO comprises the behind-the-scenes elements of your website that allow search engines like Google to crawl, index, and rank your website. Implementing technical SEO ensures your website is mobile-friendly, fast, and secure.

But what does technical SEO actually involve? Here are some technical SEO best practices:

• Use a responsive, mobile-friendly design that easily adjusts to all devices.
• Ensure a fast navigation with logical page hierarchies, breadcrumbs links, and clear menus.
• Use HTTPS to secure your site and ensure patients get encrypted connections.
• Submit XML site maps to Google Search Console to ensure your website is indexed correctly.
• Implement healthcare-related schema to boost search listings.
• Avoid duplicating content with canonical tags to assist with ranking.

You can learn more about how to optimize technical SEO for your doctor’s website with our free downloadable technical SEO guide. 

7. Collect and manage online reviews

Reputation management is crucial for gaining trust because patients view online reviews as a trust signal from others who’ve experienced your care. Patient reviews are also a ranking signal, and a high number of positive reviews boosts your visibility on local results. 

According to recent statistics, 94% of patients read online reviews first before settling on a doctor and 70% admit they only choose doctors with 4-start reviews and above. Online reputational management ensures that your online ratings and feedback support what you’re saying about your practice.

It involves the following measured steps:

• Monitor what patients are saying and where, like feedback submitted on the website, Google Business Profile, and third-party review sites.
• Encourage happy customers to leave honest feedback after appointments with automated follow-up texts, emails, QR codes, and in-office signage.
• Respond to positive and negative reviews promptly and professionally. This involves ensuring HIPAA-compliant responses and addressing patients with empathy.
• Request Google to remove inaccurate, false, defamatory, fake, or spam reviews that could be painting a bad image of your practice and tanking your rankings.

8. Track your SEO results

Even when you implement all the above SEO best practices for your doctor’s practice, you can’t’ afford not to track and measure results. Monitoring and tracking your results determines what’s working and what’s not. 

Generally, it provides insight into which pages get the most visits or the keywords that are driving traffic. For effective tracking, you need to monitor key metrics, like appointment form submissions, phone call clicks, and direction requests. 

Tracking your appointment conversion rate justifies how many leads turned into appointments and real patients. There are many tools, you can use to track SEO results, including Google Analytics and Google Search Console.

When you partner with WebFX for all your SEO needs, we make tracking results seamless with our award-winning results tracking software — RevenueCloudFX. The tool centralizes your data, attributes leads to marketing efforts, and deliver closed-loop ROI reporting, enabling you to make data-driven decisions for your SEO campaigns. 

Acquire more patients with SEO for doctors

WebFX is a reliable SEO agency specializing in helping healthcare professionals grow their practice with search engine optimization. In our 25+ years of experience, we’ve helped hundreds of medical practices increase visibility, attract more patients, and improve appointment conversion rates. 

Our SEO services for doctors ensure HIPAA-compliance and patient-centric strategies that build trust and drive measurable results for your medical practice. Our 230+ health industry experts understand SEO, your industry, and your patients, giving you a competitive edge.

Request a free SEO quote for your doctor’s practice, or give us a call at 888-256-9448 to talk to a strategist about your SEO needs.