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In this guide, you will discover why SEO for medical practices is important to increase website visibility and online traffic.

So you've set up your medical practice and you're looking at different ways to get the attention of potential patients online. You may advertise in local media, incorporate a pay-per-click campaign or rely on word-of-mouth referrals.

But these approaches may not be enough to create enough brand awareness and give you a competitive advantage in the digital age. In my experience working with medical practices, I've found that search engine optimization is the strategy to most effectively boost your website visibility and online traffic.

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What is SEO for Medical Practices?

Why SEO for Medical Practices is Important?

Medical practice SEO is a type of digital marketing that helps medical practices increase their visibility in search engines.

SEO can propel your healthcare business to the top of search results on Google, Yahoo, Bing, or similar search engines. However, the goal is not just to rank high on the search engine results pages. You want organic visibility to drive more quality traffic to your website. With quality traffic, more patients who find your site through search engines will actually be interested in your healthcare services or information.

The specific SEO strategies used for medical practices vary widely (which is why all medical practice SEO is NOT created equal).

These SEO strategies include:

- Keyword research
- On-page SEO
- Off-page SEO
- Local SEO for doctors
- Google Maps SEO optimization
- Landing page creation
- Content creation
- and more

Why is SEO Important for Medical Practices?

SEO is a perfect fit for how many patients find their doctor or search for health information online today. Without it, you'd be missing out on huge opportunities to get patients looking for your healthcare services. That's not to say that referrals are obsolete, but patients now use online resources twice as much as referrals. To get your medical practice in front of these prospects, you need a high SERP ranking.

A high ranking is necessary because most search engine users only pay attention to the first few organic results on Google. In fact, the top five organic results get about 68% of all clicks.

Key Benefits of SEO for your Healthcare Practice

High-quality leads: SEO generates high-quality leads because it allows you to target a specific segment of patients interested in your healthcare services. For example, when a user searches for "primary care near me" on Google, your relevant business pages can appear on the SERPs if they are properly optimized for that search phrase. Thus, the majority of patients who see your medical practice on the SERPs are most likely in need of your medical services. The likelihood of these prospects engaging and converting when they visit your clinic's website is high.

Brand Awareness: Your practice's website links will not always be clicked every time they appear on the first page of search engine results. However, consistently occupying one of the top few spots in the SERPs is always beneficial because it helps build brand awareness. Consistent exposure is what your practice needs to stay firmly in the minds of potential patients.

Long-term affordability: While paid advertising is an option for medical practitioners, it is usually more expensive than SEO in the long run. You may initially incur SEO fees to get significant organic traffic, but that's about it. If you've published highly optimized content, you can count on it to generate more organic traffic and continue to attract new patients for a long time. Since you're not paying for every click, SEO is worth the investment, even after factoring in the costs of updating your medical content.

Brand Authority: SEO builds brand authority - a critical success factor for healthcare businesses. This is because Google cares about user experience and takes note of the fact that more patients visit your site from relevant search results. With high levels of patient engagement on your web pages, Google establishes that you are an expert in the field that provides meaningful healthcare products or services to your online visitors. This is how you build your brand authority through SEO and gain the trust of potential patients.

Grow your Medical Practice & Attract more Patients with SEO

Here are some SEO strategies you can implement to improve your website ranking:

- Publish useful content that answers potential patients' search engine queries.
- Publish keyword-optimized content so that your website and services are ranked according to the search intent of target patients.
- Optimize your content and website for local search, as most patients seek medical help at facilities close to home.
- Build high-quality backlinks to improve your SERP rankings and increase organic traffic to your website.

How Long Does it Take for Medical Practice SEO to Work?

Medical practice SEO can take anywhere from 1 week to 6 months before you start seeing results. This depends on a variety of things:

- The size of the city you are in.
- The domain authority of your website.
- How long has your website been in existence?
- The effectiveness of your current SEO.
- and much more.

If you have no time to do SEO for your healthcare business, you can check out these services on google ranking local SEO.

What Medical Practice SEO KPIs Should you Track?

Medical practice SEO needs to be meticulously tracked.

You want to be absolutely certain that the money you invest in SEO is working for your medical practice.

For this reason, there are certain metrics you need to follow to ensure the campaign is working:

Keyword ranking: Are you ranking on page 1 of Google for your most important keywords? How do your keyword rankings change from week to week? From one month to the next?

Organic website traffic: Is your website's organic traffic from Google increasing or decreasing? Which keywords are driving more traffic to your website?

Online lead submissions: Are you seeing more leads online? How are they growing from month to month?

Phone calls: Are you receiving more phone calls from people searching on Google? How are phone calls changing over time?

SEO for Medical Practices - Summary

This was an overview of why SEO for medical practices is important to increase website visibility and online traffic.

Medical practice SEO is important because it allows you to reach your target audience (people looking for a new doctor NOW).

Think about how social media marketing for medical practices works: People scroll through Instagram or Facebook and come across an ad for a medical practice in their city. They could be actively searching for a doctor or general medical practice, but that's pretty unlikely.

Instead, SEO puts you in front of motivated people who are looking for what you have to offer:

SEO for medical practices allows you to appear on Google for people who are actively searching for a medical practice. People who are looking for the "best medical office near me" or "medical office in San Bernardino". Ranking for these keywords has a MUCH higher conversion than people scrolling on Instagram.

An effective SEO strategy for medical practices involves publishing relevant, keyword-optimized content on your standard web pages, blogs, and landing pages. By utilizing the right keywords that patients looking for on Google, you can increase your medical practice's online visibility and website engagement, which will help you attract more new patients.