SEO Services for Doctors: A Brief Guide
Do you want to explore digital marketing strategies to acquire new patients for your clinic? Are you looking for solutions to keep your existing patients engaged? Search engine optimization or SEO services for doctors may be the answer you're looking for.
Sapphire SEO Solutions is an affordable SEO company that has been helping clients, including medical practices, build an online presence and establish credibility since 2007. We have the skills and expertise to deploy effective SEO strategies to help your medical website stand out and compete in this ever-evolving digital landscape.
In this brief guide, we will walk you through:
The importance of SEO for healthcare services
How local medical SEO can help your practice gain more patients
What is the cost of local SEO services for doctors
Let's get started!
Key Takeaways
Understanding Medical SEO Services
Traditionally, businesses have relied on word of mouth and newspaper advertisements to gain foot traffic. However, things have changed over the years.
Businesses Are Competing in the Digital Space
As more businesses get listed online to gain visibility, competition in the digital landscape has been on the rise. To stand out in a crowded marketplace, you need to understand how the Google algorithm works and its impact on your medical malpractice.
How Google's Algorithm Works and Its Impact on Search Results
Google uses spiders to crawl your website and learn more about your business and offerings. It helps the search engine understand and recommend your content to users in search results.
That said, only the businesses that make it to the first page of the search engine results page (SERPs) experience website traffic.
According to Backlinko, the first, second, and third results on Google have a clickthrough rate (CTR) of 27.6%, 15.8%, and 11%. What does this mean for your medical practice?
You're barely getting any traffic if you're not ranking higher in the search engine rankings, especially the top three positions. This is because users are more likely to find what they want in the first few search results.
That doesn't have to be the end of it.
If you want your clinic to climb the local search results, you must consider various digital marketing strategies. This is where medical search engine optimization (SEO) comes in.
What Is Medical or Healthcare SEO?
Running Google ads can cost your medical practice a lot of money. Even after spending thousands of dollars on paid marketing, your clinic may not rank anywhere near the top three organic search results.
With a successful medical SEO strategy, you can climb higher in search rankings. It's a medical marketing technique experienced marketers use to:
Build an online presence
Establish authority
Attract potential patients
Medical search engine optimization is a term that refers to optimizing your website and making it more friendly for search engines like Google. It includes keyword research, on-page SEO, local SEO, technical SEO, and off-page SEO.
With SEO services for doctors, your website can rank higher for particular search terms. It enhances your site's online visibility by connecting you with users who have relevant search intent.
Don't worry if all of this information is going over your head. Keep on reading, as we will explain in a bit more detail using examples of how SEO can help connect providers of medical services with patients online.
What Is Local SEO for Doctors?
Did you know that the search term "cardiologist near me" has 60,500 monthly searches in the United States? The phrase "ENT near me" brings in over 90,500 searches per month. These are common keywords potential patients use to find relevant medical services online.
With more than 1 million medical practitioners in the United States, where does your clinic rank?
Local search optimization refers to SEO strategies that medical practices can use to stand out and compete with doctors or other similar healthcare providers in the area. It includes curating content for potential patients, optimizing your Google Business Profile, and focusing on link building.
Doctors can grow their medical business with effective healthcare SEO strategies. Local SEO efforts can help you:
Reach out to a larger audience
Drive more traffic
Gain more patient consultations
What's Included in SEO Services for Doctors?
Depending on the SEO agency you partner with, there are many different medical SEO services you can benefit from. They can help you become an authoritative figure in the healthcare industry.
At Sapphire SEO Solutions, our experts deploy a wide range of local SEO strategies to help your medical business website rank higher than your competitors. Here are some of our healthcare SEO services:
SEO Content Writing
Whether you're looking to refresh your existing content or add more pages to your site with SEO content writing, Sapphire SEO Solutions can help.
Our experienced, SEO-certified writers know how to curate content for your target audience. Plus, we also know how to write for search engines. We understand the importance of E-E-A-T guidelines and ensure that every project we work on adheres to the rules.
The outcome? Our approach to SEO content writing for doctors helps:
Establish your medical practice as a knowledgeable authority
Drive organic traffic to your medical practice's website
Attract patients and book more consultations
Are you looking for the best content writing services for doctors? Read our blog "Best Blog Writing Services: What to Look For and What to Avoid!" for more information on choosing the right SEO content marketing partner to take your medical practice to the next level.
Interested in SEO content writing for your medical practice? Check out the different content writing tiers we offer before placing an order through our intuitive client dashboard.
On-Page SEO
SEO goes beyond content creation. As a doctor looking to compete in the digital space, you must do more than just publish high-quality blogs or landing pages. You must also optimize some aspects of your pages to improve search engine visibility. What do we mean by that?
Simply put, on-page SEO is crucial for your medical practice. It optimizes your web content and pages by following the best SEO practices. Medical SEO companies often provide the following with such services:
Optimized headers
Keyword research
Optimized meta titles, meta descriptions, and alt texts
Content structure
Internal and external link-building
Do you really need to consider on-page SEO for your medical practice? Yes, as content without on-page SEO will barely rank. There are many benefits of on-page SEO for doctors, and they are as follows:
Improved search engine rankings
Increased online visibility
Better user experience
Increased conversions
Greater return on investment (ROI)
Sapphire SEO Solutions has a proven track record of helping small businesses rank higher. Our affordable on-page SEO services can help your medical practice climb higher in local search rankings. They include the following:
Researching and targeting relevant medical keywords
Free FAQs or People May Ask
Optimized headers
Click-worthy SEO-friendly meta titles, meta descriptions, and alt texts
Optimized high-quality images
Easy-to-understand content structure
Off-Page SEO
When it comes to effective medical SEO strategies, off-page SEO plays a crucial role in boosting your site's authority. What does this mean for your medical practice?
Off-page SEO tells search engines that your website is important to others. It refers to strategies used outside your website to improve search engine rankings, build authority, and improve credibility.
In short, off-page SEO includes:
Brand mentions
Building backlinks
Implementing social media strategies
Fun fact: Off-page SEO is also referred to as off-site SEO and influences how people see and engage with your website.
At Sapphire SEO Solutions, we understand the importance of off-page SEO for medical practices and its role in online reputation management.
Our medical SEO experts can help you earn authoritative backlinks and brand mentions while promoting your clinic on social media platforms to establish credibility.
Sapphire SEO Solutions offers the following off-page SEO services and much more:
Building backlinks
Earning brand mentions
Creating engaging content for other sites
Running social media campaigns
Online reputation management
Online reviews management
Technical SEO
As we've mentioned earlier, SEO for doctors is more than just creating compelling content for healthcare websites. You want your site visitors to have the best possible experience. This ensures higher patient engagement and conversion rates.
Website performance is an essential factor in search engine rankings. Many medical marketing experts know about SEO campaigns, internal linking, and even backlinks. What they fail to focus on is website optimization for better user experience.
Think about it this way: A person suffering from heart problems discovers your website and the medical procedure you carry out to cure such ailments. However, slow-loading content, broken links, and poor mobile viewing experience cause him to look elsewhere. This is lost revenue that you could've generated had you focused on technical optimization.
Technical SEO ensures that your visitors have the best experience on every page. It includes optimizing images, page loading speed, internal links, and structured data markup, among other things.
The digital marketing experts at Sapphire SEO Solutions are well-equipped to handle all of your technical SEO needs. Whether it's optimizing page loading speed or adding structured data markup, our team will make sure your website offers an exceptional experience to visitors.
Local SEO
Local SEO can significantly increase foot traffic to your clinic. It's a digital marketing strategy designed to help your medical practice appear in local search results and attract nearby patients.
How does it work?
When someone searches for "medical services nearby" on Google or other search engines, they're shown a list of providers located close to them.
If your clinic doesn't have a Google Business Profile or isn't listed in online directories, it likely won't appear in those local search results. That means you could be missing out on valuable traffic and potential revenue.
Local SEO is more than just optimizing Google Business Profile or being listed in online directories. At Sapphire SEO Solutions, our SEO experts will:
Conduct a full local SEO audit to identify issues and areas of improvement
Identify and target the right local keywords for your medical practice
Optimize your website and its content so that it aligns with local search
Build links from reputable local businesses and organizations in the medical industry
Regularly monitor and track the performance of your local SEO campaigns
How to Find the Best SEO Services for Doctors
Now that you know more about SEO services for doctors, you may be tempted to schedule a consultation with a results-driven SEO agency. That said, there are many companies out there that overpromise and underdeliver.
So, how do you find the best SEO services for doctors? Well, the process of partnering up with a reputable SEO agency can be a long one. Typically, you would want to follow the five steps below:
Check the medical SEO agency's reputation
Schedule a free consultation
Request a full SEO audit of your medical practice's website
Choose the SEO services you're interested in
Sign the contract
If you want to learn more about these steps, go over to our blog, "Finding the Best SEO Company for Doctors — What to Know!" where we explain how you can find the best healthcare SEO agency for your medical practice.
How Much Do SEO Services for Doctors Cost?
SEO agencies can have different pricing models. Some may charge a flat monthly retainer fee for a list of SEO services for doctors, while others may have fixed-price contracts for various tasks. You'll even come across SEO agencies that charge by the hour during your search.
So, what should you expect to pay for SEO services for your medical practice?
The cost of SEO services for doctors varies from one digital marketing company to another. Typically, most SEO agencies charge between $1,000 to $5,000 a month. However, depending on your goals and the scope of services required, the cost can reach tens of thousands of dollars.
That's ridiculous, right?
SEO services for medical providers shouldn't cost an arm and a leg. If you spend most of your monthly budget on search engine optimization, how are you going to run your clinic or medical practice? This is where we come in.
Sapphire SEO Solutions offers affordable SEO services to healthcare providers and medical clinics. We understand the daily financial struggle small businesses go through. That's because we are a small business ourselves. But that doesn't stop us from achieving big results.
At Sapphire SEO Solutions, our experts will handle all of your healthcare SEO needs, whether it is local search engine optimization or fixing technical issues. We charge a fraction of the price without compromising the quality of our services.
Are You Interested in SEO Services for Doctors? Get a Free SEO Quote Today!
Partner with Sapphire SEO Solutions and take your medical practice to new heights. Our experts will help your business rank higher in local search results. Call us or fill out an online form to get a free SEO quote today!