Why medical SEO is its own discipline
Most people reading this are a practice owner, a partner or a practice manager partway through comparing providers. You already know what SEO is. What you need to judge is whether an agency understands how medical practices get chosen well enough to be trusted with your phone line and your new patient enquiries.
Medical search reaches a practice from several directions at once:
- someone who already knows your practice name and wants to check your doctors and opening hours
- someone searching for a condition or a service they have just been referred for
- someone searching by suburb because they are new to the area
- someone comparing two practices with both websites open in other tabs
Each of those people needs a different page and a different next step. We plan for them separately. Planning starts with a question about which of these people your practice most wants to see more of, and the answer decides which pages are built first.
What we do
Our medical SEO work covers two areas.
Service and condition search. Deciding which services and conditions your site should compete for. Each one gets its own page, written so it can rank for the search it targets and so a patient who lands on it knows what is offered and how to book.
On-site content and technical foundations. Site structure, internal linking, crawlability, page speed, and copy written in your practice's own voice and aimed at the patients you want to see.
Local search is handled through our Google Business Profile service. This page covers search for your services and conditions.
Why the website comes first
Search brings a person to a page. What they do next depends on the website. If the page loads slowly or is awkward to book from, more visitors just means more people leaving.
The foundation comes first, then growth. Foundation work covers the pages a patient lands on, the way services are described, and the route to booking. Growth work builds new pages and visibility around the services you want more of. For some practices the foundation is a short list of fixes made before any new content goes live. For others it is a full rebuild, which we discuss as a separate project in medical website design and build.
What to expect, and what SEO won't do
SEO is build and earn. Rankings build over time as the work is carried out.
The sequence runs in order. Foundation work comes first: the pages a patient lands on, the services they describe, and the route to booking. Content and new service pages follow once that foundation is in place. We do not attach a number or a date to any stage of this.
What SEO will not do:
- It will not guarantee a position, and we will not put a figure on one.
- It will not help a practice that has no room to see more patients. If your books are full, this is the wrong spend.
- It will not rescue a website that cannot convert the visits it earns.
- It will not replace your other marketing. It is one channel doing one job.
What we need from you:
- access to your website and analytics
- decisions made without long gaps
- a clear picture of your capacity and the patients you most want to see more of
How the work runs
We start by learning what the practice wants more of. That means which services, which doctors and which patients matter most commercially, and what the current website does with the visits it already gets.
The foundation comes next, so the pages a patient reaches are clear about the services offered, the doctors and the way to book. Once that is in place, visibility is built around the services and conditions that matter.
You can read more about how we work before deciding whether that approach suits your practice.
Where SEO fits alongside your other marketing
SEO is one channel. Search work and paid advertising answer different questions, so it helps to see them side by side before choosing. If you are weighing SEO against paid ads, email and other channels, the whole picture sits on our medical marketing page. If you want search work for a business outside healthcare, start with our SEO service.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does medical SEO cost?
It depends on the condition of your website, how competitive your area is, how many services and locations you want to compete for, and how much foundation work is already done. We scope it against what your practice is trying to achieve. Bring your situation to a strategy call and we will scope it with you.
How does SEO work with our Google Business Profile and local search?
Local search is handled through our Google Business Profile service. This page covers search for your services and conditions.
Book a strategy call
The call is a conversation about your practice. We look at what your website is doing now, what the search picture looks like for your area and services, and whether SEO is the right next move for you. We will say plainly if something else needs attention first.
It suits practices that are already running well and have room to see more patients. If that sounds like yours, book a strategy call.