Healthcare SEO: The Definitive Guide to Medical SEO (original) (raw)

Key Takeaways

What is healthcare SEO? Healthcare SEO is the process of optimizing a medical website for search engines to improve visibility in organic search results through keyword research, content creation, page speed optimization, and other techniques.
Why is healthcare SEO important for medical practices? Healthcare SEO helps medical practices reach patients actively searching for services, target relevant local audiences, tap into over 70,000 health-related Google queries per minute, and deliver measurable results like patient conversions and new hires.
How does medical SEO differ from other industries? Medical SEO requires compliance with healthcare regulations like HIPAA and must demonstrate E-E-A-T (Expertise, Experience, Authority, and Trustworthiness) since health content can influence major life decisions and falls under Google’s Your Money, Your Life (YMYL) category.
What are essential healthcare SEO strategies? Key strategies include claiming local listings like Google Business Profile, targeting long-tail keywords with specific intent, involving medical experts in content creation, improving page experience and site speed, securing sites with HTTPS, and streamlining website architecture.
How much do healthcare SEO services cost? Healthcare SEO services typically cost 1,500to1,500 to 1,500to5,000 per month on average, with pricing varying based on the SEO provider, strategy complexity, and specific business needs, though custom quotes provide the most accurate estimates.

What is healthcare SEO?

Healthcare SEO is optimizing a medical website for search engines to improve the site’s visibility in organic search results. Common optimizations include keyword research, content creation, page speed optimization, and more.

Get started with healthcare SEO to grow your medical practice, dermatology, or healthcare center. Medical SEO can attract patients, talent, investors, and more through the web. Learn how to do SEO for healthcare (or get professional help with medical SEO services) in this definitive guide!

What is healthcare SEO?

Healthcare SEO infographic

Reasons why healthcare SEO is important and how to get started.

View full infographic on Medical SEO

Why is healthcare SEO important?

Healthcare SEO is important for a few reasons, including the following:

Reach: With SEO for medical practices and health centers, you can reach the people looking for you — right when they need you. SEO uses keywords to target different intents, like someone looking to switch providers, find emergency services, or something else.
Relevancy: Through keyword targeting, your center can focus on the people most important to your center. For example, if you’re an urgent care center, you’ll likely want to reach people in your area searching for immediate care vs. people in your area looking for an insurance provider.
Research: Health is one of the most popular niches in search. Google alone receives over 70,000 health related queries each minute! Building up your organization’s visibility in search will allow you to reach more people and provide more care.
Results: Healthcare SEO delivers real, measurable results like other digital marketing strategies. Through its reach and relevancy, your organization can reach the most relevant and qualified users and convert them into patients, clients, or employees.

In our decades of experience as an SEO service provider, we’ve helped dozens of organizations in the healthcare sector, from medical practices to healthcare centers to insurance companies, use search engine optimization to achieve their goals, so we can speak first-hand to its importance.

How is medical SEO different from SEO for other markets?

Medical SEO differs from performing SEO in other markets, like ecommerce, because it’s a more regulated market. For example, your organization must consider healthcare regulations like the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) in your search engine optimization efforts.

That’s why many providers in the healthcare sector benefit from partnering with the best medical SEO companies with extensive experience. Their experience can ensure your organization doesn’t make any legal missteps while optimizing your site.

What is healthcare SEO?

How to do SEO for healthcare companies

Learn how to get started with healthcare SEO below:

Claim your local listings
Focus your keyword research on long-tail keywords
Make your content helpful with E-E-A-T
Improve your website’s page experience
Secure your site with HTTPS
Streamline your website architecture

Step 1: Claim your local listings

Local listings like Google Business Profile and Bing Places provide users somewhere to learn more about your medical practice, healthcare center, or insurance company. They also give search engines valuable information about your organization, like its name, address, and phone number.

As a part of your medical SEO efforts, claim these listings and add the following information:

Name
Address
Phone number
About
Website URL
Photos
Services [if applicable]

Ongoing, you’ll want to complete the following:

Update your hours, like for holidays or sudden closures
Share your updates, like a new wing opening or a new service being offered
Monitor your reviews, like on a daily or weekly basis

If you want to grow your online reviews (which many organizations are), Google prohibits incentivizing reviews. Instead, you can inform users through business cards, physical signs, and other outlets that your organization is online and active on local listings like Google Business Profile.

Step 2: Focus your keyword research on long-tail keywords

People search the web with search queries, also known as keywords. As a part of SEO for your medical practice or healthcare center, you’ll research keywords to determine the most relevant ones to target on your site.

Free keyword generator

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Keyword ideas for “”

Keyword	Cost per Click	Keyword Difficulty	Search Volume

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While you can target broad, short-tail keywords like “hospital near me,” we recommend targeting focused, long-tail keywords like “emergency hospital los angeles” since these have a more defined intent, which you can use to determine the keyword’s relevancy to your organization.

Keyword research tools like our free keyword generator, Soovle, Keywords Everywhere, Ahrefs, and Semrush can help you discover long-tail keywords and evaluate their relevancy. For example, you can check a keyword’s monthly search volume and competitiveness to see if it receives enough searches to justify creating content.

Step 3: Make your content helpful with E-E-A-T

Why is content important for healthcare SEO? Content is critical in SEO for healthcare, especially with Google’s view of Your Money, Your Life (YMYL) topics. Because these topics can influence major life decisions, like opting for a medical procedure or choosing a specific health insurance plan, experts must write or review this content.

When you involve experts in your content process, you can amplify E-E-A-T which stands for Expertise, Experience, Authority, and Trustworthiness.

For example, a medical practitioner can highlight their decades of first-hand experience treating a specific illness or performing a particular procedure. Alternatively, they could review the content before publishing it to verify its accuracy.

While this approach can make content creation take longer, it’s essential if you want to create helpful, unique, and trustworthy content for your organization. You’ll plan for your organization’s success with medical search engine optimization in the long term.

Step 4: Improve your website’s page experience

Page experience encompasses a few areas, including:

Usability
Accessibility
Readability

With PageSpeed Insights (free from Google), you can get instant insights into these areas, like by:

Fixing mobile-friendly issues
Improving color contrast between background and text colors
Removing unused scripts

In most cases, you’ll need the help of a web developer to fix these issues. If you’re working with a full-service SEO agency (like SEO.com), they’ll have in-house web developers to develop the fixes for you — saving you the hassle of sourcing the time internally.

Step 5: Secure your site with HTTPS

HTTPS isn’t unique to medical SEO — all markets should secure their site with HTTPS — but it’s imperative for healthcare providers that make patient information available online through a patient portal to use HTTPS.

Start with HTTPS by purchasing a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate, which your developer can install. You’ll need to renew your SSL certificate annually, which won’t require your web developer’s time.

Step 6: Streamline your website architecture

Navigating a medical site, especially for a large healthcare network, can create user frustration quickly. That’s why building a logical, easy-to-use website architecture is important. Even if you have a small site now, plan for your website’s growth.

Besides users, search engines’ web crawlers use a website’s architecture to understand the relation between pages. That understanding can influence search rankings because of how search engines interpret the association.

FAQs about outsourcing medical SEO

Learn more about outsourcing your medical SEO with these FAQs:

What are healthcare SEO services?

Healthcare SEO services are the professional optimization of a healthcare website to improve the site’s visibility in organic search. The best SEO companies, agencies, consultants, and freelancers provide healthcare SEO services, which typically include on-page, off-page, and technical SEO.

What do healthcare SEO services include?

Typically, healthcare SEO services include the following:

On-page optimizations, like keyword research and content creation
Off-page optimizations, like backlink and local listing acquisition
Technical optimizations, like page experience and page speed improvements

They should also include reporting, allowing you to see SEO’s impact on your medical practice or healthcare center. Ideally, you’ll want an SEO partner to measure the SEO metrics that matter most to your business like patients acquired or hired talent.

Healthcare SEO FAQs infographic

Frequently asked questions about healthcare SEO

View full infographic on Medical SEO

How much do healthcare SEO services cost?

How much healthcare SEO services cost depends on your SEO provider, SEO strategy, and other factors. On average, businesses will pay 1500to1500 to 1500to5000 per month for search engine optimization services. For the most accurate pricing, request a custom quote.

When should I outsource my SEO to a healthcare SEO agency?

When you outsource your SEO to a healthcare marketing agency depends on your:

Availability
Resources
Results
Plans

Typically, healthcare centers will hire a medical SEO company when:

They don’t have the time to do SEO
They don’t have the skills to meet SEO goals
They don’t have the resources to manage a larger SEO plan

When you notice time, resource, or skill constraints, consider outsourcing your SEO. Waiting until you see the results of these constraints (like a plateau in results) can affect your performance and your company’s confidence (and investment) in SEO.

Why partner with your healthcare SEO company?

Medical centers across the globe partner with our healthcare SEO company for a few reasons, including:

Transparent communication
Full-funnel reporting
Consistent results
Experienced team with medical SEO experience
Customized solutions

Learn more about what makes our medical SEO services stand out by contacting us today!

Improve your healthcare SEO with SEO experts

With healthcare SEO, your organization can achieve multiple goals, from serving more patients to attracting top talent. If you’re looking for professional help with developing, implementing, and managing your SEO strategy, consider our award-winning team of medical SEO professionals.

Learn more about our healthcare SEO services by contacting us online today!

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