As a medical professional, whether you are a doctor, dentist, chiropractor, or any other healthcare provider, having a strong online presence is crucial to attract more patients in your local area. Nowadays, people rely on the internet to find healthcare providers, and having a solid local SEO for medical professionals is essential to ensure that your website appears on top of search results.
But local SEO can seem complicated, full of technical jargon, and time-consuming to implement. As a busy medical professional, you need a guide tailored specifically to your needs and challenges. This comprehensive local SEO guide aims to explain the key concepts in simple terms, provide actionable tips you can implement yourself or with your web developer’s help, and answer common questions medical practices have about local search engine optimization.
Let’s start at the beginning – what is local SEO and why does it matter?
What Is Local SEO and Why It Matters
Local SEO is all about improving your visibility when prospective patients search for healthcare providers in your city or region. For instance, someone may search “orthodontists in Miami” or “OB/GYNs near me” on Google, Bing, or other search engines. Local SEO helps your website show up prominently in those local searches.
The vast majority of people now turn to online searches when looking for local businesses and services. In fact, 46% of all Google searches have local intent. And 28% of mobile searches are specifically to find local information.
So if your website isn’t optimized for local search, you’re missing out on tons of potential patients searching for healthcare providers in your area. Investing in local SEO for your medical practice can deliver an impressive ROI, leading to more phone calls, form fills, and new patient bookings from organic search traffic.
Key Elements of An Effective Local SEO Strategy
Optimizing for local search is different than regular “SEO,” which focuses on ranking your website for broader keywords related to your industry.
Here are the key elements that make up an effective local SEO strategy:
Accurate Business Information Across Key Directories & Maps
The first step is making sure all the main sites (like Google My Business, Apple Maps, and Bing Places) have your current business name, full address, phone number listed consistently. This helps the search engines understand your exact location and what kind of business you are.
Informative Website Optimized for Local Keywords
Your website itself also plays a key role. You’ll want it optimized with your main local keywords, contact info, location pages, and schema markup to identify it as a medical business. This guide covers all those details later.
Positive Local Reviews & Signals of Trust
The more positive reviews and local recommendations you can get, the better. This signals to search engines that other patients in your area have had good experiences. User-generated content goes a long way in local SEO.
Local Link Building From Relevant Websites
Links remain one of the strongest local SEO signals. Getting mentioned or linked from local directory sites like HealthGrades, Vitals.com, medical society pages, and local publications helps a lot.
Let’s explore each of those elements more in-depth, along with other important local SEO factors…
Official Business Listings – The Cornerstone of Local SEO
The first building block of strong local SEO is making sure all the key sites have your updated business information. This includes your:
- Full practice name
- Complete street address
- Main phone number
- Website URL
- Services offered
These major directories and maps serve as critical sources that search engines and other sites reference when trying to understand relevant businesses in a particular region.
Google My Business
The most important listing is your Google My Business (GMB) profile. You’ll want to claim and verify your listing here by either receiving a postcard with a PIN in the mail, or Google calling your business phone number with a verification code.
Once your GMB profile is verified and complete, it will display prominently in Google’s map pack (the 3-pack of map listings at the top) for relevant local searches related to your medical specialty. Ranking #1 in Google’s 3-pack can drive tremendous traffic and new patients.
Apple Maps
The next most important site is Apple Maps, as so many people use iPhones. Make sure your practice is listed properly here with accurate business info.
Bing Places
Bing Places functions similarly to Google My Business, giving you an official business listing in Bing’s search engine results. Complete and optimize this as well.
Other Key Directories Here are some other important sites to create and optimize local business listings on:
- Yelp for Business
- HealthGrades
- Vitals.com
- WebMD Provider Directory
- Yellow Pages
- Citysearch
- Localeze
- Hotfrog
The more reputable directories carrying your current practice information, the better. Over time, this helps reinforce your local relevance in the eyes of search engines.
It can be tedious entering all your details across so many platforms. But solidifying these listings provides enormous long-term dividends and should be the first task you tackle in improving local visibility.
Website Optimization
Now, let’s talk about optimizing your actual website for local SEO…
Domain Name & URL Structure
If possible, work your main city or neighborhood that you serve into your domain name and URL structure:
For example:
- ChicagoDentistry.com
- SeattlePediatricSpecialists.com
Or have location pages like:
- Website.com/chicago-dentists
- Website.com/seattle-pediatric-experts
Keywords In Page Titles & Content
Naturally optimize your website pages for relevant location-based keywords that patients are likely to search for.
For example, a dentist may target keywords like:
- Dentists in Chicago
- Best dentists in 60642
- Northside Chicago dental clinics
And then work those keywords (where helpful and readable) into page titles, H1/H2 tags, photo filenames, meta descriptions, alt text, and the body content itself.
Contact Info Prominently
Displayed Make sure your phone number, address, and contact form are easy for visitors to find from any page on your website. Typically, these are featured in the header navigation, footer, contact page, and on location/staff pages.
Location Pages
Having dedicated pages highlighting your office locations, area served, pictures of your office, staff bios, and other helpful locale-based information is also beneficial. This shows search engines you truly cater to patients in those specific locations.
Schema Markup
Finally, have your developer implement schema markup to identify your site as a medical business to search engines. Some common schema types are:
- LocalBusiness
- MedicalBusiness
- Dentist
- Hospital
Proper schema markup helps validate the nature of your business and reinforce your expertise in local search results.
Generating Positive Local Reviews
Now that your business listings and website foundation are secured, the next critical local SEO factor is generating verifiable positive reviews. The more 5-star reviews you can accumulate from verified patients, the better.
Here are the main platforms to focus your review-getting efforts on:
Google My Business
Google considers reviews left on a GMB listing to be highly trustworthy signals. So emphasizing great responses here can boost your rank in local pack and map listings.
You can proactively ask patients to leave Google reviews after appointments by providing instructions/links on review sticker cards, your website, email signature, and in conversations.
But you must properly disclose the reviewer relationship per Google’s guidelines to avoid penalty. For example, “Our valued patient John S. kindly took a minute to share their positive experience.”
Facebook Recommendations
Facebook recommendations made on your Page also carry significant weight. Install the “Recommendations” plugin via Facebook Business Suite to enable recommendations. Then invite happy patients to leave positive feedback.
Yelp, HealthGrades & More Reviews left on leading directories like Yelp and HealthGrades also help demonstrate people in your region view your practice favorably. Monitor these sites and respond professionally to all reviews.
The Power of Word of Mouth
Beyond proactively soliciting online reviews, never underestimate old-fashioned word of mouth recommendations in helping spread the great work you do. When nearby friends, colleagues, and other practitioners praise your practice via local community Facebook groups, school parent listservs, neighborhood newsletters/forums, etc – it sparks powerful trust and interest from prospective new patients.
So provide great care worthy of rave reviews and work to build meaningful local connections that organically bear fruit.
Link Building for Local SEO Authority
Now let’s explore one of the most important (and challenging) areas of local SEO – acquiring backlinks from relevant sites to enhance your standing and authority for the keywords you care about ranking for.
Directory Listings The first source of quality local backlinks are submissions to complementary healthcare and service directories, for example:
- HealthCare4PPL
- MedicineNet
- WebMD Provider Directory
- HealthLine Media
- HealthGrove
- AddictionResource
Publishing guest posts or resource lists on these types of local/health portals can generate great linking opportunities too.
Location-Specific Business Directories Getting listed/featured in local chamber of commerce directories, media company “Best of…” rankings, regional healthcare sites, local tourism directories, and niche provider roundups is fantastic for local SEO signals. These types of backlinks help anchor the unique value you provide your community.
For example, Seattle dentists may aim to get links from resources like:
- seattlemet.com
- visitseattle.org
- seattleparent.com
- seattlemag.com
While Chicago orthopedists can target links from sites like:
- choosechicago.com
- chicagoparent.com
- chicagotribune.com
- chicagomagazine.com
Press Coverage Mentions Anything from minor city paper blurbs up to features by leading local publishers helps lend credibility. Being cited as an expert source related to your field also scores valuable links.
So actively pitch reporters/producers at area outlets via HARO queries and story ideas relevant to their audiences. With some persistence and compelling hooks, you can win influential media coverage highlighting your practice’s local presence.
Citations From Relevant Sites
Even securing relatively small links from local organization pages, events calendars, news outlet partners or local blogs acts as an endorsement signal. Google views a dental office getting mentioned by the Chicago Public Library for hosting a kids tooth care workshop as reinforcing that business’ local relevance.
So brainstorm lateral partnership, guest blogging, event participation, and community support opportunities that can organically lead to local citations. Be helpful, get involved, and ensure you receive a link/mention as the area expert.
Optimizing Technical SEO Elements
This covers the major categories to concentrate on regarding local link building. But it’s also important to optimize other technical SEO elements on your website for local search visibility, such as:
NAP Citations
Ensuring your complete Name, Address and Phone number (NAP) are consistently listed across key sites greatly helps search bots associate your website and listings as one entity. This avoids confusing duplicate listings that split your local signals.
Google My Business Link
Also, link your official Google My Business listing to your website footer alongside standard social media icons. This further connects the critical signals between your verified GMB profile and website.
Tags
Optimizing your page header title tags, image alt text, meta descriptions, schema tags and open graph tags to include your location can amplify keyword targeting. For example:
Page Title: Top Cardiologists in Portland, Oregon
Meta Description: We offer leading heart surgery, angioplasty, stent placement, and cardiac testing from our Portland, OR office…
XML Sitemaps
An XML sitemap detailing all your website pages submitted to Google Search Console helps index your local content. Ensure your sitemap is crawlable with no errors.
Page Speed
Quick page load speeds positively influence local search rankings. Use site caching plugins, image optimization, minimal redirects and clean code to enable sub 2 second loads. Google PageSpeed Insights helps diagnose performance issues.
Mobile Optimization
Over 60% of local searches happen on smartphones. So ensure your site is mobile-friendly and pages speedily load on cellular networks with no UX issues. Mobile-first indexing is now the norm.
Schema Compatibility
Test how your vital schema markup for identifying as a medical organization displays on Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool. Debug and fix any parsing issues where the schema isn’t applied properly.
Google Analytics Setup
Properly install Google Analytics tracking code sitewide. Segment your reports to view traffic metrics specifically from organic search to guide your local SEO efforts. See which ranked keywords and pages earn the most visits.
Incorporate Location Targeting
Install plugins like Yoast SEO or The SEO Framework to set geographic target locations by city/region. This may help orient your content to searchers in those exact areas.
Mastering Small Town Local SEO Challenges
For medical professionals based in more rural locations and small towns, securing strong local SEO can prove even more vital in cementing your visibility as patients have fewer options to evaluate.
But ranking highly in sleepy hometowns like Sheboygan, Poughkeepsie or Coeur D’alene does present particular challenges with more limited regional resources/outlets available to utilize for citations and link building…
Focus on Cornerstone Directories Carefully building up your listings on Google My Business, Apple Maps and niche medical directories takes top priority. There are fewer sites where you can create listings, so maximize each one meticulously.
Network For Local Links
Double down on leveraging personal/professional connections who run regional sites, appear on radio shows, lead civic groups, coach local sports, etc. to obtain nods and backlinks where possible. In smaller ponds, word of mouth via known entities bears more weight.
Collaborate on Local Events/Efforts
Seek opportunities to actively support and contribute expertise to main street events, school initiatives, tourism activities, open houses, galas, wellness programs, social media groups or other happenings valued by residents. Earning goodwill community participation often earns web references too.
Land Regional Press Hits
Work to get featured in the newspaper of record, on local radio broadcasts, regional public television, niche podcasts, community magazines, church bulletins and other far-reaching mediums craving expert guests. Don’t overlook small outlets serving your population.
FAQs
What are the most important things I should do right away?
Confirm your complete and consistent NAP citations across directories like Google My Business, Yelp and Apple Maps. Also add or claim listings on any reputable vertical directories serving your specialty like HealthGrades.
How much time does local SEO take?
In the initial ramp up phase, expect to spend 5+ hours getting integrated business listings established properly and installing helpful WordPress plugins.
What does expert local SEO cost?
For comprehensive setup and ongoing optimization across directories, technical elements, link building and review generation, most professional local SEO consultants charge around $750-$1,500 per month.
How quickly will I see results from local SEO?
Elementary signals like directory listings kick in within a few weeks as search engines crawl and index those.
Is SEO management software worth it?
Yes, SaaS tools like Moz Local and BrightLocal can help streamline managing listings, monitoring reviews, running reports and automating some outreach. But human guidance optimizing initiatives for your specific market is still very valuable.
In closing
With increasing reliance on online searches to find nearby doctors and medical services, incorporating these local SEO fundamentals is vital for your practice’s discoverability and reputation management.
The keys areas to focus your ongoing efforts include:
- Complete optimized listings on Google My Business, Apple Maps, Yelp and niche vertical directories. This cements your understanding of your exact location and services offered.
- Tailoring your website content around serving keywords and intent for patients in your metro area. Strengthen trust signals via positive reviews and local recommendations.
- Earning backlinks, press coverage and citations from news sites, magazines, events and organizations tightly woven into your community fabric.
Applying the principles outlined in power of SEO for manufacturing companies: A comprehensive guide is akin to the strategic approach emphasized for medical professionals – combining these core elements fuels robust local SEO momentum that compounds over the long run. Be patient, be persistent. The growing online visibility and wider industry recognition are well worth the investment for your manufacturing company’s future.