Before we dive into the ins and outs of local SEO for doc­tors, you prob­a­bly already know that Google plays a mas­sive role in the amount of traf­fic health­care web­sites get. Local SEO for med­ical pro­fes­sion­als isn’t only an oppor­tu­ni­ty for you to edu­cate your poten­tial patients about your ser­vices and med­ical con­di­tions. It’s also a chance to show­case your exper­tise and show com­pas­sion from the very begin­ning, estab­lish­ing your­self as an author­i­ta­tive fig­ure among your local health­care practices.

In this arti­cle, our expert team at Rosy Strate­gies has devel­oped the ulti­mate strate­gies for local SEO for den­tists and doc­tors to help you unlock the pow­er of search engine opti­miza­tion. And by the end of the arti­cle, if you want to learn even more, you can always look for our SEO ser­vices in Mia­mi and Fort Laud­erdale, FL.

Healthcare Local SEO By The Numbers

Why is local SEO for health­care impor­tant? Well, accord­ing to the gath­ered data, around 57% of sur­veyed patients say that they’ve booked their appoint­ment thanks to online search and that most of the major med­i­cine sites, such as MayoClinic.org, HopkinsMedicine.org, and ClevelandClinic.org get over 80% of their traf­fic organically. 

Still, grab­bing a good rank on Google isn’t as straight­for­ward as launch­ing a new web­site. Search engine opti­miza­tion has come a long way, and you need to put in some work to become vis­i­ble in the ocean of web­sites found on the internet.

That said, as a small­er prac­tice, you should start think­ing local­ly. More specif­i­cal­ly, you should start con­sid­er­ing the tac­tics and approach­es that will help poten­tial patients liv­ing in your vicin­i­ty find your prac­tices and learn about your expertise. 

To help you do just that, we bring you a hand­ful of excel­lent tips regard­ing local SEO for doctors.

Writing Displaying Text SEO. Internet Concept Incredibly Effective Way to Market Your Near Business Online Demonstrating Medical Techology Presenting New Scientific Discovery

Local SEO For Medical Professionals: What Is It?

Local SEO for den­tists and doc­tors aims to help with the state­ment we made above: it makes your web­site and online pres­ence more vis­i­ble for users in your area, who will have an eas­i­er time find­ing you if they are con­duct­ing loca­tion-spe­cif­ic searches. 

This, for the most part, means try­ing to rank high for the fol­low­ing search query, for exam­ple: “Den­tist in Bis­cayne” or “Pedi­a­tri­cian near me.” In both cas­es, search engines will take a look at either the giv­en loca­tion or the user’s IP address to find the best match­es and con­nect them with the experts they are look­ing for. 

Best Strategies for Healthcare Local SEO

So, with­out fur­ther ado, let’s look at how to dri­ve traf­fic by think­ing locally. 

1. Use Google Business Profile

Known for­mer­ly as Google My Busi­ness, now Google Busi­ness Pro­file should be your first step in your health­care local SEO strategy. 

Google Busi­ness Pro­file can help small­er prac­tices get expo­sure and show­case their prod­ucts and ser­vices to searchers. It gives you the oppor­tu­ni­ty to cre­ate a com­pre­hen­sive list­ing with all your nec­es­sary infor­ma­tion, and it’s vital if you want to ben­e­fit from local SEO for healthcare. 

To get the most out of these fea­tures, con­sid­er adding an appoint­ment sched­ul­ing link on your pro­file to boost your con­ver­sions with a few sim­ple steps. 

On that note, make sure that you have your name, address, and phone num­ber list­ed cor­rect­ly, with your most recent work­ing hours. If any of these are sus­pect­ed to be fre­quent changes (espe­cial­ly hours of oper­a­tion), don’t for­get to update them regularly. 

2. Utilize Geolocal Keywords 

Apart from your “stan­dard” key­words, opti­mize your con­tent with loca­tion-spe­cif­ic key­words as well. This can be every­thing from “sur­geon in Mia­mi” to aller­gy ser­vices in Doral, Mia­mi, Flori­da,” and so on.

The trick when it comes to key­word opti­miza­tion for local health­care SEO is to be intu­itive and try to pin down what peo­ple are think­ing about when look­ing for a doc­tor. Brain­storm your ideas, cre­ate a list, and check out how they rank.

3. Make Good Use of Local Reviews

Online reviews can also help you boost your efforts if local SEO for health­care is your main goal. Apart from help­ing you with vis­i­bil­i­ty, they also help with cred­i­bil­i­ty as poten­tial patients can get peace of mind read­ing the reviews, ensur­ing them that they are in good hands. That said, make sure that your GBP list­ing has an exten­sive and diverse list of reviews that they can trust.

Still, there’s a catch. If you know human nature, you’ll also know that more peo­ple will actu­al­ly take the time to leave a bad review than to praise an excel­lent ser­vice. As such, you will have to pur­sue these pos­i­tive reviews active­ly for your own rep­u­ta­tion’s (and opti­miza­tion effort’s) sake. 

To do this, you can always sim­ply ask your patients to kind­ly leave a review if they are sat­is­fied with your services. 

Customer Review Satisfaction Feedback Survey Concept. User Give Rating to Service Experience on Online Application

4. Use Google Posts

Google Posts is a handy lit­tle tool that enables you to com­mu­ni­cate with your audi­ence. Google Posts will let you show­case ten of your posts, which stay live for around a week. You can lever­age these spaces for pro­mo­tions, offers, announce­ments, and more. To make things even more inter­est­ing and SEO-friend­ly, you can leave call-to-action links on the posts to your local land­ing pages. 

Sim­ply put, Google Posts enables you to reach out and com­mu­ni­cate your lat­est offer­ings and news to prospec­tive patients who can gath­er more knowl­edge about you via your lat­est updates. 

5. Safety and Health Attributes in GBP Listings

Google incor­po­rat­ed these fea­tures as a result of the pan­dem­ic, and these infor­ma­tion nuggets can give local users a bet­ter idea of what they can expect at your practice.

Ever since COVID-19, peo­ple want to ensure that your prac­tice is safe and up to date with the lat­est safe­ty stan­dards before they pay you a visit. 

6. Embrace Local Link Building

Back­links, which are links to your web­site placed on oth­er web­sites, are essen­tial for SEO. Google val­ues web­sites with numer­ous back­links as they sig­ni­fy trust­wor­thi­ness and author­i­ty. For local SEO, it’s cru­cial to acquire links from local sources to estab­lish your pres­ence in a spe­cif­ic area. This process is known as local link build­ing, and var­i­ous strate­gies can help you obtain these links.

Some effec­tive strate­gies include cre­at­ing valu­able con­tent relat­ed to health­care and get­ting it fea­tured on your com­mu­ni­ty blog with a link back to your web­site. Spon­sor­ing local school teams or stu­dents and join­ing your local cham­ber of com­merce can also earn you valu­able links. Writ­ing con­tent for local news­pa­pers and con­tribut­ing to local busi­ness direc­to­ries are addi­tion­al tac­tics to consider.

If You Need Help

Local SEO for health­care also uti­lizes a few more excel­lent prac­tices, which we did­n’t talk about above. All in all, it’s a great way to gain a stronger pres­ence in the local scene and dri­ve more rel­e­vant traf­fic to your web­site. Still, local SEO requires con­stant work and tweak­ing. That said, med­ical pro­fes­sion­als should con­sid­er part­ner­ing up with sea­soned SEO experts such as us, who can take care of their search engine opti­miza­tion while they focus on what they do best – treat­ing patients and improv­ing their lives.