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Surgery Practice SEO: Is It Worth Your Investment? (The Answer Is Yes)

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Last updated: Friday, October 4, 2024

As a surgeon focused on growing your practice, you’ve likely explored various digital marketing techniques, like search engine optimization (SEO).

You recognize how SEO can help you build a robust online presence, showcasing your exceptional skills and services to potential patients turning to the digital space for their healthcare needs.

However, you’ve probably also realized that launching and managing an effective SEO campaign could pull you away from what you do best—delivering outstanding patient care.

To avoid that trade-off, you may have hired one or more online marketing agencies, hoping you could bring in more qualified leads, consultations, and procedure bookings to your practice.

But if you’re reading this, chances are things didn’t go as planned. Despite your SEO investments, you’re still not seeing the expected results. Now, you’re skeptical about whether SEO can work for your practice.

We’ve seen this scenario play out repeatedly. In fact, many of our surgeon clients have worked with three to seven digital marketing agencies before coming to us.

We’re proud to say that many of them are still leveraging our SEO strategies to stay ahead of their competition and keep their practice top-of-mind with patients, reflected in our 95.65% client retention rate.

And there’s a reason for that: We understand the unique challenges and needs of surgeons and use advanced statistical analysis to craft tailored SEO strategies that drive results.

Our deep understanding of your niche, combined with a data-driven approach to SEO, ensures that every dollar you invest yields tangible returns. 

But don’t just take our word for it—see for yourself.

Schedule a free consultation with one of our SEO experts by calling 310 879 8003 or emailing contact@digitalspotlight.com. You can also visit us at 2450 Colorado Avenue, Suite 100E, Santa Monica, CA 90404.

What Is SEO and Why Do You Need It for Your Surgical Practice?

If you’ve worked with several digital marketing agencies in the past to implement search engine optimization (SEO) but have nothing to show for it, you’re likely questioning whether your practice even needs it.

Guess what? SEO isn’t for everyone. But unlike many SEO service providers, we’re not afraid to admit that. In fact, we’d tell you if we don’t believe SEO is a suitable investment for your unique situation.

However, there’s a reason we think everyone should at least consider SEO in their marketing strategy: Today’s patients search for healthcare providers online, primarily on search engines like Google.

If potential patients can’t find you on these online channels, you’re invisible, regardless of how skilled, experienced, or passionate you are about helping them.

Enter SEO. In a nutshell, SEO is about raising your organic (nonpaid) rankings. The goal: Put your website, content, and online business listings on the first page of Google.

But why do you need SEO for your surgical practice? Two words: Visibility and authority. 

If your practice is on Google’s first page, you increase the odds of prospective clients finding you, as many searchers never look past the first search engine results page (SERP).

Additionally, first-page rankings improve your credibility. Searchers are inclined to believe you’re the #1 brand when Google thinks you’re the best answer to their queries.

Understanding the Basics of SEO

SEO can be a complex subject. Unfortunately, it’s this intricacy that many digital marketing firms try to leverage to convince you they’re your only hope for online success.

But we’re not like other agencies. Yes, we’ll happily do all the SEO heavy lifting for you. However, we also take pride in giving people the tools to take control of their campaigns at any time.

To help you understand SEO better, you must first realize two critical processes that search algorithms perform when determining website ranks: crawling and indexing.

Crawling involves scouring the web for pages relevant to the user’s query. Meanwhile, indexing refers to saving and organizing these web pages into the search engine’s database.

In short, SEO is about making it easier for search engines, primarily Google, to perform these functions. After all, your website won’t rank—or appear on SERPs—if search engines can’t crawl and index it.

While SEO efforts vary from client to client, ours generally involve initiatives such as the following:

  • Improving your website’s PageSpeed score, which is a metric of how quickly your web pages open
  • Keeping your content fresh by monitoring your website’s cache dates, aiming for recency within two weeks
  • Ensuring your content’s uniqueness and relevancy and removing duplicate, thin, or placeholder content

Is SEO Free on Google?

Here’s something you may find surprising if you’ve previously invested a considerable amount of money in SEO services: SEO is technically free, with “technically” being the operative word.

SEO doesn’t involve direct payments to Google. However, the effort involved—from creating high-quality content to optimizing your website and business listings—can be a significant time investment.

But you know what they say, “Time is money.” So, the more appropriate question would be, “Which resource is more valuable to you—time or money?”

For many surgeons, the answer would be “time.” After all, more time on their hands means more opportunities to provide exceptional patient care. That’s why they’d rather spend money on professional SEO.

If you’re one of the surgeons who wants to dedicate your valuable time to helping patients, leveraging the in-depth knowledge and experience of a digital marketing company like ours lets you do just that.

Is Physician SEO Good for New Patient Marketing?

Where do you find information about a business, product, or service? Do you visit LinkedIn? How about Facebook? Chances are high that your first destination would be a search engine.

Patients are likely to do the same when researching physicians or healthcare practices, and the data shows it. Nearly two-thirds of all online experiences start on a search engine like Google.

An SEO strategy lets you tap into search engines to acquire new patients. After all, a higher SERP position leads to increased website traffic, inquiries, and, ultimately, patients.

So, is SEO good for acquiring new clients? Absolutely! Even more so if you work with a firm like us—one that takes the time to understand your target audience, including the strategies that will convert them into patients.

How Long Does It Take for Medical SEO to Work?

We’re not going to sugarcoat it. If you’re looking for a digital marketing strategy that will give your surgical practice instant search visibility, SEO isn’t for you.

SEO is a long-term strategy. According to Google, you can expect noticeable improvements to your search engine rankings in four months to a year.

This means you could pay for SEO services for several months without seeing a return on your investment. Fortunately, Google’s estimated timeline is solely that—an estimate.

Every practice is unique. Your starting point, competition, and algorithm updates can affect how soon your SEO rankings will improve and how early you can reap the benefits.

That’s why we like to do our homework first. We audit, research, and analyze your unique situation before we ask you to sign up. This approach ensures we set realistic expectations about your SEO success timeline.

What Are the Benefits of Using SEO for Medical Websites?

We can’t blame you for thinking that SEO is trivial if none of your prior campaigns have yielded results. Many of our clients felt so, too, having partnered with several firms without much success.

However, you should reconsider your stance. After all, approximately 74% of small- to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) turn to search engine optimization for growth.

And there’s a simple reason: SEO offers various benefits that surgeons like you don’t want to miss. Here are some of the most common advantages of SEO:

Higher Ranking on the Google Search Results Pages

Google’s search algorithm checks signals or “ranking factors” that some say number over 200 to determine a web page’s relevance and usefulness to a user’s search query.

With SEO, you ensure your website, content, and business listings communicate these critical signals. The reward? Higher rankings on Google’s SERPs and, by extension, more eyes on your medical practice

Increased Leads and Phone Calls

The top three organic results usually get 75.1% of all the clicks. In other words, the higher you rank on SERPs, the more website visitors you drive toward your services.

It’s basic math—increased traffic means more opportunities to turn curious browsers into patient leads and convince them to call your practice’s phone number for inquiries, consultations, or procedures.

Local Findability in Google Maps

SEO can amplify your website’s visibility by helping you secure higher positions on search engine results pages. However, it can also put your practice on the map—literally.

A local SEO strategy can help you get on Google’s map pack. This SERP feature displays local establishments with their Google Maps location. The best part? Map pack results appear above standard search results.

Automated Marketing

An SEO investment can take some time to bear fruit, especially if you’re starting from scratch. But here’s some good news: SEO offers medium- to long-term, compounding returns.

In other words, barring significant algorithm changes, you can expect a continuous stream of organic traffic, patient leads, and conversions even after your initial campaign ends.

When You Know It’s Working

Google provides tools, such as Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and Google PageSpeed Insights, that give you a comprehensive view of your SEO campaign’s performance.

And if you partner with an agency like ours, one that leverages advanced statistical analysis, data modeling, and niche segmentation, you can be confident that your campaigns are continually optimized for success.

Brings More Profit and Success to Your Practice

You don’t have to overthink it. If your practice’s online visibility improves with SEO, your bottom line will also grow. After all, you’re driving more patients toward your offerings.

How do we know? We’ve seen it happen. Our unique data-driven and math-based SEO services have helped our clients secure over $130 million in additional annual revenue.

SEO Strategies: How to Implement SEO for a Medical Website

Many digital marketing companies will tell you to “leave your SEO needs to them,” which is great because you can then focus on being the outstanding surgeon that you are.

Unfortunately, many of these firms will also disappear as soon as your check clears and will wish that you’d forget that you’re paying for their services. But that’s not us.

We take pride in keeping our clients informed. We’ll tell you what we’re doing, the rationale behind our actions, and the results you can expect your medical practice to receive.

To prove our commitment to transparency, here’s how we’ll implement SEO for your website:

Create a Website Architecture That Defines Your Medical Practice’s Core Service Areas

It may sound counterintuitive, but your practice doesn’t need a website to dominate the online space. However, we highly recommend that you have one.

Why? A website gives potential patients a digital hub to learn more about your offerings and areas of expertise. Unfortunately, not all websites are created equal.

An SEO-optimized site’s architecture should make it straightforward for search engines and site visitors to find your core services. That’s why our optimizations include:

  • Ensuring your primary offerings have dedicated web pages
  • Improving your website’s navigability through internal links
  • Updating or creating an XML (extensible markup language) sitemap—the list of pages within your website

Topic and Keyword Research for Healthcare SEO

Keywords are the terms and phrases you type into a search engine. Let’s say you want information on quality surgical tools. In that case, you’d use something like “quality surgical tools near me.”

Search algorithms use these keywords to determine how relevant a website, piece of content, or business listing is to a searcher’s query, making targeting the “right” keywords the foundation of an SEO strategy.

The question is, “How do you decide which keywords you should target for your campaign?” Here’s our topic and keyword research approach for healthcare SEO:

What Is Your Most Profitable Medical Treatment?

While you’re committed to helping as many people as possible, you must admit that some treatments or procedures contribute more to your practice’s revenue than others.

For this reason, our keyword selection process involves prioritization. We create a list of keywords you want to target and sort them based on profitability or their likelihood to deliver returns. 

This approach ensures your entire service catalog can get top rankings while spotlighting the surgical procedures that are most profitable.

SEO for Doctors – How to Decide Which Keywords to Choose?

Gathering the initial list of keywords isn’t hard for us to do. After all, we use a variety of tactics, including the following:

  • Asking for your preferred keywords via a questionnaire
  • Identifying your competition’s ranking keywords
  • Utilizing Google Keyword Planner, Semrush, and Ahrefs

Once we have the initial list, we then filter the keywords to determine which ones are the “best” to target based on your objectives using the following criteria:

  • Quality or how likely a potential patient is to convert
  • Quantity or how many patients are using the specific keyword
  • Competition or how quickly you can get ranked for the keyword

What Types of Patients Have Your Practice Made the Most Impact On, and Why?

If you want to grow your medical practice, it makes sense to focus on keywords related to your most profitable services. However, doing so can mean putting valuable yet less profitable procedures by the wayside.

Fortunately, we can help you balance patient care with profitability. After all, our marketing principle is all about giving your target audience what they want instead of what we want them to have.

Generic Doctor or Healthcare Searches

Targeting generic or general keywords like “surgeon” or “surgery practice” can drive substantial traffic toward your practice’s website and offerings.

However, these keywords may not always give you the best return on investment (ROI). Why? Generic doctor- or healthcarerelevant keywords typically have low conversion rates.

For this reason, we also leverage long-tail keywords, which are more specific and less competitive, containing three or more terms like “best doctor near me.”

However, we will prioritize generic keywords if you believe they’re critical for branding your medical practice or if our analysis finds that they’re essential for dominating the healthcare industry.

Create a Content Calendar and Prioritize Your Medical Practice’s SEO Efforts

Two decades ago, you only needed to scatter your target keywords across your website to climb the search rankings. But times have changed. Today, you must incorporate your chosen keywords strategically.

That’s where website content comes in. Articles, blogs, and other content pieces allow you to include keywords in your website seamlessly. 

However, content marketing is more than publishing as much content as possible. We also create content calendars based on our keyword universe analysis. This approach ensures our content creation efforts are ROI-focused while hitting user intent for every keyword.

Establish a Content Production Process and Create Solid Content Briefs

Our content marketing strategy involves defining SEO-focused guidelines, including the creation of content briefs (CBs). CBs help us align our content creation workflow with our proposed SEO strategy.

After all, our CBs contain critical details, including the topics, the target audience, the keywords needed to be incorporated, and even the tone.

What Type of Healthcare Content Should Your Practice Website Have?

The sky’s the limit regarding content, from informative articles on your procedures to blogs showcasing patient success stories and FAQs (frequently asked questions) answering common patient concerns.

However, regardless of what form our produced content takes, we ensure they demonstrate E-E-A-T (expertise, experience, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness).

Why? These qualities ensure we deliver engaging, high-quality materials. Google’s search algorithm also rewards content that displays these traits with higher SERP rankings.

Add Fresh, New Content to Your Practice’s Website on a Regular Basis

Search engine rankings constantly change. So, to keep your first-page positions, you must create new content regularly. However, that’s where the problem lies.

You might ask, “How often should we upload content?” Unfortunately, there’s no one-size-fits-all answer. Some practices benefit from releasing fresh content more frequently than others.

Our content marketing strategy, particularly involving content freshness, aims for recency within two weeks. We accomplish this objective by monitoring your website’s cache date.

Use Simple and Easy-to-Read Language

Sometimes, you must use complex medical jargon to establish credibility and showcase your surgical expertise. But it’s also essential to meet where your patients are.

Think about it. Would you reach this point if all we did in this write-up was throw technical marketing terminology at you? Probably not. Your target audience is the same.

Fortunately, our in-house team of skilled and experienced writers, proofreaders, and editors can convey your message in simple English while demonstrating your surgical mastery.

Get Started With Video Content

Let’s be honest. Text-based content like articles and blogs are overused. But who says you have to stick with them? Not us. After all, we can help you create video or YouTube content in the following formats:

  • In-stream: Skippable promotional materials that play before, during, or after a YouTube video
  • Discovery: Videos that potential patients can find as search results on YouTube or wherever they discover content
  • Non-skippable: Unskippable video content up to 15 seconds long
  • Bumper: Unskippable short-form video materials with an up to six-second duration

What Is Technical SEO?

An SEO campaign generally has three primary components: on-page, off-page, and technical optimizations. The last one involves tweaking your website’s behind-the-scenes elements.

These enhancements aim to improve your healthcare website’s user experience (UX) and help search engines crawl, index, and rank you. 

We conduct technical SEO through initiatives such as:

  • Setting up Google Search Console to identify issues preventing your website from reaching the first page
  • Installing an SSL (secure sockets layer) certificate signed by a trusted source to protect your visitors’ connections
  • Creating a robots.txt file, which gives search engine bots instructions on crawling your practice’s website

On-Page Medical SEO

On-site or on-page SEO refers to optimizations you can make on your web pages to raise your search rankings. While on-page tweaks can vary from client to client, our efforts typically include:

  • Ensuring your web pages’ URL (uniform resource locator) structures are straightforward and functional
  • Giving users and search engines context on your web pages by adding descriptive and compelling title tags and meta descriptions
  • Adding internal links to web pages that you want to appear and rank high on SERPs

Off-Page Medical SEO

If on-page SEO is everything you can do within your surgery website to boost your search visibility, off-page or off-site SEO is the opposite—the tweaks are done outside your web pages.

Some of our off-page medical SEO strategies include:

  • Building your link profile or earning backlinks (hyperlinks that redirect users from other websites to yours) from authoritative websites
  • Ensuring NAP (name, address, and phone number) citations contain accurate information about your medical practice
  • Curating online reviews from your previous patients

Local SEO

Let’s say you’re someone who needs surgical services. Wouldn’t you want the search results to recommend practices in your area?

Google thinks so. That’s why your location or proximity to the searcher is one of the factors its algorithm checks when determining your SERP position. Here’s where local SEO comes in.

Like general SEO, local SEO is all about raising your search visibility. The only difference is that the latter focuses on local search visibility—for searches that contain geo-specific keywords like “near me.”

What Does a Local SEO Company Do?

The primary responsibility of a local SEO provider is to enhance your local search rankings, a task that can be accomplished in various ways. We, for instance, perform our local optimizations by:

  • Setting up profiles for your practice on online directories like Yelp and the Yellow Pages
  • Creating web pages and content that are relevant to your target geographic location
  • Identifying and targeting geo-specific (city- or suburb-specific) keywords

Is Doing Local SEO Worth It?

Incorporating local SEO techniques can add complexity to your overall SEO strategy. After all, you’re not only optimizing for a general market, you’re also making tweaks to reach a local one.

However, local SEO is undoubtedly worth your investment, especially considering that around 40% of Google searches have local-based keywords, roughly 76% of which have local buying intent.

Establishing and Optimizing Your Google Business Profile

One of the most, if not the most, effective local SEO strategies is creating and maintaining a Google Business Profile (formerly known as Google My Business).

After all, this free local listing allows your medical practice to appear on organic search results, the local map pack, and Google Maps, significantly increasing the odds of potential patients finding you.

However, having a Google Business Profile isn’t enough to dominate local search. Like your website, your business listing must be optimized, too. Here’s how we do that:

Claim and Verify the Listing

You may find it surprising, but it’s possible you already have a Google Business Profile—you just don’t know that you do. No one knows why and how these listings occur. However, you must claim them.

Why? Local listings that display inaccurate information about your practice can affect its credibility and authority. For this reason, we claim and verify your listings.

Complete the Profile

Your Google Business Profile contains essential information about your practice, giving prospective patients a peek behind the curtain. That’s why we provide every data point we can about you, such as your:

  • Contact information
  • Treatments and procedures
  • Operating hours
  • Service areas
  • Health and safety protocols
Add Photos and Videos

A Google Business Profile can help potential clients learn more about medical practice. But why stop at providing standard information like your phone number and services?

We don’t. After all, we also personalize your local listing by uploading high-quality visual materials that showcase your clinic, staff, equipment, and the results of your top-notch surgical skills.

Monitor and Respond to Reviews

Encouraging your patients to leave reviews, particularly on your Google Business Profile, helps with establishing credibility and earning your target audience’s trust.

However, responding to these online assessments is equally essential, as doing so shows potential patients you’re open to feedback and, by extension, committed to providing exceptional patient care.

Fortunately, our digital marketing strategy involves Google Business Profile reputation management. This process includes recommending PR (public relations) moves to control and protect your digital image.

Utilizing Local Citations

NAP citations can enhance your local search rankings. It’s as straightforward as that. They also appear on online directories like Facebook and Bing Places, making it easier for patients to find you.

For this reason, we leverage local citations in our local SEO efforts. We do this by finding lead-generating citations, primarily from websites in your local community.

How Much Does It Cost to Create a Google Business Profile?

Many digital marketing service providers, including us, consider Google Business Profile the foundation of local search success. So, it’s natural to think this valuable listing would be expensive.

Fortunately, this isn’t the case. In fact, creating a Google Business Profile is free. However, this brings us back to the age-old question, “Is spending time to build an effective listing really free?”

The straight answer is yes. Partnering with us means paying not only for our services but also for our local SEO skills and expertise. Just ask any of our clients—they’ll tell you it’s worth the investment.

Creating and Maintaining Social Media Profiles

Your likes, shares, and engagement on social media don’t directly impact your local search rankings. However, your social profiles give you additional channels to drive traffic toward your website.

For this reason, we also offer social media management (SMM) services, which involve leveraging geo-targeting features to help you reach social media users in your area.

Earning Geo-Relevant Backlinks

Backlinks are hyperlinks from other websites that redirect users to your practice’s site. Think of them as votes of confidence. The more you have, the better your local SEO rankings.

However, that doesn’t mean you should get random links. After all, Google’s algorithm also considers backlink quality or how authoritative the source that’s linking to your surgery website is.

Fortunately, our outreach department can pinpoint high-value linking opportunities and connect you with local businesses, publications, and blogs to improve your geographic authority and relevance.

Build Local Page

In addition to targeting locally relevant keywords and creating content explicitly for potential patients in your target market, you must also have localized landing pages to appear on local searches.

But don’t worry. If you partner with us, expect building local pages to be part of our local SEO efforts, from providing web page designs to curating permissible photographs. 

Acquiring Topically Relevant Backlinks

If you’re scouring the web for, let’s say, the best Tex-Mex restaurant in Los Angeles, and you see a recommendation from a website selling music equipment, what would you think?

You’ll likely think, “That has to be the best Tex-Mex restaurant ever if even a music store is vouching for it.” However, you might also say, “What qualifies a music store to give me food suggestions?”

The same applies to acquiring backlinks. So, as a surgeon, your link-building initiatives should be focused on obtaining high-quality backlinks from medical-related websites.

“How Can I Persuade Third-Party Sites to Link to My Practice’s Website?”

Our outreach team utilizes various backlinking strategies. One of the most effective is guest posting, which involves writing and publishing articles and blogs for other websites.

This tactic allows other websites to leverage our experienced and talented content department while allowing our clients to tap into an engaged audience—a win-win for everybody.

Talk to one of our SEO professionals for more information on our backlinking tactics. Call 310 879 8003, email contact@digitalspotlight.com, or visit us at 2450 Colorado Avenue, Suite 100E, Santa Monica, CA 90404.

Encourage Patients to Click on Your Page Title and Page Snippet

If your website appears on SERPs, it’ll typically look like the following:

Surgical Services – Your Surgery Practice
www.yoursurgerypractice.com/procedures
A list of treatments and procedures available at our clinic to help you lead a fulfilling life.

The first line is the page title, the second is the URL, and the last is the page snippet or description. Based on this information, patients decide if your website provides the answers they’re looking for.

That’s why it’s critical that you make your search entry worth clicking. We achieve this objective by ensuring your title tags are unique and by writing meta descriptions like advertisements. 

Schema Markup and Auditing

Just as you wouldn’t perform a procedure on a patient without a proper diagnosis, we don’t optimize without first looking under your medical practice website’s hood.

After all, doing so gives us insight into what we need to do to get you on Google’s first page. That’s why we perform preliminary audits before you sign up and conduct periodic ones throughout your SEO campaign.

This research-backed approach ensures we identify issues and implement solutions, such as creating schema markup, which is code that helps search engines understand your website’s content.

Monitoring and Monthly Reporting

While SEO can provide long-term, compounding returns, it’s not a set-it-and-forget-it strategy. Search engineers constantly tweak their algorithms, which can render previously working tactics ineffective.

Fortunately, we have full-time researchers who closely monitor the web for potential shifts in the algorithm, allowing us to test strategies and integrate them into your campaign before they happen.

And don’t worry. We’ll provide detailed monthly reports showing how our commitment to keeping your SEO campaign ahead of the curve benefits your surgery practice.

Measuring and Analyzing SEO Success

We’re not a digital marketing company that works based on hunches. We measure our SEO strategies’ effectiveness by digging into the numbers using tools such as:

  • Ahrefs
  • Semrush
  • Screaming Frog
  • Google Search Console
  • Google Analytics
  • Google PageSpeed Insights
  • Whois Domain

These tools and our proprietary software let us track campaign KPIs (key performance indicators) like website traffic, leads, and conversions, ensuring we deliver your desired results.

Optimize Your Medical Practice’s Internal Linking

Think of your surgery practice website as a freeway and internal links as the exit ramps. Without the latter, your website visitors will find getting to where they’re going challenging, sometimes near impossible.

In this scenario, potential patients are unlikely to stay on your website, increasing its bounce rate—a metric indicating that visits are only lasting under 10 seconds and aren’t leading to conversions.

A quick and straightforward fix: Add internal links, particularly on web pages you want to appear on SERPs, which is what we’ll do if you sign up for our SEO services.

Optimize Page Speed and Website Experience

If a prospective patient can read through another surgeon’s website before one of your web pages finishes loading, why would they bother visiting your website?

For this reason, your SEO strategy must include improving your PageSpeed score. After all, providing a site that opens quickly goes a long way to ensuring website visitors get a positive user experience.

The question is, “How do you make your website faster and more responsive?” Here’s what our process looks like:

“How Do I Know If My Practice’s Website Is Fast Enough?”

We use Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool to measure your web pages’ speeds. This tool provides a score between 0 and 100. The closer to the latter, the quicker the page opens.

“How Can I Increase the Speed of My Site?”

When optimizing page speed, we generally aim for a score of 90 or higher. Fortunately, the PageSpeed Insights tool provides fix suggestions, so we don’t have to guess what tweaks are needed to reach this score.

Research Your Practice’s Competition

If your competitor’s SEO strategy and online presence are taking potential patients away from your surgery practice, you have two options: Get jealous or learn from it. We suggest going for the second.

Here’s where our competitor analysis comes in. Reverse engineering what your peers are doing right allows us to formulate a plan of attack to outrank them and defend your first-page positions.

Focus on the Ultimate Goal: Leads and Conversions

Digital marketing companies love to talk numbers. Unfortunately, most focus on the number of clicks their SEO efforts have earned. While more clicks are welcome, they don’t necessarily translate to success.

That’s why we work backward. Instead of focusing on metrics that only look good in a monthly report, we strive for the numbers that truly matter for your practice: high-quality leads and conversions.

Mobile-Friendly Website Design

Around 63% of Google searches in the United States occur on mobile devices. If this statistic teaches us anything, it is that ignoring mobile optimization results in missing out on potential patients.

That’s why our SEO strategy involves making your surgery practice website more mobile-friendly through initiatives such as the following:

  • Adding design elements that automatically adjust and scale to the user’s screen size
  • Providing mobile-specific HTTP (hypertext transfer protocol) headers that direct users to your website’s device-appropriate version
  • Integrating accessibility features on your web pages, such as descriptive text for images

“How Do I Know If My Practice’s Website Is Mobile-Friendly?”

We use two tools to check your practice website’s mobile-friendliness: The Mobile Usability report on the Google Search Console and the Mobile-Friendly Test tool.

The former lets us inspect your entire website’s mobile-friendliness, while the latter allows us to review individual web pages. These tools help us ensure that your website meets Google’s mobile-friendly standards.

Social Media Marketing

While your social media efforts don’t directly impact your organic search rankings, they can be valuable in driving patient leads toward your medical practice’s website.

Fortunately, we speak the same language as social media platforms like Meta sites and TikTok. This inside track allows us to create SMM campaigns that deliver high-quality leads at low acquisition costs.

Optimize for Voice Search

How often do you say “Hey, Google!” aloud or call out to “Alexa” or “Siri”? If it’s become a habit at this point, voice search is on the rise, with around 40% of searchers using a voice assistant monthly.

Unfortunately, traditional SEO techniques, specifically keyword targeting, may not always apply to voice search optimization. After all, people don’t speak like search engine algorithms.

Think about it. People searching for qualified surgeons in their area wouldn’t ask Siri, “Surgeon near me.” Instead, they’d say, “Who are the best surgeons near me?”

Fortunately, whether it’s targeting long-tail keywords or creating content using a conversational tone, we can help you capture the valuable voice-search segment.

Poor SEO Tactics: What Are the Frequent Errors Committed While Optimizing a Healthcare Website for Search Engines?

It’s natural to question whether SEO can help your surgery practice get more patient leads, consultations, and procedure bookings if none of your previous campaigns delivered results.

However, like surgeons, digital marketing agencies vary in skills and experience, and optimization missteps that unskilled and inexperienced firms take can significantly affect your ROI.

Don’t get us wrong. We’re not saying we’re perfect. However, our over 15 years in the SEO game have taught us many things, including the errors we must avoid when tweaking websites for search engines.

What are these pitfalls? Here they are:

Poor Website and Mobile Experience

Your website is your surgery practice’s digital clinic. If it’s poorly designed, slow, or a chore to visit, potential patients will go elsewhere for their healthcare needs—it’s that straightforward.

That’s why one of our primary SEO services includes web development and design, ensuring your website visitors stay and you get opportunities to drive them toward your competitive offerings.

Poor Topic and Keyword Research

“Your target keywords form the backbone of your SEO strategy” is an understatement. After all, picking the wrong terms and phrases for your campaign is like fishing with the wrong bait.

For this reason, we take our time conducting thorough keyword research, allowing us to pick highly profitable keywords that will get you on top of the rankings and keep you there.

Thin Content

Many digital marketing agencies still take the “Publish till it hurts” approach to content marketing. While this tactic may have worked previously, Google now penalizes thin or low-quality content.

Fortunately, you can be confident that our content strategy focuses on quality over quantity, producing informative, relatable, rank-ready articles and blogs, not half-baked materials solely for squeezing clicks.

Not Earning Backlinks

Backlinks are like recommendations from other businesses. They help build your practice’s credibility and authority. Unfortunately, many SEO providers forget that.

But not us. After all, Google considers backlinks one of its top three most influential ranking factors. That’s why we have a dedicated team whose sole responsibility is to build your link profile.

Not Updating Your SEO Strategy

SEO is an evolving field. Search engine engineers constantly rework their algorithms to give internet users the best possible results. So, why let your campaigns stay the same?

Fortunately, we work tirelessly as these engineers, constantly checking for areas of improvement and making adjustments to ensure your SEO campaign is fine-tuned and adapts to any changes.

Ignoring Local Listings

Many SEO providers focus on optimizing your website. While your medical website is critical for securing high rankings, it’s not the only thing that can appear on SERPs—your local listings can, too.

That’s why our SEO process, particularly our local SEO one, involves setting up, claiming, and verifying your business listings for all your clinics with an offline address.

Copying What Others Have Done

They say, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” It’s true. You’d want to use an effective SEO strategy to maximum advantage for as long as possible. 

However, every surgeon and practice is unique, and a one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work. For this reason, we tailor our tactics to each client. 

We’ll shape our SEO strategies around your unique situation—your challenges, objectives, and budget.

Ignoring Reviews

Acquiring online reviews can help raise your SEO ranking and instill confidence in your medical practice and procedures. However, obtaining these assessments is not the be-all and end-all of getting feedback from your patients.

Responding to reviews, regardless of whether they’re positive or negative, shows potential patients and search engines that you care, which is why our efforts don’t stop at solely “getting” them.

Avoid “Over-Optimizing”

Google’s algorithm considers many ranking factors. Unfortunately, optimizing the over 200 alleged elements can be time-consuming and often not worth the effort.

After all, some factors impact your search rankings more than others. That’s why we follow the Pareto principle—we focus on the 20% of the ranking factors that deliver 80% of the results.

SEO for Doctors Example

We could say, “Our SEO strategies will get you on Google’s first page.” Or we could claim, “We understand the inner workings of Google’s algorithm.” But without solid proof, these statements are just empty promises.

Fortunately, we can put our money where our mouth is. To give you an example, here’s how our SEO services helped Dr. Jordan Rihani and his Texas-based Facial Plastic Surgery Institute:

  • 800% more appearances on Google’s Top 3 rankings
  • 584% more qualified patient leads
  • 11,276% more organic monthly website traffic

Meanwhile, for Dr. Marc Lowenberg, Dr. Gregg Lituchy, and Dr. Brian Kantor, oral surgeons based in New York, our math-backed SEO efforts have delivered:

  • 146% more authoritative domains linking back to their website
  • 628% more unique website visitors
  • 2,367% more patient leads

If you’re still not convinced, we have all the case studies and data you need to help you decide whether our search engine optimization services are suited for your practice—feel free to check them out!

How Many Patients Will SEO Generate?

It’s understandable to inquire about how many patients signing up for an SEO service will benefit your surgery practice. After all, the answer can be the deciding factor on whether SEO is worth your hard-earned dollars.

Unfortunately, there are no guarantees in SEO. Anyone who claims they can give you X number of patients in Y days is lying. There are simply too many variables for anyone to give an exact figure.

That said, if you partner with us, you can be confident that our SEO strategies, regardless of their form, will be focused on delivering one thing: quality patient leads. 

How Much Does SEO for Doctors Cost?

The cost of our SEO services depends on the package level or the number of keywords your campaign needs to acquire your desired results. Here’s our SEO pricing table:

Number of initial target keywords Number of target keywords from the second month onwards
SEO Entry 3 5
SEO Premium 6 10
SEO Corporate 9 15
SEO Corporate Plus 12 20

Note that we also have an Enterprise-level SEO package. This service suite combines SEO with public relations (PR), content marketing, and social media management (SMM).

For more information on our SEO pricing, call 310 879 8003 or email contact@digitalspotlight.com. You can also visit our office at 2450 Colorado Avenue, Suite 100E, Santa Monica, CA 90404, to talk to our SEO experts.

What Makes Simplified SEO Different from a Medical SEO Agency?

Simplified or general SEO and medical SEO work similarly, aiming to boost your search rankings. The only difference is that the latter is specifically designed for medical professionals.

The good news is that our digital marketing services, which include SEO, specialize in helping surgeons like you get your practice and services in front of your desired patients.

Is Organic SEO Better Than Google Ads for Medical Websites?

Paid advertising or PPC (pay-per-click) marketing, such as through Google Ads (formerly Google AdWords and Google AdWords Express), can give you immediate online visibility.

That one advantage is often enough to convince people to opt for PPC over SEO. After all, you wouldn’t need to wait long to get more leads, consultations, and procedure appointments.

But here’s a reason to choose SEO: Roughly 70% of searchers would rather click on websites that appear on Google’s SERPs organically, and only the remainder click on Google Ads.

Doesn’t that mean SEO is better than Google Ads? Unfortunately, the answer isn’t so black and white. Not everyone can benefit from implementing an SEO strategy.

Fortunately, we won’t be afraid to tell you if that’s the case. While we don’t like saying “no” to businesses or medical professionals, we will if we don’t believe that SEO is the right strategy for your unique situation.

“How Do I Find a Good Company for SEO?”

Countless SEO companies exist that promise that their tactics can help your practice dominate the front page of Google. Unfortunately, only a few can live up to their claims.

Here’s how you weed out the wheat from the chaff:

Company’s Expertise

Many digital marketing companies offer extensive services, from SEO and PPC to SMM and email marketing. We do, too. What sets us apart, however, is our in-depth understanding of surgeons’ unique needs.

Other SEO providers may have worked on more campaigns than we do. But wouldn’t you prefer a firm that explicitly specializes in helping surgeons like you at your corner?

Company’s Reviews

Any SEO service provider can claim to be something they’re not. A good indicator that they may be the right fit to take your practice to new heights is if their clients back them up.

Meanwhile, here’s what some of our surgeon clients have said about us:

“I was never the least bit skeptical to work with [Digital Spotlight]. From the get-go, [they] seemed more knowledgeable and found errors that my previous company had done that put me at a disadvantage…

[Digital Spotlight] took me to the first page for everything that I was trying to promote within a very short period of time. I have zero complaints and only positive experiences with [Digital Spotlight].”

Richard A. Zoumalan, MD | Dr. Richard Zoumalan Facial Plastic Surgery

 

“[The] team at Digital Spotlight is excellent. I really appreciate the responsiveness and focus brought to each project. My website has never ranked better.

In a world only becoming more tech-savvy, having a proper team promoting and guiding your SEO is essential. This is the team to use!”

Benjamin C. Paul, MD | M.D., Facial Plastic and Hair Restoration Surgery

 

“[The Digital Spotlight] team is terrific. I was with another web company that essentially wanted to keep me hostage to their service. [Digital Spotlight] literally moved my site to their servers in one night. By the time the other company realized my site had been moved, it was several days. This validated my sense that the other company was inept.

On the other hand, [Digital Spotlight’s] team has consistently raised my rankings on Google, and my practice has continued to grow, thanks to [their] efforts. They respond promptly to my questions and are able to make corrections quickly. I highly recommend [them].”

Mark P. Solomon, MD | Mark P. Solomon, M.D.

Company’s Results

If an SEO service provider is what it says it is, it’ll have nothing to hide—it’ll happily share their wins. And if you ask any of our clients to describe us in one word, that would be “results.”

We’ve worked on over 2,000 client campaigns while maintaining a 95.65% client retention rate—a testament to our ability to deliver tailored campaigns that produce results our clients won’t get anywhere else.

Company’s Creativity and Innovation

Reputable SEO companies don’t get stuck in the past. Instead, they innovate, crafting creative solutions that will help address the unique challenges your surgery practice faces.

And not to brag, but publications like VentureBeat publish our strategies, and multi-billion dollar organizations ask for our expertise because they know we’re at the forefront of SEO.

Company’s Contract Duration and Flexibility

You know you’re working with the right agency if they’re not trying to lock you into a long-term commitment. We don’t. You can leave any time with no hard feelings.

So, if you’re looking for a digital marketing company that will give you results without holding you hostage, call us at 310 879 8003 or email contact@digitalspotlight.com.


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