Essential local SEO tips for your private practice website

Private practices used to rely on word of mouth, street-side advertising and newspaper ads to bring in patients. In a world where the Internet serves as our primary guide to finding what we need, that just isn’t the case anymore.

Most people look up doctor offices online and browse review sites before they set up an appointment. In fact, according to Go Gulf’s local search engine optimization (SEO) stats, “46% of searches on Google are seeking local information, whereas 97% of search engine users searched online to find a local business.”¹ When running a brick-and-mortar private practice, it is important to incorporate local SEO efforts to ensure the right people find your website.

You can adopt a variety of SEO strategies to improve your private practice’s online visibility. From improving the overall design of your website to incorporating various SEO strategies, there seems to always be something new to tweak in order to increase your chances of new patients finding your site.

Learning about how to optimize a private practice website can be intimidating. However, by taking these few easy steps, you can significantly improve the organic flow of traffic to your site from patients in your local area.

CLAIM AND OPTIMIZE GOOGLE MY BUSINESS

Have you ever searched Google for a restaurant in your city? Have you typed “near me” while searching for a business in your area? Well, all of the establishments that showed up from that local search are effectively using Google My Business.

Before you put forth any other local SEO efforts, it is essential for you to claim and complete your Google My Business profile. Once you’ve claimed your profile, it will take 3-4 days for your business to show up on Google searches.

While optimizing your Google My Business, be mindful of completing all possible sections. The more information you include, the more organic traffic you will attract (see key sections above).

By setting up your Google My Business, your business will be open to receiving reviews from your patients. Read these reviews regularly and respond professionally to both positive and negative reviews. This will show your patients that you care about the service offered at your location and, if any negative reviews occur, that you’re willing to clarify or make things right.

INCORPORATE LOCAL KEYWORDS

While you don’t want to stuff your site so full of keywords that the verbiage sounds inauthentic or awkward, it will significantly improve your organic traffic flow to incorporate local keywords into your site’s content. By including industry keywords in addition to local keywords, you will show up as a relevant search when potential patients search your industry paired with their location.

For example, it would be wise for a practice in Denver to incorporate keywords such as “ophthalmologist in Denver” or even “ophthalmologist in Denver, Colorado.” Also, many people may not think to type “ophthalmologist” into Google, so consider keywords such as “eye doctor” as well.

READY, SET, OPTIMIZE!

While implementing local SEO efforts takes time and effort, each initiative isn’t too complicated to follow. We recommend you take it one step at a time. Once you set up your Google My Business account, move on to establishing your social media presence.

Also, consider having your administrative staff assist you in maintaining these accounts and responding to online reviews, questions and comments. OM

REFERENCE

1. Walker-Ford M. 12 Local SEO Stats Every Business Owner and Marketer Should Know in 2019 [Infographic]. https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/12-local-seo-stats-every-business-owner-and-marketer-should-know-in-2019-i/549079/ . Accessed July 13, 2022.

Richard Zimbalist, OD, FAAO, is owner of Ignite Medical, a medical digital marketing agency (ignitemedicalco.com ) and COMO Web Designs (comowebdesigns.com ).

Nathan Abraham, MD, is owner of Abraham Eye Center (abrahameye.com ).