The Danger of Dismissing SEO For Doctors
As a private physician — and a business professional — you’re probably familiar with the concept of search engine optimization (SEO) and its potential benefits.
But whether you’re an SEO expert or novice, there are some big changes happening in our niche of the medical industry that make SEO for doctors a crucial area for both near- and long-term business success.
Now, you might be thinking,
My practice already has a patient waitlist. Why would I invest in SEO to attract members I don’t need?
And there’s the rub.
As it turns out, SEO isn’t just about building today’s patient base. It’s much bigger than that.
In this post we’ll get into the importance of SEO for concierge physicians, what it can accomplish for your practice, and the danger of doctors dismissing SEO in light of what’s on our industry’s horizon.
Attract More Than Members
The conventional thought around SEO for private doctor’s practices is related to attracting new members. But if you’ve reached capacity and have a waitlist for membership, you’re likely more concerned with scaling up and recruiting new physicians.
SEO is an effective and necessary tool for adding team members and physicians to your practice.
Consider this: Patients aren’t the only ones who search for “concierge practice near me.”
If you’re not showing up on the first page of Google (or Bing) search results, you’re essentially invisible on the web. This isn’t hyperbole. Without a strong online presence and a website that Google views as authoritative, physicians, RNs, office staff — anyone searching for a job — won’t know you exist.
To continue growing your practice, you’ll have to attract new physicians and team members. And to do that, you’ll have to be visible to them on the web.
Focusing on SEO gives doctors that visibility.
Even if you’re not looking for growth and expansion at the moment, hiring a new physician can take time — a lot of time. By making sure you’re visible to providers searching for a new home, you put yourself ahead of the game and increase the likelihood of finding the right person when you need them.
Stay Ahead of the SEO Curve
Maybe you realize SEO is important for doctors but haven’t had the bandwidth to devote resources to it yet. You’ve thought, I’ll get to SEO a little later.
This is certainly understandable. SEO doesn’t feel urgent; it feels like the kind of project you can work on as the need arises.
SEO is devious that way.
The reality is that SEO is a marathon, not a sprint. If you wait until you need it to get started, it’s too late. You’ll be lost in the dark backwoods of the internet, hidden from Google’s search bots. And the providers or patients you’re trying to attract won’t even know you’re there.
Search algorithms change all the time, but the fundamental nature of Google (and other search engines) remains pretty simple. It relies on gradually building trusted links, keywords, and domain authority.
Over time, a well-optimized site incrementally grows in strength and traffic. It’s a synergistic process: the better optimized your site, the more traffic you get, and more traffic correlates to better search ranking.
The good news is, you don’t have to be an algorithm wizard to get in on this. Doctors just need to patiently play the game and consistently observe SEO best practices. If you want to rank high in local searches, for example, you can create a Google Business Profile listing, target local keywords, and make sure your business information is correct and listed in major online directories.
There’s not an instant SEO switch that will catapult doctor’s websites search rankings overnight. So waiting until you have the capacity for new members or the need for new providers to start optimizing won’t get you the results you need when you need them.
But if you start now, then when the time comes to expand, you’ll have a steady stream of traffic and leads baked into your website’s daily performance. That’s the power of SEO for doctors.
Broaden Your Mentality and Footprint
Locally targeted SEO is the best way to stand out from your local competitors. When people Google phrases like “concierge doctor near me,” you want to rank high in the search engine results pages (SERPs).
But local ranking isn’t the only important ranking. There are two important considerations for doctors to consider beyond local SEO:
Prospects Can Come From Anywhere
While the majority of your patients may come from your area, using SEO doctors can attract extra-local patients as well.
Millions of people who live in New York, California, and all around the country consistently travel for their jobs. Many of them look for physicians in the cities where they routinely do business. They don’t ask, “What doctor is close to me?” They Google for keywords like “Where is the right doctor for me?”
Some of these people go back and forth between their city and yours every week. They may not live where your practice operates, but they’ll come to you if you’re the right physician for them.
When doctor’s SEO doesn’t target a national audience, the risk is missing out on these potential members.
For example, one ROAMD network physician gained a member who is an A-list musician who swings through his city during tours. This musician wanted specialized medical care and locality wasn’t an issue.
You may be the perfect physician for countless out-of-area patients who are gladly willing to travel… but only if they can find you.
This could also be an important factor in attracting the right extra-local physician to your practice. Maybe a phenomenal physician is looking for a change, but doesn’t have a specific location in mind. They search for a certain type of practice, sans location. Will you appear in their search results?
SEO helps doctors show up for the relevant terms (keywords) specific to the services you offer and the niche that you serve, regardless of location. It helps you demonstrate your specializations and differentiate yourself from other medical providers.
Competition Can Come From Anywhere
The winds of change are upon us in the DPC and concierge world. (This is the change I alluded to at the beginning of the post.)
We’re seeing big-league money — literally billions of dollars — dumped into concierge medicine by major institutional investors and corporations.
Just in the last year, Mount Sinai, PlushCare, VillageMD, Firefly, and many others have jumped into the game. Goldman Sachs acquired the MDVIP primary care network, marking the clearest signal yet that the established medical-industrial empire is hedging its bets in the membership-based medicine market.
What does this have to do with SEO?
Google the name of your practice and/or “concierge MD [your city]” right now. Do any of the companies listed in the paragraph above have a Google Ad placement on these terms? Many ROAMD member practices will answer with a resounding, “yes,” to this question.
Yes, it’s debatable whether hospitals and healthcare systems will ever be able to successfully scale concierge-style medicine. But there’s one thing we know for sure: you will soon be directly competing for the SEO real estate with big corporations that have virtually limitless resources and capital. And they know how to use SEO.
These companies will be looking to attract not just patients, but physicians, staff, leadership, and more. And they’ll source them from all over.
So while optimizing for local search results will always be important for private physicians, thinking bigger and on a national or even international scale will open up new sources of supply for your practice.
You have the opportunity to focus on SEO now, before the big companies get their engines running. As I mentioned, SEO takes time; if you begin optimizing now, you have the advantage of a head start. If you wait, you’ll be competing neck and neck with juggernauts for online attention — and by then, your odds of winning will be bleak.
Perception Is Key
Prospective members and physicians see the market through an online filter. At the end of the day, SEO is about visibility online, about being seen when people search for your services. It’s about perception.
To attract the right physicians and staff, as well as new members, they’re going to have to see you. And for them to see you, you have to go through the trouble of making sure Google thinks your practice is worth ranking high in their search results.
SEO is kind of like the internet version of an avian mating dance. A good meta description here, the right keyword there, and you’ve got feathers in all the right places. So the Google algorithm ranks you in the top spots when someone searches for “concierge physician in [your city]” or “best primary care doctor for performance athletes.” And when you rank well, the searcher perceives you to have a high level of prestige and degree of authority.
This is how you stand out in an (increasingly large) online crowd.
Future-Proof Your Practice With SEO
Private concierge physicians are no longer just competing with geo-local businesses — they’re entering the ring with global powerhouses. Consider this post the canary in the coal mine. The online marketplace for concierge medicine and DPC is about to blow up.
Now is the time to future-proof your practice by understanding SEO for doctors to stand out in a coast-to-coast marketplace of patients and providers.
Dr. Scott Pope serves as the Chief Growth Officer at In Scope Ventures, a growth consulting firm focused on early stage healthcare companies. Scott is passionate about healthcare entrepreneurship and has been involved in various advocacy efforts to promote innovation in the industry.
Scott earned his PharmD from Ohio Northern University, where he participated in Habitat for Humanity, Phi Mu Delta, Order of Omega, and NCAA basketball. After graduating from ONU, Scott completed a pharmacy residency at Cone Health, followed by a specialty residency in infectious diseases, internal medicine, and academics at Campbell University and Duke University Medical Center.
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