A dermatology practice is really two businesses sharing a waiting room. One is medical: rashes, acne, skin checks, suspicious moles, mostly insured, mostly local, and searched by people who want an appointment soon. The other is cosmetic: injectables, lasers, peels, paid out of pocket, higher value per patient and far more contested. Search marketing that treats them as one thing tends to serve neither well. This guide separates them, explains what drives visibility in each, covers the advertising rules that apply when you make a claim about skin, and sets out how to check a vendor's work before you commit a budget to it.
Medical and cosmetic demand behave differently
Medical dermatology searches are dominated by proximity and availability. Someone searching for a dermatologist near them wants a clinic they can reach and an appointment they can get, so the map results and the accuracy of your profile carry most of the weight: correct categories, insurances accepted stated clearly, hours, and a booking path that works on a phone. Cosmetic searches behave like any high value consumer purchase. People research the procedure long before they choose a provider, comparing what it involves, what it costs, how long recovery takes and what results look like. That means cosmetic visibility is won with procedure pages and genuinely useful explanatory content, while medical visibility is won with local completeness. A single retainer can cover both, but the plan should show two tracks, and a vendor who presents one undifferentiated content calendar has not thought about your business.
What the work actually is
In practical terms, four workstreams. Local completeness: your Google Business Profile and the equivalent listings, plus your practice details marked up on the site with the structured data Google documents, so the two agree. Provider pages: each dermatologist and physician assistant with a real page, credentials, and the conditions they treat, because patients search by name and by specialism. Condition and procedure pages: one page each, written to answer what the patient actually asks, not a paragraph in a services list. And technical health: a fast site, a booking flow that works on mobile, and content present in the page source. Beyond that sits reviews, which for a dermatology practice are both a ranking factor and the main thing a nervous patient reads before calling.
Claims about skin are advertising claims
The moment a page says a treatment produces a result, you are making an advertising claim and it needs support. The Federal Trade Commission's health products compliance guidance sets out the standard plainly: health related claims must be truthful and backed by competent and reliable scientific evidence, and any material qualification must be clear rather than tucked into small print. Before and after photographs are claims too, and they imply typical results whether or not you intend them to, so how they are captured, labelled and qualified matters. Testimonials carry the same weight. This is not a reason to write timidly; it is a reason to write specifically. A page that explains what a laser does, who it suits, what recovery involves and what it cannot fix is both more compliant and more persuasive than one that promises flawless skin. Ask any vendor who reviews their copy for claim support before publication, and be certain a clinician signs off.
Vetting a vendor without taking anything on faith
Ask for three named practice clients, the city each is in and the procedure or condition terms they rank for, then check those terms from a private window set to that city. Read the pages the vendor claims to have written and ask yourself whether a patient would find them useful or whether they read like padded filler. Ask specifically how they handle reviews, and reject any process that involves incentives, gating or screening, all of which breach platform policy and create disclosure problems. Ask whether they have worked with your electronic medical record or booking system, since a beautiful page that cannot make an appointment is decoration. The vetting discipline here is not different in kind from the way any local service business buys search, which is to say: named clients, verifiable rankings, work you can read, ownership in writing. Any guarantee of a ranking position is a reason to end the conversation.
Questions people ask about dermatology seo
Should medical and cosmetic sit on the same website?
Usually yes, with clearly separated sections, because the practice authority built by one helps the other and running two sites doubles the work. Separate sites make sense only when the cosmetic brand is genuinely distinct with its own location and staff. If you split, expect to fund two sets of content.
How long before a dermatology practice sees results?
Profile and listing corrections can shift local visibility within weeks, since they fix relevance signals that were simply wrong. Procedure pages in competitive metros generally take two to three quarters to gain traction. Cosmetic terms in large cities are among the more contested in local healthcare and take longer than medical ones.
Do patient before and after photos help or create risk?
Both. They are among the most persuasive things on a cosmetic page and among the most scrutinised. Use consistent lighting and framing, obtain and document written consent, label the number of treatments and the time elapsed, and qualify that results vary. Unlabelled composites are the version that causes problems.
What should I expect in the first ninety days?
A technical and local audit with fixes applied rather than listed, complete and consistent listings, a page plan naming the query each page targets, and the first pages live. If the quarter produces a content calendar and nothing published, the engagement is behind and you should say so before the next invoice.