Medical practices are sold search retainers by firms that treat a physician group exactly like a plumber with better margins. The mechanics do overlap, but three things make this trade genuinely different: the content makes claims about health and therefore sits under advertising law and clinical review, the forms collect protected health information, and the results the practice cares about are usually appointments in specific service lines rather than traffic. An agency that cannot speak to all three will produce a queue of unpublished drafts, a compliance problem, or a report full of visitors who wanted a condition you do not treat.
Clinical review is the schedule, not a formality
The rate limiting step in medical search work is almost never writing, it is getting a physician to read and approve. Practices that skip this end up publishing content assembled from other clinics' pages, which reproduces their claims and occasionally their errors. Practices that take it seriously discover that a busy specialist reviews perhaps a couple of pieces a month, and any agency plan promising a high publishing cadence collides with that immediately. Solve it during selection, not month three: name the reviewing clinician, agree how many pieces a month they can realistically read, agree a turnaround, and price the plan against that number rather than the agency's standard content package. Ask each candidate how they run clinical interviews, how long they take, and what the draft looks like when it reaches the reviewer. Agencies experienced with physicians send drafts annotated with the source for every clinical statement, which makes review fast. Agencies new to the sector send prose and wonder why it comes back covered in red.
Claims, testimonials and the rules that apply to your ads
Everything the practice publishes about outcomes is advertising and has to be truthful and substantiated. The Federal Trade Commission's guidance on health claims sets out the standard, and its health products compliance guidance goes further into what level of evidence a claim needs. In practice this means outcome language, comparative claims about techniques, and before and after imagery all need a defensible basis, and the practice owns that even when an agency wrote it. Patient testimonials add a second layer: they are endorsements, so any material connection or incentive has to be disclosed, and a testimonial cannot imply typical results if it does not represent them. Ask any agency proposing a review or testimonial programme how they handle both points, and whether they have ever had content rejected by a compliance reviewer and what they changed. The right answer is yes and a specific story. Never accept a plan that treats patient stories as free content.
Patient data on the website is a compliance surface
The moment a form asks why a patient is contacting you, the site is handling protected health information, and the privacy and security standards at 45 CFR Part 164 apply to how it is stored and who can access it. The practical questions are narrow and answerable. Where do submissions go, and is that inbox appropriate. Is any analytics, session recording or advertising script capturing what patients typed into form fields, since that is a common and serious failure. Does a business associate agreement exist with every vendor who could see that data. Can the agency describe what happens to patient details inside their own project management tools, because screenshots of enquiries pasted into a ticket are a real leak. Ask these in writing and keep the replies. An agency that answers precisely has been through this; one that says the developer handles it has not.
Measure service lines, not traffic
A physician group does not want visitors, it wants appointments in the lines with capacity and margin. Those are different targets and a good agency will ask which service lines to grow before it opens a keyword tool. Insist that reporting is broken out by service line and that a booked or requested appointment, not a session, is the headline number. Ask how calls are tracked, since a large share of medical enquiries are phone calls and an agency ignoring them will understate its own results and misread which pages work. Then ask commercial questions: the disclosed minimum engagement, what is delivered in house versus subcontracted, who owns the site and analytics if you leave. Where a practice decides how much of this to buy, seo services for doctors are best scoped one service line at a time so results are attributable rather than folded into a single number that nobody can act on.
Questions people ask about seo agency for doctors
Do we need an agency that only works with medical practices?
Not necessarily, but you do need one that has worked inside clinical review and understands health claim substantiation. Ask a generalist to describe their approval workflow for a health claim. If they have one and can name a time it stopped a page from publishing, sector exclusivity adds little beyond a higher rate.
How many pages a month is realistic?
It is set by your reviewing clinician's capacity, not the agency's. Many practices sustain a small number of substantial, reviewed pieces a month and do better than practices publishing far more unreviewed content. Agree the realistic number during selection and let the plan follow it rather than the other way around.
What about reviews from patients?
Collect them through a process that does not incentivise positive sentiment, publish them unedited in substance, and disclose any connection where one exists. Also confirm the process does not cause patients to disclose treatment details publicly in ways they did not intend. Ask the agency to show you the exact request wording they would send.
How long before we see appointments move?
Local visibility and map results can move within a few months; competitive condition and procedure queries take longer because they need reviewed content built up over time. Ask for a written expectation at month three and month six, split by service line, and judge the engagement against that document rather than a later narrative.