SEO services for doctors, compared on evidence

Agencies with a verified published price

How a practice should buy search services

1. Start with the services you want more of. A practice rarely needs more of everything. Name the two or three procedures or specialties with spare capacity and the highest margin, because those decide the pages that get built and the queries worth chasing.
2. Test the agency's compliance literacy early. Ask how they handle patient testimonials, before and after imagery, review solicitation and any use of patient information. An agency that has never heard of the HIPAA marketing rules should not be writing your patient facing pages.
3. Check who writes the clinical content. Google's helpful content guidance asks whether a reader can tell who created the page and whether the author has genuine expertise, and it gives extra weight to trust on health topics. Clinician review of medical pages should be part of the scope, not an upsell.
4. Verify the agency against its own pages. Named team, real address, printed pricing where it exists, and case work that names a practice type and a measurable outcome. Agencies are listed here only on what can be verified from their own published pages.

The compliance layer a general agency will miss

The HIPAA Privacy Rule defines marketing as a communication about a product or service that encourages recipients to purchase or use it, and it generally requires written patient authorisation before protected health information is used for marketing. There are exceptions, including communications about the covered entity's own health related products and services, treatment communications such as refill reminders and referrals, and care coordination. The practical result is that a testimonial campaign, a patient email list or a case study built from a real chart is a compliance question before it is a marketing question.

Advertising rules apply as well. Claims about outcomes need to be truthful and substantiated, and any material connection behind a testimonial has to be disclosed. Ask a prospective agency to explain, in writing, how it collects and publishes patient stories and reviews. If the answer is that the practice handles that part, the agency has told you where its expertise stops.

What actually moves a practice's visibility

Most patient searches are local and specific: a condition, a procedure, or a specialty plus a place. That makes the practice's Google Business Profile, its location pages and its individual clinician pages the working assets, alongside procedure pages written to answer the questions patients actually ask before booking. Google describes local ranking as relevance, distance and prominence, and states there is no way to request or pay for a better local ranking, so the work is in being genuinely relevant and genuinely well described.

For multi location groups, the same discipline applies per site rather than per brand: correct hours, correct services, correct clinicians, and pages that are written rather than duplicated. Near identical location pages built only to catch place names are the pattern Google's spam policies describe as doorway abuse.

Scoping and pricing the engagement

Practices are usually quoted a monthly retainer covering technical maintenance, a fixed number of new or rewritten pages, local profile management and reporting. The variable that moves price most is content volume, particularly when clinical review is included in the workflow.

Ask each candidate to quote one written scope with the number of pages named, to say who writes and who reviews, and to state what happens to the pages if the engagement ends. Agencies in this index that publish their pricing give you a set of reference points to hold any quote against.

Questions people actually ask

Can we publish patient testimonials on the practice site?

Only with care. The HIPAA Privacy Rule generally requires written authorisation before protected health information is used for marketing, and advertising rules require testimonials to be honest and any material connection disclosed. Get the authorisation process agreed before the campaign, and take your own counsel's view.

How long before search work brings new patients?

Google's guidance says some changes take effect in a few hours while others take several months, and suggests several weeks before judging a change. Expect a practice programme to be measured over quarters, and treat any promise of a fixed ranking by a fixed date as a warning sign.

Do we need a separate page for each location?

Yes, if each location is genuinely distinct in clinicians, services and hours, and the page is written rather than duplicated. Near identical pages produced only to catch place names match what Google's spam policies call doorway abuse.

Should the agency or the practice own the content?

The practice should own the site, the content and the profiles. Confirm ownership and handover in the contract, and make clinician review of medical pages part of the agreed scope rather than an extra.

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