SEO Guide for Plastic Surgeons

Having your own plastic surgery practice takes a lot of work.

Getting customers is not one of the main facets of the job but it’s needed to grow your practice. Referrals and word of mouth can be very powerful, but digital marketing is one of the most powerful ways to market your plastic surgery practice.

In this guide, I am going to show you how to market your plastic surgeon practice online.

What is SEO?

SEO stands for search engine optimization and is the methodology of optimizing your website so it ranks higher in search engines, resulting in organic visitors coming to your website from search engines.

With SEO, your website can rank above your competitors and send you free traffic 24/7, 365.

SEO can be broken down into 2 subcategories of Local SEO and National SEO. Since most plastic surgeons take local clients, we will be talking about how to do local SEO in this guide.

Since a part of the Google Algorithm looks at the location you are searching from, you can actually rank your plastic surgery practice’s website for searches like ‘plastic surgeons near me’ or ‘plastic surgeons in + your city’ and get a considerable amount of new appointments and patients.

Why Is SEO Important for Plastic Surgeons?

In 2020, SEO is as important as ever for plastic surgery businesses.

Did you know that “97% of people learn more about a local company online than anywhere else.”?

'97% of people learn more about a local company online than anywhere else.'Click To Tweet

That means that people are searching for your plastic surgery practice way before they even think about contacting you. This is why it’s so important for your business to rank high on Google.

“Near me” or “close by” type searches grew by more than 900% over two years according to HubSpot.

You can see that the number of searches for plastic surgeons is about 7,400 searches a month.

If your website is not bringing in more patients to your plastic surgeon practice, then you need to implement the SEO guide below.

Google My Business Optimization

Google My Business is your #1 asset online for gaining new customers if you are a medical practice.

What is Google My Business

Google My Business is a platform that allows you to create a profile for your business on Google.

Google uses this information in Google Maps, Local & Google Searches.

The #1 thing you should do is create or claim your Google My Business listing.

Simply go to Google My Business and sign in to your Google account. I would suggest creating a separate Google Account for your business (if you don’t already have one) so that everything is separate.

Click ‘Add Location’ to see if your practice is already added in Google. If you already have access to your Google My Business, then simply go to the next step.

Type in the name of your practice to see if it is already added in Google.

If it’s not, then select ‘Create a business with this name’.

Optimizing Your Google My Business

Add All Your Info

Adding as much information as possible to your Google My Business listing will help it stand out more and will allow Google to more easily show your profile.

Add hours, images, staff, products, services, description and any other information required by Google.

Get More Reviews

Reviews are a large part of the local search algorithm in Google. Having more 5-star reviews will get you to the top of your competitors on your local market.

Website Optimization

In order to rank your website high for these search terms, you will need to optimize your website as well as your Google My Business listing.

First, let’s talk about how to optimize your website to rank higher for these search terms.

Optimize Your Meta Titles

The meta title tag is an HTML tag that is used in Google as well as the browser to show the name and information of a page.

Having your main keywords in the meta title is very important for ranking your plastic surgeon practice higher in Google.

Ideally, you want to have your meta title of your homepage to be something like:

City + Plastic Surgeons – Practice Name or Doctor Name

and the actual  HTML code:

<title>Top-Rated Kansas City Plastic Surgeon - Dr. Joseph R. Barnthouse, MD</title>

You can see that the meta title includes the city and or state, the keyword ‘plastic surgeon’ and the practice or doctor’s name.

This will help you rank better for those higher searched terms.

Optimize Your Meta Descriptions

We need to do the same thing with our homepage’s meta description as well.

The meta description is an HTML tag that tells search engines a little bit more about the page.

Google often uses the meta description in the SERP (search engine result pages) as the text below the link in Google.

Sometimes they will create their own if it’s more relevant to the searcher’s term, but it’s very important to have your main keywords in the meta description as well.

Here is an example meta description that you could use as a template:

[Practice name] is a top-rated plastic surgeon practice located in [Your City], [Your State], serving hundreds of happy clients. Click here to schedule a free consultation today.

and here is the HTML code:

<meta name="description" content="Dr. Joseph R. Barnthouse, MD is a top-rated plastic surgeon practice located in Kansas City, MO, serving hundreds of happy clients. Click here to schedule a free consultation today."/>

Now, we need to add those same keywords throughout the content of your website.

Add Keywords to your Pages

Next, you want to add those same keywords throughout the content on your site, mainly your homepage.

Don’t just paste the keyword a bunch of times because that won’t work. Naturally, work it into your existing content so it sounds natural and organic.

You can use a keyword density tool to check to make sure your main keywords are used on your page a few times. Try and shoot for a density around 1-4% if you can,  but as long as you are adding your keywords a few times, Google will pick these up and rank you for them.

The tool will show you if any of your keywords are too dense. Be sure to check one, two and three-word phrases using the tool.

Add Schema Snippets

You can also add a local business schema snippet so that Google knows which location/GMB profile is connected to which website.

Simply use a schema snippet generator to create the schema snippet you can add to your website code.

Make sure to fill in all of the details and be consistent with your address, name, URL, etc and copy the entire code when you are done.

Now just add this code into the <head> section of your homepage.

Add Your Business Address to the Footer

Having your practice’s address in your footer can help you rank for local terms and dominate your geographical area.

If you have multiple locations, add each location to the footer.

It’s also important to note that you will have a different strategy if you have multiple locations. Check out our SEO guide for medical practices with multiple locations.