Medical SEO that Google and patients can trust.
Patients look up symptoms, then a specialist, then a doctor's name, then whether that doctor takes their insurance. Each step is a different search and a different page. We run healthcare SEO for practices and clinics with medically reviewed content, accurate provider profiles and analytics that don't leak patient data to ad platforms.
The rules we write within
- AMA Code of Medical Ethics, Opinion 9.6.1: physician advertising must not contain false or misleading statements. Testimonials that don't reflect typical results, and claims that imply a certainty of cure, are treated as deceptive.
- HHS OCR guidance on online tracking technologies: tags on logged-in and booking pages can access protected health information. A June 2024 court ruling vacated the part about IP addresses on public pages; the rest still stands.
- HIPAA Privacy Rule: replies to online reviews can't reveal anything about a patient's care. HHS OCR settled with a New Jersey practice, Manasa Health Center, for $30,000 in 2023 over review replies that did.
- Google's guidance on helpful content: health is a 'Your Money or Your Life' topic, so content must be accurate, consistent with expert consensus and clear about who wrote it.
Medical SEO, also called healthcare SEO, is the work of getting a medical practice found for the conditions it treats, the services it offers and the names of its providers. Because health is a "Your Money or Your Life" topic, it depends on accurate, clinician-reviewed content, clear authorship, consistent directory listings and privacy-aware tracking.
Patients search in stages.
Symptom, specialist, doctor, insurance. Each step needs a page that answers that one question well.
| Search type | Example searches | What the patient needs | Page we build |
|---|---|---|---|
| Condition | plantar fasciitis treatment, migraine specialist near me | To understand options and find someone who treats it | A clinician-reviewed condition page linked to the providers who see it |
| Service or test | sleep study near me, allergy testing [city] | Prep, cost, how long and who does it | A service page with preparation steps, insurance notes and booking |
| Provider name | dr [name] reviews, [name] md cardiologist | Credentials, reviews and how to book | A provider page with Physician schema, board certification and accepted insurance |
| Insurance | primary care doctor that accepts aetna, dermatologist that takes medicare | Proof they're in network | An insurance page plus accurate insurance networks on each Business Profile |
| Walk-in and urgent | urgent care open now, walk in clinic near me | Hours, wait and directions | Location pages with live hours, services offered on site and what to bring |
Why medical SEO is its own job
General local SEO gets a clinic on the map. These are the things that decide whether a patient trusts it.
Google holds health pages to a higher bar
Health content falls under what Google calls Your Money or Your Life topics. Pages with no named author, no clinical review and vague claims struggle, however well they're optimised.
Your doctors are the brand
Patients search by name after a referral. If the provider page is thin and a directory profile is richer, the directory gets the click and, sometimes, the booking.
Your analytics may be a privacy question
A pixel that reports which condition page someone read before booking can be sending health information to an ad platform. We fix that before we build anything else.
Insurance decides the shortlist
Google Search can show which insurance networks a provider might accept, managed through the Business Profile. Out-of-date networks quietly cost you patients who would have booked.
Many providers, one consistent story
Multi-provider and multi-location groups multiply every listing. One old phone number copied across twenty profiles is twenty small reasons for Google to doubt the details.
What medical SEO includes
Built for practices where every page is read by a worried patient and judged by Google's highest bar for accuracy.
Clinician-reviewed condition and service pages
Our writers draft pages for the conditions you treat and the services you offer. A clinician from your practice reviews each one, and the page shows the author, the reviewer and the date it was last checked.
Provider pages with Physician schema
One page per provider with training, board certification, languages, locations and insurance. We mark it up with Schema.org's Physician type, including medical specialty, NPI number and whether they're accepting new patients.
Business Profiles for every location and provider
Google treats doctors as individual practitioners who can hold their own profile beside the clinic's. We set up both, keep hours current, and maintain the insurance networks you accept so they show where patients filter for them.
Healthgrades, WebMD, Vitals and Zocdoc
Claimed and corrected listings on the medical directories that rank beside you, plus insurer provider directories, so a patient sees the same address, phone and specialties everywhere.
Tracking set up with HIPAA in mind
An audit of every pixel and tag on your booking, portal and condition pages, then a measurement setup that counts appointments without passing health information to ad platforms. We work alongside your compliance lead, not instead of them.
Reviews and AI search visibility
A review request routine that follows Google's policies, reply templates that confirm nothing about anyone's care, and regular checks on whether AI assistants name your clinicians when patients ask who treats their condition.
SEO, paid search or the directories?
Healthcare marketing usually needs all three. They do different jobs and carry different privacy questions.
| SEO | Paid search | Healthgrades, Zocdoc & co. | |
|---|---|---|---|
| How you pay | A fixed retainer, or staff time if done internally | Per click, priced by auction | Varies by platform, from free listings to paid tiers |
| Where it wins | Condition research, provider names and local searches | Urgent, high-intent searches and new service launches | Patients who start by filtering for specialty and insurance |
| What you keep | Your pages, authority and Google reviews | Visibility ends with the campaign | A profile on a platform you don't control |
| Targeting limits | Organic results have no audience targeting to restrict | Health is a sensitive category: no remarketing or Customer Match lists | Set by each directory's own policies |
| Privacy watch-outs | Tags on booking and portal pages need a HIPAA review | Conversion tags on landing pages need the same review | Check what each platform collects when patients book through it |
Weighing the budget split? Our SEO vs PPC guide walks through it, and the marketing budget calculator gives you a starting number.
Your first 90 days
Privacy first, then pages, then authority. Ranking timelines depend on your specialty and market. Here's what drives them.
Privacy & foundations
A tag and pixel audit across booking, portal and condition pages, a technical SEO audit, Business Profile clean-up for each location and provider, and a map of your specialties against who ranks for them today.
Providers & priority pages
Provider pages rebuilt with schema, the first set of clinician-reviewed condition and service pages, an insurance page, and a review-request process built into your check-out workflow.
Directories & authority
Healthgrades, WebMD, Vitals, Zocdoc and insurer listings corrected, links from hospital affiliations, medical societies and community health partners, and the first report on appointment requests by page.
Published price. Proof from harder markets.
Our SEO retainer is $1,199 a month, with the same deliverables listed on our SEO packages page. We don't have a published case study from a medical practice yet. What we do have are results from cannabis and wellness brands, categories where Google and Meta allow far less than they allow a clinic, so the content and technical work had to carry everything.
Monthly organic revenue
A craft cannabinoid brand, over 18 months, with $814K in total organic revenue and organic conversions up 478%.
Read the case study →Organic revenue, year over year
A wellness brand that couldn't lean on paid ads, grown through content, technical SEO and links.
Read the case study →Google Ads, restricted niche
$10,508 in spend returned $52,799 in tracked revenue, using bottom-of-funnel keywords only.
Read the case study →Sources: AMA Code of Medical Ethics, Opinion 9.6.1 "Advertising and Publicity"; HHS Office for Civil Rights, "Use of Online Tracking Technologies by HIPAA Covered Entities and Business Associates" (with notice of Am. Hosp. Ass'n v. Becerra, N.D. Tex., June 20, 2024) and June 2023 press release on Manasa Health Center; Google Search Central, "Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content" and "Spam policies for Google web search"; Google Ads Help, "Personalized advertising" and the Health sensitive interest category; Google Business Profile Help, "Guidelines for representing your business on Google"; Schema.org, Physician type; Search Engine Land, "Google Search lets you see if a doctor or healthcare facility takes your insurance". Case-study figures from Hello Bleu client GA4 and Google Ads data, client names withheld.
Free practice visibility audit.
Send us your site and your specialties. We'll show you where patients find you, where they find someone else, and what your tags are sharing.
- Provider and location visibilityHow each doctor and clinic shows on Google, Healthgrades, WebMD, Vitals and Zocdoc, and where the details disagree.
- Content quality checkWhich condition and service pages lack authorship, clinical review or depth, and which important ones don't exist yet.
- Tag and pixel scanA first look at the third-party tags on your booking and patient-facing pages, so your compliance lead knows what to review.
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Book a Free CallFrequently asked questions
How much does medical SEO cost?
Hello Bleu's SEO retainer is $1,199 a month. In the wider market, a single-specialty practice in one town might pay anywhere from several hundred to around two thousand a month, while multi-location groups with dozens of providers often pay considerably more because there are more profiles, pages and listings to manage. We'll tell you on the first call whether one retainer fits your size.
Who writes the medical content?
Our writers research and draft. A licensed clinician at your practice reviews and corrects every page before it goes live, and the page names both. Google asks whether it is self-evident who wrote a page and says health content must be consistent with established expert consensus. Clinician review is how a practice meets that bar honestly.
Can we use Meta Pixel or Google Analytics on our site?
Carefully. HHS guidance says tracking on patient portals and logged-in pages generally has access to protected health information, and booking pages can too. In June 2024 a Texas federal court vacated the part of that guidance covering IP addresses on public, unauthenticated pages, and HHS says it is evaluating next steps. We audit your tags and set up measurement, and your counsel decides the policy.
Should we have a page for every condition we treat?
Only for conditions where you can say something specific: how your clinicians assess it, which providers see it, what a first visit involves. Hundreds of thin, look-alike pages are exactly what Google's spam policies call scaled content abuse. We'd rather build forty pages patients actually finish reading.
Do medical boards restrict our marketing?
Yes. State medical boards set their own advertising rules, and the AMA's ethics opinion on advertising warns against testimonials that don't reflect typical results and claims that imply a certain cure. We write within those rules and your state's, and your practice signs off on every clinical statement before it is published.
Can you guarantee page one for our specialty?
No. Google decides rankings, not agencies, and a promised spot for a health term is a sales line, not a plan. What you get from us is a clear monthly scope, plain reporting, and appointment requests linked to the pages and searches behind them, so you can judge the return yourself.
From The Bleu Print
Guides from our team on the questions we get asked most.
What is AEO?
How to get your business chosen as the answer in AI Overviews, featured snippets, ChatGPT and voice search, and how AEO differs from SEO and GEO.
Read article →How long does SEO take?
What happens in each month of an SEO campaign, what speeds it up, and real GA4 data from two client campaigns.
Read article →SEO vs PPC
Costs, speed, ROI and risk compared, plus a simple framework for where your next marketing dollar should go.
Read article →Accurate pages.
Fuller schedules.
Book a free call. We'll review your provider profiles, your content and your tracking, and tell you honestly what's worth fixing first.
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