Common Question From Doctors: How Long Does It Take to Improve Medical SEO? or How Long Does It Take For Medical SEO To Work?

Answer: 4 Months to 1 Year (according to Google)

Here are 2 examples for medical practices.

Example 1: If you already have a website, let’s say you have a primary care practice for 10 years.  You have the same website, with minimum information and the SEO and other performance like conversions are in a bad shape and are minimum, then using GOLD or PLATINUM service form PatientGain, you should see improvements in your medical SEO within 1 months to 2 months, you will start seeing improvements.

Example 2: If you are opening a new practice, and there has been no website, no web presence before. In this case your website’s medical SEO has to start from zero. So it will take you longer to start building your SEO, initially. Once the initial 6 months (approximately) have passed, and you are using either GOLD or PLATINUM service, you should generally see incremental improvements every month.

There is no set or specific answer for this question.  It can take  from a few weeks to several months before you will see any improvements. The true benefit of SEO is long term.  According to Google SEO staff, medical marketing companies and agencies should set proper expectations for healthcare customers.

It takes 4 months to 1 year to start seeing benefits of medical SEO and improvements in rankings. Watch this video from Google.  

How long does it take to get top medical SEO rankings? 

This is very difficult question to answer. Short answer is “it depends” on many factors. Your healthcare business is unique, and so is your website, your competition and demographics of the area where you are located. It typically takes at least four to six months to see noticeable improvement from your healthcare SEO efforts. You may see progress before then or it may take longer, up to a year in some cases. If you have a newer website, with no or low domain authority, it will take longer.

Use Case:  New website, new URL – with no previous history.

We will divide medical practices website into three broad areas: 

1) Low competition – will start seeing improved results in first 2 to 3 months.
2) Medium competition – will start seeing improved results in first 3 to 7 months.
3) High competition – will start seeing improved results in first 6 or more months.

Use Case: Existing website, existing URL – with previous history.

We will divide medical practices website into three broad areas: 

1) Low competition – will start seeing improved results in first 1 to 2 months.
2) Medium competition – will start seeing improved results in first 1 to 3 months.
3) High competition – will start seeing improved results in first 2 to 4 months.

Use Case: Telemedicine practice – targeting large population areas.

Telemedicine practices generally do not have a specific location, like a city or locality, or a physical address. They typically target a large area. Like a complete state or multiple states. To build proper SEO strategy for a website like this, it will be a massive effort. And it will require many dozens of content pages, and constant attention to conversion data. Expect to see very slow progress and many, many months – even years for SEO to accomplish good results.

Some SEO factors, included but not limited to:

0) Domain authority. If a domain has domain authority of 50 or above, it is much easier to improve the rankings – Check domain authority using this tool. If your domain is less than 2 years old, and domain authority is ver low, it will take much longer to see the improvement in SEO results
1) Your competition and their own SEO
2) Mobile site page load – should be less than 3 seconds
3) Content of the website – Quality of information on your website – does it add value to the reader – reader can be a patient or a search engine – both are equally important
4) Structure of the website
5) Links inbound and outbound
6) Website quality and E-A-T score
7) Technical website structure
8) Structured information within your website – Schema.org implementation
9) User experience
10) Images & videos tagging
11) Service being offered – every service and keyword has different competition – detailed information
12) Location VS virtual – If you are local business it is much easier to improve your SEO, if you are a virtual, telemedicine practice, it will take a very long time to get high SEO rankings
13) there are additional 200+ factors, according to Google’s CEO

Medical SEO optimization for higher rankings is a constant process, and not a one time “job”. 

In addition, SEO for doctors depends on:

1) Clinic Industry Knowledge and Content Writing Skills

2) Expertise in Search Engine Algorithms, Digital Best Practices, and Patient Behavior

3) Your Competition. Everyone Wants Top SEO Rankings.

4) A Dynamic Software Platform Designed to Adapt to Changes with Trends and Technology

5) World Class Support behind Your Technology System

Achieving top SEO rankings for medical practices and physicians is a process and not a simple one-time setup. It is time-intensive, requires deep knowledge about your own medical practice and Search Engine technology, costs both money and time to get real results, and it never stops for your medical practice.

So for Medical SEO rankings think about a marathon, not a sprint. 

Promoting Your Medical Practice Getting Listed In Important Directories

Your website is not the only place where the name of your business should be found. You need to create business listings on several essential websites with direct links back to your site. The most important directories to create a business listing on are:

• Google  – Add your clinic listing on Google my business
• Bing    – Add your clinic listing on Bing places 
• Yelp –  Add your clinic listing on Yelp
• Facebook – Add your clinic listing on Facebook
• Foursquare – Add your clinic listing on Foursquare
• Apple Maps – Add your clinic listing on Apple Maps