Plastic Surgery SEO Strategies to Try This Year, As Told By an Expert Marketing Agency
When people are searching for plastic surgery in your city, you want your name to appear at the top of their search results. Strengthening your SEO efforts can help your business’ name rise to the top over time. As more prospective clients who need your services find you, you can gain high-quality leads and conversions. But how do you begin?
As an expert in boosting SEO for plastic surgeons, we’ve lined up our top recommendations that can help improve your rankings and drive business growth. Let’s explore the top SEO strategies you can try this year.
1. Fundamentals of Plastic Surgery SEO
SEO is the practice of optimizing your website to improve organic search rankings. When it’s done well, it increases the visibility of your practice to prospective patients searching for plastic surgery services.
With approximately 83% of patients using search engines to find providers, SEO drives qualified traffic, builds brand credibility, and offers higher ROI over time.
2. Technical & On-Site SEO
Technical and on-site SEO work together to improve your site’s visibility. Optimized technical SEO provides a better user experience with a fast site speed, security, and mobile-friendly design. On-site SEO focuses on optimizing keywords, meta descriptions, and high-quality content.
Site Performance & Mobile Optimization
A user-friendly experience on your website can boost your search visibility and drive business growth. Qualities of a well-optimized website include fast load times, HTTPS security, and mobile responsiveness. Optimizing your site’s core web vitals also ensures a user friendly experience.
These core vitals measure:
- How long it takes for the largest element to become visible on a page
- How often users experience shifts in the layout
- How long it takes for a page to respond to a user’s action (like clicking a button)
Fortunately, Google PageSpeed Insights can analyze your site’s performance and user experience. SEMrush audits also identify ways to improve technical SEO.
Clean, Lean Code
When your website’s code is easy to understand, it’s easier for search engine bots to crawl and index your pages. As a result, it can improve your site’s rankings. A well-structured site is also user-friendly, fast, responsive, and secure. All of these traits can help improve SEO.
To ensure you have lean code, use efficient, custom-coded or clean CMS templates. They are built to optimize a website’s performance, minimizing plug-ins, scripts, and styles that can add unnecessary code.
Structured Data & Technical Infrastructure
Structured data helps search engines understand your website’s content. When Google understands your business and what services you provide, it’s easier for it to rank your content. Technical infrastructure provides a good user experience, which can also improve your rankings. An optimized technical infrastructure includes a fast site speed, mobile compatibility, and security.
To improve your structured data and technical infrastructure, we recommend implementing schema markup for FAQs, procedures, and medical practice. This type of code helps search engines understand your website content better.
It’s also important to maintain the following properly:
- Sitemap: This is the outline of your website’s structure and how the pages relate to one another.
- Canonical Tags: These HTML elements tell search engines which page is the preferred version. Optimized canonical tags help prevent lowering your rankings from having duplicate content.
- Alt Attributes: This text is used in the <img> tag and provides the description of an image. They help people using assistive technologies understand the content.
- ARIA Labels: These HTML elements provide alternative text for elements on a page. This text makes the website more accessible for visitors using screen readers.
3. Keyword & Content Strategy
Regularly posting high-quality content on your website can help attract and engage your target audience. Using the keywords that they’re searching for can drive them to your site.
Keyword Research
When you know the keywords your potential clients are searching for, you can provide the information they’re looking for. Keywords can optimize a website, draw in traffic, and lead to more conversions.
SEO tools like SEMrush and Ahrefs can identify high-intent, long-tail and local keywords (e.g., “rhinoplasty near me” and “eyelid surgery in Miami”) that you can use in your content.
Dedicated Procedure Pages
Service pages can boost your visibility by showing your expertise. Appearing on the first page of search results can also help you attract potential clients. To improve your SEO, create unique in-depth pages for each procedure (e.g., breast lift, liposuction, rhinoplasty), and optimize them with your location and procedure terms. That way if someone searches for “breast lift in Miami,” they’re more likely to see your website.
High-Quality Content
Search engines reward websites with valuable, user-friendly content with high rankings. You can publish informative guides, FAQs, and cost-based posts. Human-written, original content outperforms AI-only material. Having engaging, valuable content that is easy to understand can boost your search rankings.
Media Enrichment
Media enrichment refers to the visual elements that enhance your website beyond the text. It impacts SEO by improving the users’ experience. Having engaging media on your site can help lower your bounce rate. This means that potential clients are more likely to stay longer on your website. To upgrade your website’s media enrichment, integrate professional photos, videos, and media assets. These elements can be engaging for users and support SEO when pictures are indexed by Google Images.
4. Backlinks & Authority Building
A backlink is a link on one website that links to yours. Search engines use backlinks as a ranking factor, considering them signals of trustworthy information. When a website gains backlinks from trustworthy sites, it builds authority. Trustworthy, authoritative websites achieve better rankings and visibility.
Link Quality Over Link Quantity
When it comes to backlinks, search engines prefer quality over quantity. It’s better to have a few quality backlinks than many links to untrustworthy sites, so avoid spammy and irrelevant link building.
Examples of authoritative backlinks include:
- Industry Associations: The American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS), American Association of Plastic Surgeons (AAPS), and American Board of Plastic Surgery (ABPS)
- Medical Directories: American Board of Cosmetic Surgery (ABCS), Healthgrades, and state medical boards
Pillar & Cluster Content
A pillar page is a comprehensive overview of a broad topic. It can easily link to other pages, or clusters of separate articles that provide relevant information on sub-topics. For example, a pillar page on cosmetic procedure guides can attract links naturally and support topic clusters about each procedure. This site structure can boost SEO because it’s well-organized and for search engines. Covering topics to this extent also signals expertise and authority, which may improve search rankings.
5. Implement Local SEO Optimization
Local SEO helps prospective clients in your area find you more easily. With this strategy, your business can appear at the top of search results when people look for your services in your city. It can also help your business show up on Google maps and boost your visibility.
Optimize Your Google Business Profile
To help boost your local SEO, you should make sure your Google Business Profile has accurate NAP (name, address, and phone number), business hours, photos, and service descriptions. These details make it easier to find your business and potentially leave reviews. When your business gains positive reviews, it builds credibility with prospective clients. Plus, getting high reviews can help your business rank better.
Bing Places
Optimizing Bing Places for Business can also improve local SEO and your online visibility. After Google, Bing is the second most popular search engine, so you can use it to broaden your outreach to future clients. Providing your location and offerings can help you be seen by people looking for your services nearby.
Consistent NAP Citations
Maintaining uniform listings across all local directories (local chamber, ASPS, etc) and social profiles builds trust. Having this consistency can boost your rankings and help more people find your business. Inconsistent details can be confusing to potential clients and lower your rankings in search engines.
Create Location-Specific Pages or Robust Location Pages
If you have clinics in multiple cities, you can develop individual pages that provide the location and procedure (e.g., “BBL in Austin”). This strategy gives details that can help prospective clients find your business and book a consultation with your team.
6. Tracking, Analytics, & Adjustments
Monitoring your website’s analytics provides key insights into what is increasing conversions and what may need to be improved. To boost conversions, it’s important to look into your site’s user behavior to gain helpful insights.
SEO Tools & Audit Software
SEO audits can give you incredible insights into how well your site is performing. Tools from SEMrush and Ahrefs track site health, crawl errors, and mobile scores. This information can help you fix technical issues to enhance the user’s experience. Insights on keyword performance can let you know how your clients are finding you online, and you can learn new opportunities to attract new customers.
Google Analytics & Conversion Tracking
Key performance indicators (KPIs) can track your progress toward your goals. These metrics include organic visits, ranked, conversions, and bounce rates, and they indicate how successful your SEO strategy is for your business. You can also track journey-to-booking via Google Analytics 4. This analytics platform gives insights into the interactions visitors make on your site that cause them to make a booking.
A/B Testing & Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)
With A/B testing, you can compare two versions of a webpage and see which drives a higher CRO. You can test headlines, CTAs, forms, and landing pages to increase lead conversion.
Adapt To Algorithm Updates
Google’s search algorithm is continuously being updated. Medic, BERT, and RankBrain are examples of core updates on how Google processes online information. To prepare for core shifts, keep improving your site’s equality and speed. You should also focus on making sure your content conveys E-E-A-T (experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness).
7. Integration with PPC & Social (Optional but Effective)
While you don’t have to try the following strategies, these tips can help you rank higher.
Complementary Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Campaigns
Running high-intent PPC ads alongside your SEO strategy can help you reach a wider audience. As a result, you can also attract more high-quality leads. If you implement this strategy, it’s important to manage, track, target, and follow healthcare ad policies.
Social Media & Remarketing
With this strategy, you can further build your reputation and conversions with your social presence. Remarketing ads can target people who have shown interest in your business, potentially driving growth. SEO isn’t about increasing visibility with as many people as possible. A strong strategy implements targeted campaigns, gaining high-quality leads that can increase conversions.
8. Cost & Investment
SEO typically costs $1,200-$10,000+ per month, depending on scope. Local SEO is near the lower end of this range. However, SEO investments often outpace paid ads in long-term value, especially once rankings are established. For plastic surgeons, the ROI on SEO can really pay off. As you gain more clients, some of them will return again and recommend your services, driving business growth. With an effective strategy in place, your business can rise to the top of search results, bringing more traffic to your website and increasing conversions. You can also stand apart from your competitors who don’t have the strongest online presence. For many plastic surgeons, these benefits make SEO strategies worth the cost.
Final Key Takeaways
There are so many strategies you can use to improve your SEO. Here’s a helpful recap:
- Nail the tech foundation (speed, security, schema).
- Create deep, original content per procedure, optimized locally.
- Build authority through relevant backlinks and directory consistency.
- Track everything: analytics, conversions, and algorithm shifts.
- Use SEO + PPC + social to build a holistic patient acquisition funnel.
Fortunately, you don’t have to do all of this alone. At Medstar Media, our SEO team knows how to boost traffic for plastic surgeons like you. With our experience, we can recommend and implement strategies that can take your business to the next level.
If you’re interested in a free, no-obligation consultation, we can provide you with a free SEO analysis. Just fill out the form below, call or text (801) 890-3847, or email us at support@medstarmedia.com.
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