SEO for Doctors

Many physicians have only a profile page on their employer’s website, written by someone else and lost when they change jobs. A personal physician website — even five pages — is the one place you control:

• it ranks for your name above directories you cannot edit
• it stays yours when you move hospitals, join a group or open a private practice
• it can explain your approach and the conditions you focus on in your own words

If you stay with one practice for the long term, a strong profile page on its site may be enough, and the work goes into that page and the directories. How a doctor’s site is designed and built is covered on the medical website design page.

Google treats health as a “Your Money or Your Life” subject and looks for E-E-A-T — first-hand experience, expertise, authority and trust — before it ranks medical pages. For an individual physician E-E-A-T is not abstract: it is the list of facts on your profile page that a patient, a colleague or a search engine can verify.

Credentials and board certification on a physician profile

Medical school, residency and fellowship with years; board certification with the board named; state licenses; memberships in specialty societies; publications and teaching roles. Patients and search engines can check board certification, so it is written exactly as the board states it.

Hospital affiliation and the hospital’s find-a-doctor page

The hospitals where you have privileges are both a trust signal and a source of links. Your profile names them, and the hospital’s find-a-doctor page should link back to your profile or personal site. Many US directories build profiles from public provider data such as the NPI registry, so an old address there spreads to sites you never touched.

All of this is also marked up as structured data for the physician — specialty, credentials, affiliated hospitals, offices — so search engines and assistants connect the page with the person.

A page about a condition you treat — say, psoriatic arthritis for a rheumatologist — can rank for searches that no directory answers. In a YMYL field it only works if it is clearly yours:

• written or reviewed by you, with your name, credentials and the date of the last review at the top
• explains the condition, how it is diagnosed and what treatment options exist at your office, without giving advice to an individual reader
• says when to seek urgent care and that the page is no substitute for a visit
• cites guidelines or studies where it makes a claim, and makes no promises of a cure or outcome

I draft and structure the pages from search data and your notes; you correct the medicine. Pages nobody with credentials has reviewed are not published.

Patients read ratings before they book a doctor they do not know. The directories hold profiles for most US physicians whether or not they have claimed them, often with wrong offices, old photos and missing insurance. The work:

• claim and correct the profiles on Healthgrades, Vitals, ZocDoc, WebMD and Google, with the same name format, offices and phone numbers
• add a recent photo, languages, accepted insurance and a short biography that matches the profile page
• set up a request for a review after the visit, sent to every patient, with no incentives of any kind
• report reviews that break a platform’s rules, such as ones about a different doctor

Replies need the most care. In the US, a reply that confirms someone is your patient or mentions their care can be a HIPAA disclosure, even when the patient wrote about it first; in the EU the GDPR raises the same concern. A reply thanks the person, states a general policy and invites them to call the office — nothing more. This is general guidance; your practice’s compliance officer has the last word.

Google allows a separate Business Profile for an individual practitioner at the practice where they see patients. For a specialist this profile often ranks for “[specialty] near me” alongside the practice. Local SEO for doctors means:

• one practitioner profile for each office where you hold regular hours, with the specialty as the category
• hours that match your clinic days at that location, not the building’s hours
• an appointment link to the booking page for you, not the general switchboard
• no duplicate profiles from an old practice; those are merged or marked as moved

Map results for a whole clinic or hospital, with many departments and locations, are part of healthcare SEO.

Many specialists depend on referrals from primary care physicians and other specialists, and a referred patient almost always searches for the name before calling. If that search shows an outdated directory profile with two stars and an old phone number, some referrals never arrive. For referral-based practice, SEO is mostly about the name search: a profile page that ranks first, directories that agree with it, a clear way to book, and a short page for referring physicians with your fax or e-referral details, the conditions you see and typical wait times.

Telehealth lets a physician see patients far beyond the commute radius, and it changes what search can bring. A virtual visit page states what can and cannot be handled by video, which platform is used and how to book. In the US a physician generally needs a license in the state where the patient is during the visit, so the page lists the states you are licensed in, and pages target those states rather than the whole country. Search does not override licensing; it only helps the patients you can lawfully see find you.

Patients now ask ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google’s AI Overviews “who is a good endocrinologist in [city] who takes my insurance” or “which surgeons do robotic hernia repair near me”. The answers are put together from directories, hospital pages, reviews and the physician’s own site. For a doctor, generative engine optimization (GEO) and answer engine optimization (AEO) mean:

• credentials, board certification, hospital affiliation and specialty written as plain facts on your profile page
• the same name format and offices on every directory, so the assistant does not merge you with another doctor of the same name
• condition pages with your name as the reviewer, which assistants can cite
• structured data that ties the person, the specialty and the offices together

I check what assistants say about you before and after the work. More on the AI SEO and GEO optimization page.

Most firms ranking for “seo for doctors” are physician marketing agencies that bundle a website, ads, social posts and review software into one monthly fee; some reuse the same condition pages for every dermatologist or orthopedist they sign. I work alone, on SEO and on the site itself. The questions below are worth putting to me as much as to any agency:

• Who writes the condition pages, and do I review every one before it goes live?
• If we part ways, do the site, the domain and the Healthgrades and Google logins stay with me?
• How do you handle review replies with patient privacy in mind?
• Will you report appointment requests and referral calls, or only rankings?

• SEO audit for a physician — profile pages, directories, Google profile and what assistants say: from 250 €, one-off, with fixes in order of impact.
• One-off work — a profile page, condition pages, structured data, directory clean-up: 250–700 €.
• Monthly SEO for a physician or specialist — new condition pages, directories and reviews, AI visibility and reporting: from 800 € per month; in very competitive cities from 1,300 € per month.

Dentists will find their version on the dentist SEO page. Full price ranges are on the pricing page.