Top 10 SEO Strategies for Plastic Surgery Businesses in 2023
As the world grows more accepting and encouraging about “looking your best,” more and more plastic surgery practices have sprung up all over the country. This means ever more competition for the plastic surgery patients you’re trying to attract.
How do you make sure you’re drawing in your fair share of leads and converting them into patients with such fierce competition in the industry? The first step is to master plastic surgery SEO.
Table of Contents:
- What is plastic surgery SEO?
- Why is plastic surgery SEO important?
- Top 10 plastic surgeon SEO strategies
- Make sure your website is SEO optimized
- Use a Local SEO for Plastic Surgeons Strategy
- Get a killer blog
- Make your plastic surgery website mobile friendly
- Double down on social media
- Make Youtube videos
- Get professional keyword research
- Don’t set it and forget it
- Make sure you’re “up to speed”
- Don’t let all your plastic surgery SEO work go to waste
- Need help with SEO for Plastic Surgeons?
What is plastic surgery SEO?
SEO stands for search engine optimization, which basically means making it easy for Google to see what your website (and your practice) is all about.
When Google gets a clear picture of what you do, who you serve, where you’re located and what services you offer, it can more easily deliver your plastic surgery website in search results to people who are searching for what you’re selling.
Google’s high-tech and ultimately mysterious algorithms are built to provide the best answers to whatever users are searching for. That’s why Google has taken over as THE be-all-and-end-all search engine that blows other engines like Yahoo or Bing out of the water.
The algorithm works. Your job, as a plastic surgery practice, is to make sure Google knows what you’re about so you can use its algorithm to your advantage.
That is where plastic surgery SEO comes into play.
Why is plastic surgery SEO important?
Expert SEO for your plastic surgery practice is critical to its long-term success. That’s because SEO is the link between you and all the potential patients out there who are looking for a plastic surgeon.
The way SEO works is that someone types something into Google like “plastic surgeons near me” or “breast augmentation cost Austin, TX.” If your website provides that information and your SEO is done right, your plastic surgery website will pop up in the search results.
If your SEO is done really well, it’ll pop up at the top of the search results page – above your competitors. That exposure translates into more leads, more consults, and more procedures done at your practice.
Effective SEO for your plastic surgery practice starts with these 10 strategies. Of course, there’s more where this came from. But these are the first 10 you’ll want to start with today to build a strong online foundation that gets your practice loads of exposure to the right web visitors.
Top 10 plastic surgeon SEO strategies
Today, we’re going to walk you through 10 plastic surgery SEO strategies you can use to grow your practice starting today. Once you start seeing the rapidly growing numbers of plastic surgery patients coming through your door as a result of your SEO efforts, you’ll be hooked.
1. Make sure your website is SEO optimized
Just having a website isn’t good enough these days. You have to optimize it for SEO.
Luckily for you, people searching out plastic surgery want lots of information before they step into a clinic – which means endless opportunities for you to create content that they can interact with via SEO.
Think “before and after photos” of all your cosmetic procedures, information about cost of procedures, blogs about pros and cons of plastic surgery.
Having plastic surgery isn’t something people typically jump into – they do a ton of research first. That’s good news for you.
Answer their questions on your website with SEO friendly terms, and you’ll explode the number of visitors to your website as well as your SEO rankings.
Adding a strong section of commonly searched FAQs to your treatments and surgery specific pages will help strengthen the overall SEO of those pages and help you rank higher in SERPs.
Here are more specific on page plastic surgeon SEO tips for how you can rank your treatments and conditions pages in Google Search.
2. Local SEO for Plastic Surgeons
Most people are not going to look for a plastic surgeon outside of their local area.
For that reason, it’s imperative that you tap into the all the local plastic surgery SEO strategies for plastic surgeons when optimizing your online presence.
Make sure you work in the name of your city or region into the copy on your website, as well as in title tags, meta descriptions, photo file names and more.
Also, don’t forget to claim your Google My Business Listing, because it will allow your business to show up on Google Maps and improve your search engine rankings.
Plus, as we said before, people don’t want to travel a long way for plastic surgery. Showing potential patients that you’re right close by will help you book more consults that lead to more procedures.
3. Get a killer blog
Did you know that nearly 80% of visitors to your website will get there because of a blog? When someone has a question about plastic surgery, they’ll type that question in. If you’ve got a blog that answers their question that’s properly set up with SEO so it shows up high in the search results, that’s where they’ll click to get information.
Check out this website that ranks 3rd in the US on search results for “recovering from a butt lift surgery”. Guess what? It’s a blog post.
If they were an Intrepy client, however, that blog post would be updated with new 2020 content to work them toward taking over the #1 ranking spot for butt lift recovery related search terms.
And while they’re on your blog getting the answer to their initial question, they’re likely to browse around at the other content on your site. In general, people consume 11 pieces of content before they take action.
All that time that they’re browsing around on your website also helps your search engine rankings.
Google can see that they clicked on your link and then stayed on the site – which tells Google that your website provides helpful, useful information.
Since Google is in the business of delivering the best information to its users, they’ll push your site rankings higher because it can see that your website is useful to visitors.
By regularly posting new blogs to your website, you’ll also show Google that you take an interest in keeping your website up to date and providing current information to your visitors.
Google hates old content. If you’ve ever tried to find out information and been directed to something from 2002, you probably do, too. The more you post fresh, high-quality content, the better your search engine results will be.
4. Make your plastic surgery website mobile friendly
Not only do nearly 60% of all internet searches occur on a mobile device these days, but Google will also bump mobile-friendly sites up higher in search engine results.
Having a mobile-friendly site means your website looks good on any device. So if a customer is searching for cosmetic surgery on their phone while waiting to pick up the kids at school, or on the train, or in the locker room at the gym, they can.
In today’s online marketplace, it is quite often a case of “the first one gets the prize.”
If your site isn’t mobile friendly, potential plastic surgery leads will bounce off and find your competitors. Fast. Your market is way too competitive to rest on your laurels when it comes to plastic surgery SEO, mobile marketing, or anything else you do to market your practice on the web.
5. Double down on social media
No, we’re not talking about Facebook ads, though those are worth their weight in gold, too.
We’re talking about having a strong social media presence on all the major platforms for plastic surgery social media – Facebook and Instagram in particular. As a plastic surgery practice, your business is all about visuals.
People come to you to feel better because they look better. So showing off your work is quite simply the best possible advertising you can do. And on social media, it’s free.
How does having a social media presence tie into SEO for plastic surgeons? Backlinks.
Every high-quality link you have on the internet that leads back to your site gives fuel to the SEO fire. High quality links are the key here – don’t ever buy black hat backlinks, which are essentially fake links that go nowhere but attempt to trick Google into thinking you have lots of links to your site.
If Google catches you using black hat shenanigans, they’ll blacklist your site and you’ll lose all the SEO work and momentum you’ve built. Just don’t do it.
6. Make Youtube videos
Google owns YouTube, so for every video you have on there, you get a little bump in Google’s SEO algorithm.
Plus, when people are researching plastic surgery online, your videos, with proper, professional plastic surgery SEO, will pop up in the top of search results – the most valuable real estate on the internet.
Make sure to always include a link in the YouTube description to your website. Like we said – the more backlinks to your website, the better.
7. Keyword research is critical for SEO for Cosmetic Surgeons
Guessing isn’t as good as knowing. Sure, you can guess what plastic surgery keywords people in your area are searching for, but if you’re wrong, you’re going to waste a lot of time and money figuring it out.
It’s better to start with professional keyword research from a reputable plastic surgery SEO company. Maybe in your area, breast augmentation isn’t huge (pardon our pun), but facelifts or tummy tucks are. The only way to know is with professional keyword research.
8. Don’t set it and forget it
Once you finish with the SEO on your website, claiming your Google My Business listing, getting videos on YouTube, and hiring a brilliant content writer for your cosmetic surgery blog, you might think you’re done. But you’re not.
What keywords are “hot” changes all the time – from season to season and even from month to month. Watch what happens when an event happens, like a terrorist attack, a protest, or a celebrity baby being born. In minutes, the “most searched terms” on Google will change!
That kind of “turn on a dime” keyword shifting isn’t likely to affect your plastic surgery practice, but it’s just a good example that things on the internet change fast.
Every month or so, you’ll need to have new keyword research done to make sure that you’re still going after SEO keywords for cosmetic surgery that are getting a lot of traction. You always want to cash in on whatever people are searching for at the moment!
9. Make sure you’re “up to speed”
Google research says that the average website takes 15 seconds to load yet a user expects a less than 3 second load time.
That means users have a slow attention span and can result in poor SEO and high bounce rates.
A slow-loading website isn’t just frustrating to your visitors, it’s bad for your plastic surgery practice’s SEO, too. Page-loading speed is one of the things Google takes into account when ranking your plastic surgery website for SEO.
If your website is slow-loading now, there are plenty of things you can do to speed it up that don’t include redesigning the whole thing. Talk to a medical website marketing company that does web development, and they can help you trim and tweak your current site (if you like it and don’t want to change it) so that it loads faster.
10. Don’t let all your plastic surgery SEO work go to waste
Getting people to your website is one thing. Turning them into paying customers is another. Include calls-to-action that get your website visitors to do something like book a consult, download a report, or claim a free gift.
Don’t make them pick up the phone to interact with you! Picking up the phone and calling is actually one of the LAST things consumers do before making a purchase. Therefore, you’ve got to give them ways to interact with your brand in the interim to warm them up until they’re ready to schedule a consult or book a procedure.
Make sure you’re capturing the email addresses of as many site visitors as possible by offering “freebies” they’ll be happy to trade their email addresses to get. Physical samples of your products can be pricey to send out, but virtual products like a 10-step skincare guide from your top surgeon can be a big hit that costs you nothing to make and nothing to deliver.
“Freemiums” like this can help you collect valuable email addresses you can use to market to your customers until they’re ready to buy.
Plastic surgery is a big purchase.
So it takes a while for a potential plastic surgery lead to go through the buying cycle – from the moment they first consider a procedure until they actually buy it.
By harvesting email addresses from all of your website visitors, you can communicate with them and send them valuable, helpful information while they’re making up their minds. That puts you front and center when they’re finally ready to buy.
Need help with SEO for Plastic Surgeons?
At Intrepy Healthcare Marketing we specialize in marketing for plastic surgery practices. We leverage localized plastic surgeon SEO, paid advertising, marketing analytics and automation to develop highly engaging patient-centric marketing programs for aesthetics practice.
Let us know if we can help grow your practice and reach new patients.
