Even The Best Medical Brands Get Buried Online. We Fix That.

Expert Medical SEO Agency

At Intrepy, we’re a trusted medical SEO agency that was built for healthcare. Our healthcare SEO services help medical practices, MSOs, and healthcare brands turn their websites into powerful patient or client acquisition channels. We combine real industry expertise with proven SEO strategies that deliver lasting visibility and sustainable growth.

Our growth as a practice has been significant because of their focus on SEO optimization

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Edward Espinosa DO.

Buckhead Medicine

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New client average increase growth in new patient appointments

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New client average increase revenue growth

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Average increase in organic website traffic

Understanding Medical SEO

If great medical SEO feels like a black mystery box to you, know you’re not alone. In today’s rapidly evolving search landscape with AI platforms like ChatGPT and Google’s SGE (Search Generative Engine = AI Overviews) influencing how patients discover care — even experienced healthcare marketers can feel overwhelmed. That’s why it’s so important to understand the foundations. Whether you’re new to search engine optimization or just unsure how it applies to healthcare or AI, this section will help clarify what medical SEO actually is, how it’s different from general SEO, and why it’s critical for practices looking to grow their patient pipeline in a digital-first world.

What Is Medical SEO?

Medical SEO, or medical search engine optimization, is the process of improving a healthcare website’s pages or blog so they rank higher in search engine results or AI answers when patients conduct an online search. It involves strategies like writing accurate medical content for patient acquisition and using specific medical structured data (or code) behind the pages to help platforms like Google and ChatGPT understand what your practice offers. The goal is to make your practice more visible, more trusted, and more able to attract new patients online while remaining compliant to various healthcare marketing standards.

How is Medical SEO different from Regular SEO?

Medical SEO is different from regular SEO because it requires conformance with Google’s standards for Y-M-Y-L (Your Money or Your Life) websites. It typically includes layered healthcare-specific tactics like optimizing multiple locations for numerous physicians and services. It involves HIPAA-safe strategies and content development aligned with E-E-A-T (experience, expertise, authority, trust) standards for medical websites. It requires medically precise schema markup that helps Google and AI models understand your services and display your pages or generate answers. It also requires a deep knowledge of patients’ digital journeys and search behavior as well as working experience of online directories and review platforms.

Why Is Medical SEO So Important?

Medical SEO is so important because over the past few years we have experienced a massive shift in patient behavior. The majority of potential patients are now actively using search to find and choose healthcare providers. LLM usage is growing rapidly with patients turning to platforms such as ChatGPT and Perplexity to ask for physician recommendations. That makes SEO for doctors and other medical businesses not just useful, but essential for staying visible and relevant in the digital spaces where your patients spend time.

What To Look For In A Medical SEO Agency

You’ve seen why medical SEO matters, and why visibility in search and AI platforms is essential for patient growth.

But not all SEO is created equal. In healthcare, relying on general strategies can lead to missed opportunities, compliance risks, and sometimes, unfortunately, underwhelming results.

Here’s how healthcare-specific SEO truly stacks up and what to watch for when choosing a partner.

Intrepy Healthcare Marketing Agency
Other General Agency

Uses HIPAA-compliant strategies to protect patient privacy

No in-depth expertise of HIPAA compliant marketing

Creates healthcare content that follows Google’s medical quality guidelines

Likely to miss medical quality signals in content

Proactively manages and improves local medical clinic visibility

Focuses on broad directory platforms, not medical-specific networks

Optimizes medical SEO for practices with multiple locations

Uses generic local SEO not tailored to healthcare

Targets specialty keywords for medical search and AI platforms

Misses specialty medical terminology and opportunities

Writes ad messages that comply with healthcare regulations

Risk for non-compliant ads and ad rejections

Connects SEO and marketing tools with online scheduling and EMRs

No knowledge of integrating marketing with healthcare digital tools

Builds high-performing, trustworthy healthcare websites

Lacks expertise in healthcare website technical and content standards

Quick Glossary for Medical SEO Table

E-E-A-T: Google’s guideline for ranking sites that show Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. Crucial for medical websites.

YMYL: “Your Money or Your Life”. Google’s category for finance or healthcare websites that affect health or finances, held to strict quality standards.

Core Web Vitals: Google’s metrics that score website speed, interactivity, and visual stability, impacting SEO and user experience.

UX (User Experience): How easy and enjoyable it is for visitors to use and navigate your website.

LLM (Large Language Model): Advanced AI, like ChatGPT, that understands and generates human-like language for search and content.

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Is It Time to Partner with a Medical SEO Agency?

If you’re wondering whether now’s the time to get expert help, this checklist might answer it for you. These are the real-world pain points we hear every day and exactly why practices come to us for help.

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When to Call Us: The Checklist

Mentally check all that apply:

  • We’ve invested in digital, but still have white space on our provider schedules
  • We know we need SEO, but don’t have time to learn it, never mind do it
  • Our practice is well-established, but we don’t show up where we should in search
  • We’re not sure how to get our practice mentioned in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, or other new AI platforms
  • Our internal marketer is great, but maxed out (we’re with you)
  • We have multiple providers or clinic locations, and SEO hasn’t scaled with us
  • We’re looking to reduce ad spend and invest in long-term visibility
  • We just need a team who really knows SEO strategy and where to put marketing dollars

If you said “yes” to more than two, let’s talk.

We’ll show you what’s possible when medical SEO is done right by a team that’s helped practices across the US go from invisible online to “we need another provider!”

Not ready to jump into a partnership just yet? No problem.

Whether you’re still evaluating your options or just getting serious about improving your online visibility, it helps to understand exactly how medical SEO works and what we offer.

Here’s a closer look at the proven Medical SEO services we deliver for healthcare practices across the country.

Medical SEO Services Overview

Our medical SEO services start with a rock-solid foundation built around your specific goals, your market, and your patients’ digital journeys. In the first month, we create a tailored strategy that sets the stage for long-term growth. Then our expert team, with over 100 years of combined healthcare SEO experience, takes that strategy and powers it forward using smart technology, deep industry insight, and disciplined execution. The result? Measurable gains in visibility, website visitors, and new patient acquisition.

Explore Our Core Medical SEO Services:

Keyword research

Medical SEO Audit

Keyword research

Multi-Specialty SEO

Keyword research

Medical Website SEO

Keyword research

Localized Medical SEO

Keyword research

Content Marketing & Backlink Building

Keyword research

AI & Structured Data Optimization

Medical SEO Audit

Multi-Specialty SEO

Medical Website SEO

Localized Medical SEO

Content Marketing & Backlink Building

AI Visibility Services

What It Is

A Medical SEO Audit is a comprehensive diagnostic of your website’s visibility across search engines, local listings, and AI platforms and is tailored specifically for healthcare practices. It uncovers the technical issues, content gaps, compliance risks, and missed opportunities that may be keeping your practice from ranking well or attracting new patients online.

What’s Included In Our Medical SEO Audit

Our medical SEO audit is built for the complexities of healthcare which are beyond what a standard SEO checklist would be expected to uncover. It includes (but not limited to):

  • Healthcare competitive landscape & medical keyword analysis
  • Technical SEO health check (site speed, structure, crawlability, errors)
  • On-page medical content & metadata evaluation (titles, headings, alt-text, schema)
  • Local SEO performance for Google Business Profiles & directories
  • HIPAA-safe content, tracking, and privacy compliance review
  • Structured medical data audit for both search engines and AI platforms (like ChatGPT)

Common Question

Why should I get a Medical SEO Audit, and how is it different from a general SEO audit?

Answer

You should get a Medical SEO Audit to identify the gaps that matter most in healthcare, specifically compliance issues, visibility problems, and missed opportunities across Google and AI tools. A Medical SEO audit is different from a general SEO audit as it evaluates HIPAA-safe practices, structured medical data, and how well your site communicates expertise to search engines and patients. With an Intrepy Medical SEO audit you’ll walk away with a clear roadmap to boost rankings, improve trust, and increase patient acquisition.

What It Is

Multi-Specialty SEO is the strategic optimization of your medical website to rank across multiple service lines, subspecialties, providers, and locations. Leading SEO aligns with real-world patient search behavior and Google’s healthcare content standards.

Whether you’re a multi-specialty large group, a solo provider clinic or a massive MSO, your digital footprint must work harder to ensure that each location, physician, and service lien easily discoverable—by search engines and AI platforms like ChatGPT.

Our Multi-Specialty SEO Service Covers:

  • Ranking individual provider pages for specialty-specific queries (e.g., “hand surgeon near me”)
  • Optimizing each location for local map pack visibility and geo-targeted searches
  • Creating treatment- and condition-specific pages using high-intent medical keywords
  • Structuring internal linking and metadata to scale across specialties and locations
  • Preventing keyword cannibalization across overlapping service lines

Common Question

Why is SEO more complex for multi-specialty practices and MSOs?

Answer

SEO is more complex for multi-specialty practices and MSOs because we are managing multiple providers, service lines, and locations that are all subject to unique search behavior. We optimize physician pages, local listings, and condition-based content to align with how patients search. Your structure is built to both scale and stay readable by both Google and AI. With healthcare-specific strategy, your entire network becomes visible across specialties, markets, and platforms so your SEO grows as your organization does.

What It Is

The true value of your website isn’t just as a digital brochure, it’s the engine behind your search visibility. Medical Website SEO ensures that every part of your site from service pages to provider bios to clinic location pages is structured, coded, and written in a way that both search engines and AI platforms can easily understand and rank.

We focus on technical performance, page structure, and content clarity so that your entire site becomes a growth asset, not just an online placeholder. A well-optimized medical website will drive higher search engine results page (SERPS) rankings, stronger AI discoverability, and a better patient experience.

Some Of What We Optimize in Medical Website SEO

  • Website structure & internal linking for scalable navigation
  • Page speed & Core Web Vitals for performance and user trust
  • Content tags & metadata for search engine clarity
  • Local keywords & geographic signals for map and regional visibility
  • Bounce rates & behavioral signals to support long-term rankings
  • Patient-first usability that encourages engagement and conversion

Common Question

What makes medical website SEO different from optimizing a regular business site?

Answer

Medical website SEO is different from optimizing a regular business site because they must reflect specialties, follow HIPAA standards, and clearly present complex care offerings. We optimize structure, metadata, and content so search engines and AI tools understand your services. At the same time, we build for patients, making it easy to find providers, conditions, and locations. Great medical SEO balances performance, compliance, and clarity so your site drives traffic and helps each patient navigate their own care journey.

What It Is

Localized medical SEO ensures your practice appears when patients search for care in your area, whether they are searching for a treatment, a physician or a location. It focuses on your visibility in the Local Map Pack on Google Maps, your Google Business Profile, and authoritative healthcare directories like Healthgrades and Vitals. When done correctly, it brings high-intent patients from your own community directly to your practice without relying solely on paid ads.

We focus on what matters most in local patient discovery: accurate information, trust signals, and optimized listings across platforms patients most commonly use.

With our Localized Medical SEO We Help You:

  • Fully optimize your local Google Business Profile (formerly GMB/Google My Business)
  • Remove duplicates, fix bad data, and clean up citations
  • Claim & enhance listings on directories like Healthgrades and Vitals
  • Align local search intent with your service pages
  • Audit & improve location-specific content
  • Monitor performance with geo-tracking and analytics
  • Encourage & manage reviews to strengthen community trust

Common Question

Why is Local SEO so important for medical practices?

Answer

Local SEO is so important for medical practices because even if a patient doesn’t type “near me,” Google still uses their location to show nearby providers. If your local SEO isn’t dialed in, you’ll miss high-intent patients in your area. We optimize your Google Business Profile SEO for medical, update healthcare directories and local content so you rank in map packs, build trust, and show you where patients search most. Local SEO drives real-world visibility without depending solely on paid advertising.

What It Is

Content and backlinks are two of the strongest ranking signals in medical SEO. Great content builds trust with both patients and search engines, while authoritative backlinks validate that trust. Our approach combines medically reviewed articles, location-specific service pages, and condition-focused blogs with strategic backlink outreach to boost rankings, increase authority, and grow organic traffic which we can then convert into patients.

With our Content Marketing & Backlink Building Service We Help You:

  • Develop medically accurate, high-ranking content
  • Execute content distribution strategies to reach your audience
  • Improve on-page metrics like time-on-site and bounce rate
  • Build authoritative backlinks from healthcare and local sources
  • Offer guest blogging opportunities with industry-relevant publications
  • Monitor rankings and engagement through real-time analytics

Common Question

Why do medical practices need content marketing and backlinks for SEO?

Answer

Medical practices need content marketing and backlinks for SEO because content builds up signals of expertise and authority and backlinks earn trust. Without both, your website struggles to gain visibility. We create content that matches what patients search for and we supply backlinks from reputable medical and local sources to prove your site’s authority to Google and AI platforms. This one-two punch drives search performance, improves credibility, and helps your practice stand out in competitive markets.

What It Is

Artificial Intelligence (AI)-driven search (Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Bing Copilot, Perplexity etc) is rapidly shaping how patients and referring providers discover healthcare information. Unlike traditional SEO, AI visibility depends on how well your website communicates structured meaning: medical entities, schema markup, and machine-readable connections between your doctors, locations, services, and conditions. Our approach ensures your site is built to be understood by both search engines and large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, so your practice is discoverable in the next era of patient search.

With our AI Visibility Services We:

  • Implement schema markup for doctors, locations, and medical services
  • Create and embed precise markdown files to help LLMs/GPT’s read your website
  • Map conditions and treatments to standardized medical entities recognized by AI
  • Optimize content for AI/LLM understanding and relevance scoring
  • Connect provider bios, specialties, and locations with structured relationships
  • Improve placement in AI Overviews and generative search results
  • Future-proof your site for evolving AI discovery and patient search behavior
  • Monitor AI/LLM visibility and adopt ongoing strategies

Common Question

Why do medical practices need AI visibility services?

Answer

Because AI platforms don’t just “index” content, they interpret it and generate their own responses to queries. If your providers, services, locations and specialties aren’t clearly mapped as medical entities with structured data, LLMs may overlook or misunderstand your practice. Our AI visibility services make sure your organization is recognized, your services are ‘surfaced’ (shown), and your physicians are accurately linked to the conditions they treat. This positions your practice as a trusted source, driving both patient acquisition and professional credibility.

Real Results From Healthcare Brands

You’ve seen what goes into great medical SEO and now you can see what it actually delivers. These case studies show how our strategies translate into real-world growth, measurable patient acquisition, and long-term visibility for healthcare brands like yours.

Orthopedic Client

94% Increase in Organic Search Traffic
Challenge

Improve SEO rankings to surpass its competitors and reach new patients.

Solutions:
  • Strategic Clinic SEO roadmap
  • Optimized medical content writing
  • On-site technical optimization for medical website

Women's Health Client

268% Increase in Organic Search Traffic
Challenge

Execute a patient growth marketing strategy to help them open new locations, and improve SEO.

Solutions:
  • Comprehensive SEO optimization strategy
  • SEO content development
  • On page Technical SEO

Orthopedic Client

82% Increase in Organic Search Traffic
Challenge

New vision for growth and ramping up their digital presence and invest in reaching patients online.

Solutions:
  • Integrated SEO framework for medical visibility
  • Search-optimized content for patient acquisition
  • Page level SEO and performance enhancements

Med Spa Client

79% Increase in Organic Search Traffic
Challenge

Needed a focused SEO strategy to generate content and increase search rankings for its main treatments.

Solutions:
  • End-to-end medical SEO planning
  • Keyword rich content tailored to specialties
  • Technical SEO for improved crawling and indexing

Medical SEO Results In Their Own Words

Behind every case study is a real healthcare leader who took the leap toward better visibility, stronger rankings, and more patients. Here’s what they have to say about working with Intrepy.

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Why Healthcare Brands Choose Intrepy

The Challenge

A growing healthcare organization came to us with two key goals: outrank local competitors in organic search and reduce the cost of acquiring new patient appointments through better SEO performance.

The Solution

We implemented a full-spectrum medical SEO strategy combining page-by-page technical optimization, targeted content development, and local visibility enhancements.

94%

Increase in organic website traffic

The Result

94% Increase in organic website visits from boosted discoverability aimed at high, intent, traffic.

Client Results That Speak For Themselves

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Rob Giannese

Comprehensive Orthopaedics, S.C.

Their team is fantastic! We have business vendors coming to our place for a meeting about nothing related to our website that mention how nice our website is. Kudos to Intrepy!

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Sam Gaynes

rater8

The team at Intrepy Healthcare Marketing knows what they’re doing! As one of our go-to marketing partners, introducing our clients to someone we can rely on to provide equally good service and support is crucial; Justin and the team always deliver!

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Kristy Parker

Tennessee Orthopaedic Alliance

I think the synergy between the internal marketing team here at TOC and Intrepy is just spot on. For everything that we need an expert on Intrepy provides.

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Edward Espinosa DO

Buckhead Medicine

What drew me towards them was the experience they had, the base of understanding, and base of medical knowledge. Our growth as a practice has been significant, particularly in the last two to three years…because or their focus on SEO optimization and making sure that we really stand out not only in our local community.

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Ashlan C.

Midlands Orthopaedics & Neurosurgery

Everyone on the Intrepy team has been so great to work with. They are always quick to respond to questions or requests. I feel like they’re truly apart of our practice and always have our best interest at heart! Highly recommend them and their expertise!

FAQs: Medical SEO Questions, Answered

We understand if you still have questions or want to learn more. This FAQ covers the questions that most of our providers, practice managers, and marketing teams have asked us before investing in their medical SEO with Intrepy.

How Long Does Medical SEO Take?

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Most practices we work with see really meaningful improvements within 100 days, but strong, sustained results typically take 6-18 months for large complex provider networks. SEO is a long-term investment that compounds over time, especially in competitive healthcare markets. The timeline depends on your starting point, site quality, local competition, and how aggressively you invest in SEO.

Can SEO Really Bring in New Patients?

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Yes—when it’s done exactly right. SEO connects your services to patients actively searching for care. Keywords and structured data, local map listings, and optimized webpages help your practice appear where patients are looking. Medical SEO turns organic search into a scalable source of new patient growth minimizing dependence on Google and other ad platforms.

Do You Work with Solo Providers or Just Larger Practices and MSOs?

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At Intrepy we work with providers of all sizes—from solo specialists to medium-size practices, national MSOs and leading USA healthcare industry vendors. Our strategies scale based on your goals, budget, and practice complexity. Whether you’re a one-location clinic or a multi-state Telehealth brand, we tailor SEO solutions to fit your growth stage and market.

Is Medical SEO Worth It For Small Practices?

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Absolutely. In fact, SEO can be an effective way to level the playing field for small specialty practices competing against larger groups. Local SEO and targeted content help you stand out in your zip code, attract patients nearby, and reduce your dependence on paid advertising.

How Much Does SEO Usually Cost?

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Intrepy offers white glove custom SEO that varies with our clients goals. Our starter level SEO for doctors who are solo physicians starts at $750 per month. For larger multi-physician practices our average monthly retainers typically range from $3,000 to $5,000+. Our clients’ investments in SEO vary based on scope, competition, and how fast the practice wants to grow. We find that Medical SEO has a very positive ROI for our clients when you choose the right specialty partner.

How Does HIPAA Compliance Affect Medical SEO?

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Many SEO performance metrics that are precursors to booking an appointment, like form submissions, engagement, and user behavior depend on tools that collect data. If these tools capture protected health information (PHI), they must be HIPAA-compliant. That includes using secure forms and carefully configured tracking. Intrepy specializes in designing SEO that is HIPAA-compliant, ensuring privacy while preserving visibility to the metrics you need to measure and improve your SEO performance.

Learn More About Medical SEO

Seo for doctors blog 2023

The tectonic move toward local SEO for doctors has made it easier than ever to implement SEO for doctors, even whether your business is small or brand-new.

Get a Trusted Medical SEO Team in Your Corner with Intrepy Healthcare Marketing

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We take great pride in meaning it when we say

“We are true medical marketing experts”

Justin Knott

CEO, Intrepy Healthcare Marketing