Healthmark’s Guide to Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) for Medical Clinics

When it comes to doing SEO for medical clinics - the first thing to understand is that SEO is a long-term investment. If you’re prepared for that, let’s continue.

SEO is a digital marketing strategy to drive organic traffic to your website from search engines, primarily Google. Think of it as a way to make your website more visible and easily discoverable to potential patients searching for medical services or doctors online.

Several factors go into SEO:

User Experience (UX): Providing a positive experience for visitors to your website. This includes factors like page speed, mobile-friendliness, easy navigation, and secure browsing.
Keywords: Identifying the words or phrases (keywords) that people commonly use when searching for medical services, eg. “best cardiologist singapore”, “total knee replacement surgery cost”, “GP near me”
On-page optimisation: Optimising your website content to include these cluster keywords strategically. This means integrating these keywords into your website's titles, headings, body text, meta descriptions, etc.
Quality Content: Producing high-quality content pieces by topic clusters to improve the expertise, authority and trustworthiness (EAT) of the site. This not only helps in SEO, but also provides value to visitors - sharing a doctor’s insights, medical advice, and updates through blog posts, articles, or FAQs.
Authority and Backlinks: This can be achieved through earning backlinks from reputable websites, such as medical journals, healthcare organisations, or news outlets. Backlinks act as endorsements from other sites, signalling to search engines that your website is trustworthy and valuable.

Getting started on SEO

The first steps that go into doing SEO for a website are not identifying the keywords, and/ or performing on-page & off-page optimisation. It is making sure the website is structurally SEO-friendly. Is it hosted on a fast website hosting provider? Is it using the best WordPress builder?

Next, comes identifying the keywords we want to target, and where along the marketing funnel they fall on. An example for an orthopaedic surgeon would be:

An example of search terms for an orthopaedic surgeon

By targeting keywords relevant to each stage, the objective is to ensure your online presence is strong and helpful throughout the patient’s journey.

Lastly, it’ll be a continuous hustle of high-quality content, and on-page & off-page optimisation.

I want to rank for specific procedures like “ERCP” and see patients for that!

Sure, it’s not a difficult keyword to rank for but you’re not likely to get patients coming in for that.

Most laymen do not know what ERCP is. So, who searches for “ERCP”? It could be your medical students, or patients who already have an ERCP arranged with their doctor who wants to research it.

This doesn’t mean we should forgo this keyword entirely. It is still beneficial to rank for it to position you as the go-to ERCP doctor, however, you will not get patients walking in saying “Hi doc, I wanna do ERCP.”

I want to rank for specific conditions like “Trigeminal Neuralgia” and see patients for that!

Similarly to ranking for specific procedures, most searches for terms like “Trigeminal Neuralgia” are for research purposes. However, you do get occasional searches from people looking for a second opinion - especially for more complex conditions.

Strategically, it is reasonable to allocate some SEO resources to such keywords. On the other hand, we will not recommend SEM for such keywords - You wouldn’t want to be paying Google every time a medical student researching clicks on your ad.

How does Healthmark do SEO differently?

We approach SEO with a unique perspective. Rather than fixating solely on a predefined set of 20 to 30 keywords, we base our SEO strategy per service/ product.

Search terms encompass a wide spectrum of user intent, ranging from informational to transactional queries. This is why we optimise our SEO strategy for the entire marketing funnel, reaching users across all stages of the patient journey, ensuring that your online presence resonates with users at every touchpoint.

I see overseas agencies that provide SEO services for $500.

While it may be tempting to engage overseas agencies that provide SEO services at a fraction of the cost, there are several important considerations so as not to affect the quality, effectiveness and your reputation.

SEO is not just about stuffing keywords and buying backlinks. Especially for medical practices in Singapore, it involves a deep understanding on search engine algorithms, patient behaviour, and PHMC publicity guidelines.

Cheap SEO services often use cookie-cutter approaches, risky shortcuts and black hat SEO techniques (eg. keyword stuffing, link farms) that can lead to penalties from search engines.

When can I see results?

Unlike SEM which can deliver immediate results, SEO focuses on gradually improving your website’s organic visibility.

The timeline for getting your website on the first page varies. Factors include:

Competition: Are you fighting for highly contested keywords like “orthopaedic surgeon singapore”, “colonscopy screening singapore”, or niche keywords like “myasthenia gravis surgery singapore”?
Website age: New websites generally take longer to rank
Content: How often are we producing high-quality content?

Typically, we tell doctors it takes about 6 months to start seeing results for niche keywords, and 12 to 18 months for competitive keywords.

Medical SEO & Reviews on Third Party Platforms. Its over?

Recent events between DxD and SMC have left many doctors and fellow medical marketing specialists wondering:

What is the present state of medical marketing?

Are 3rd party medical platforms truly dead?

Are we still allowed to do SEO or other forms of marketing?

What are other doctors planning to do?

Many of my doctor friends and even some medical marketing experts have asked me for my view on this. To be frank – even to me, this is unprecedented.

I can’t speak for MOH. But if you read their press releases, we’ll probably arrive at the same conclusion.

MOH is going to heavily scrutinise doctors advertising on 3rd-party medical platforms.

Here’s some supporting evidence -

Credit: https://www.facebook.com/drkohpohkoon/

Even the Minister has spoken. This is clearly a serious matter.

Previously, MOH’s regulatory efforts were focused on what doctors do on platforms THEY manage (clinic website, Facebook, YouTube channel, Instagram, etc). Now they’re going to scrutinize what doctors do on OTHER platforms.

MOH has successfully enforced a high standard of ethical marketing in the industry. But doctors can bypass that via 3rd party sites. Their jurisdiction cannot control what 3^rd party platforms do, but they can control what DOCTORS can or cannot on those platforms.

This will lead to a few BIG repercussions.

#1 - Doctors will start dropping out of 3rd party platforms

Expect many doctors to opt out of lists like these.
Credit: https://www.bestinsingapore.co/best-aesthetic-clinics-singapore/

We’re expecting an industry-level falling off in terms of 3rd party website engagement. I believe MOH won’t stop doctors outright from working with 3^rd party websites, but they will likely place a lot more attention of them from now on.

You certainly can still benefit from using them, but do you want to invest in that effort to ensure no careless flouting of the PHMC Advertisement Regulations? No accidental choice of words in your article that might be inappropriate? Scanning through every single word on every piece of content?

Some doctors might, but most likely won’t. I can’t imagine anyone will want that additional stress.

If you ARE willing to invest that effort, you’ll strongly benefit from a lack of competition there. You will simply get more visibility on those sites.

But you’ll have to take that risk.

#2 - Increased Competition in Medical SEO and SEM

...and YouTube and Facebook AND IG. We’re talking about all traditional forms of digital marketing. Why?

Because many doctors still believe in digital marketing and visibility. I feel most doctors aren’t necessarily looking to do digital marketing for monetary gains. Doctors also really want to establish a connection with prospective patients. Some want to let them understand their medical perspectives. Some simply want to educate their readers.

Just probably not on “unsafe” third-party websites.

So, where?

Back to the basics of medical SEO, SEM and Social Media. That marketing budget has to go somewhere and the safest platforms... are the tried and tested ones. You already know what you CAN or CANNOT do there.

Expect competition and costs for SEO and Google Ads to increase by 20-25% over the next 6 months or so. SEM is the lowest hanging fruit in terms of accessibility. Everyone just has to login to Adwords and increase their budget - It’s that easy.

Many doctors might play safe and wait to see how this will unfold. This is a good chance to take advantage of that by pre-emptively strengthening your SEO, SEM or SMM presence. Most doctors only really need Medical SEO anyway. When most doctors have finally decided to act, your website should already be ahead.

#3 - Patient Reviews on Google Reviews becoming EVEN more important

The fact that 3rd party patient review platforms (aside from Google Reviews since we don’t have a say in it - Google calls the shots) getting COMPLETELY eliminated will shake up the review landscape.

Consider this: Even Facebook reviews have to go since they are a marketing medium under your direct control. MOH made this incredibly clear in the last circular they released.

Credit: https://www.healthprofessionals.gov.sg/smc/home/Announcements/Index/advisory-medical-practitioners-participation-in-online-search-engine-optimisation-platforms

Here’s how you can disable Facebook reviews.

This leaves Google Reviews as the ONLY allowed patient review platform. This also means it’s the only visible platform left for prospective patients to judge you by.

Here’s a simple example of the difference that Google reviews can make -

Be honest – which clinic would you rather visit?

So what should doctors do for their medical marketing?

Most doctors don’t actually do digital marketing regardless of 3^rd party platforms. If you’re in that camp, all is good and recent events are unlikely to affect you.

For doctors who are, here’s my advice:

Dissociate yourself from 3rd party platforms for a while. Stay cautious and wait for the dust to settle before deciding if you really want to return to those platforms, and on what terms.
Consult your digital marketer to see how you can get ahead of the pack on SEO, SEM, SMM. It’s definitely going to get more competitive. Does this mean you cut down on already expensive volume keywords and go for highly-targeted ones? Go for more laser targeted SEM campaigns on high premium services? Or possibly increase SEO budgets to strengthen link-building and commission original content to stay ahead on SEO? Plan ahead.
Work actively with your digital marketing team to closely monitor your Google Review status. Now that other sources of patient reviews are down, Google Reviews will be the MOST representative of your reputation online.
If you do decide to continue marketing efforts on 3rd party platforms, take this opportunity to negotiate a favourable deal. You’re going to be one of the few doctors brave enough to continue supporting them. You deserve a better deal.