SEO for Medical Practices

Welcome to another Great week of SEO B.S. In this episode we are going to dive into the topic of “SEO for Medical Practices!” Now, first and foremost, we are not going to discuss actually ‘HOW‘ to do SEO in the Medical Field’ but rather “how would a medical practice hire someone to do their SEO or Digital Marketing?“

There are only a few scenarios a small medical practice can do in the areas of SEO:

1. You hire a Marketing Agency.
2. Hire a Niche Marketing Agency that focuses only on the Medical Field.
3. You Hire In-house.

Let’s visit each of these scenarios…

SEO for Medical Practices:
You Hire An SEO Expert In-house

This is going to be my BEST choice overall and the biggest bang for the buck. In other words, it’s the best choice for the money. At first glance, this is easy for a large medical practice or a hospital because they probably have a marketing department. So, you might argue the fact that a large medical establishment has the budget to hire in-house.

Hear me out first!

Even if you are a small medical practice, a long-term care facility, nursing home, an urgent care center, or even a dental practice, YOU CAN STILL HIRE IN-HOUSE. But…

YOU HAVE TO THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX.

Now, Yes, you might not be able to hire full-time but…

WHAT ABOUT HIRING PART-TIME?

Let me tell you from experience, and you might not believe me but I have worked in many marketing agencies; and I can tell you firsthand that Your Hard Earned Money is going to go farther hiring someone in-house either full-time or part-time.

Why? You may ask? Well, let’s dig deeper!

SEO for Medical Practices:
You Hire a Marketing Agency

At first glance, a medical practice thinks,

“Well, we cannot hire someone full-time so what about a Marketing Agency? An agency is an expert in the field, right?

Then the medical practice calls up an agency, and the agency tells them EXACTLY what they want to hear.

“Yes, hiring in-house is so expensive, we are cheaper! Plus, we have a team of experts working everyday on your business.

This makes me think of a story. It is story time (lol). I recently had an interview for a small company that needed SEO Services and the CEO was telling me that he reached out to a Highly Popular Agency (I will keep the name private) and they charged $130,000/year for their SEO Services. He stated, “There’s no way I can afford that. Plus, I have to sign a yearly contract.

The interview proceeded and then, within middle of the interview he said,

“Well, maybe I should hire a marketing agency because they are experts.”

I almost laughed out loud. I completely had to hold myself together. Seriously! 

Then I had to explain my own experiences working inside Marketing Agencies.

• First, It is notorious for marketing departments and Marketing Agencies to hire Interns and employees with only 1 or 2 years of experience.  So Imagine, you hire a marketing agency and an intern is working on your stuff (this is what really happens in real life).
• Second, Marketing agencies are businesses themselves, they want to SCALE their services to make more money to increase cliental. So, think about it, when you are scaling a personal service, what happens? You have to cut-corners! This is exactly what happening in digital media agencies. 
• Third, you have to understand, when an agency is popular, they have around 80 clients per month with a very lean staff. So, again, they have to cut-corners.
• Fourth, when an agency cuts-corners and scales their services, they become more of a cookie cutter approach to marketing – they give the same advice to most of their clients.
• Fifth, let me put this in as a bonus, you have to look at the monthly contract of the agency. Any agency is going to have some type of monthly contract or terms and conditions. The reason why is because they are not going to work on your business 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week. There is noway. Usually, at least descent agencies will have a cost breakdown. For example, if you pay $1500/month, their contract my state that they charge $150/hr. This means that best case scenario, they are only going to work on your marketing and SEO for 10 hours per month. Take note: lots of times agencies hide this information as well! 

Now, I can go on and on but these are the top 5 deficiencies. Further, watch the Youtube video below about What is SEO and what skills an SEO expert should have. 

 

The major item of concern when a medical practice hires a Medical Marketing Agency is that this type of agency is a cookie-cutter business model. For the record, remember, it happens in almost every marketing agency at some level.

When a marketing agency specializes within a certain niche like the medical industry and offering Marketing and SEO packages, remember, in order for the marketing company to scale its services, they develop a cookie-cutter approach. Meaning, they give the same advice to all their clients. Now, at this point, this may get you thinking about the reasons behind hiring a marketing company or do it myself. 

Think about it this way. Since a medical marketing agency focuses within a niche industry, they are scaling services in such a way they end up giving every client the same advice and service. 

To take is a step further, let’s focus our attention to your competitors in the medical field. The same questions you would ask a marketing agency about your competition is the same exact questions your competitors ask about you. Makes you think, huh?

So, in essence to save time and scale their services, marketing agencies tend to give the same advice to you and your competition as well.

Why? You may Ask?

Because it is easy. Takes no effort and thought. It takes no strategy. As a test, just look online in your industry locally and you will probably see nearly identical websites and so forth. And, sometimes you will even find word-for-word identical websites, web pages, product and e-commerce pages, and so on.