If you own a medical spa (or any business for that matter), you’ve probably heard about Search Engine Optimization (SEO). As ungainly and technical as that phrase may sound, medical spa SEO is easier to understand than the name implies. So, what exactly is SEO, and how does it work with the rest of the marketing for a medical spa?
At Sagapixel our medical spa SEO services have helped businesses from New York to Atlanta to Los Angeles (in other words, everywhere!). In this article, I’m going to share that coveted experience and insights with you.
Yes, you!
Prefer video? Here’s our founder’s take on the topic of SEO for med spas! Also be sure to check out our other medical spa digital marketing videos here
So What Is Medical Spa SEO?
SEO, or search engine optimization, strives to increase the visibility of a website for search engines like Google. Successful SEO should raise your website’s ranking on the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs — we’ve got as many acronyms as the military). In other words, successful SEO will make your medical spa website be among the first — if not the first listing — in the SERPs.
It does this in three different ways:
- Demonstrating Relevance: Your content answers the questions that users search for!
- Maximizing Trust: All signs indicate your website is a trustworthy source of information.
- Technical Optimization: Making site experience simple and quick, with good internal linking, effective calls-to-action, quality backlinks, etc.
There is a big difference between being #1 and #2 in the SERPs: (tens of) thousands of dollars difference for your business and the livelihood of your employees.
Last thing: SEO is not a set-it-and-forget-it feature of your website. The medical spa marketplace is changing, and the products offered are changing. An effective SEO strategy changes with that.
What Can SEO Do For A Medical Spa?
A large number of your clientele perform a Google search at some point before walking through your doors. This is a prime opportunity to be the medical spa they find.
These searches may be informational, asking a question such as “how much do fillers cost?”
They also may be transactional, as in the case of someone searching for “fillers miami.”
In either case, your medical spa can clearly benefit from getting in front of these potential customers as they perform searches on Google.
Are you a wellness-focused spa offering holistic treatments? Or perhaps you specialize in anti-aging procedures? Identifying these unique aspects helps tailor your SEO content strategy.
It’s likely your medical spa offers injectables and users need to know how much it costs, what results they will receive, how soon you can schedule them to receive an injection, and how to get to your location. In short, users have lots of questions about fillers and other injectables and your medical spa could be the one in your market answering them
Making sure that users can find these answers on your website is what SEO does.
Medical Spa SEO Begins With An Audit
The first step in SEO for medical spas is performing an audit of your website to find opportunities for technical improvements that can benefit your search visibility.
There are lots of things we’re looking for doing an initial SEO audit for a new client, but a few of those questions that must be answered are:
- Are all of your pages indexed with Google? Have you submitted a sitemap?
- Do you have a Google Business Profile that has a consistent name-address-phone number and listing of services? Have you collected reviews? Is your site link UTM-coded?
- Does your site have a sensible folder hierarchy that reflects dominant keywords? Do pages exploit appropriate keywords in their slugs?
- Does the site have broken links? Redirect chains? Excessively long title tags? Missing alt text?
This data helps identify opportunities for quick SEO wins through technical and qualitative improvements to your website.
These improvements could include:
- Opportunities for better user engagement.
- The discovery of what keywords your website is already ranking for, paving the way for further keyword optimization.
- Optimizing your Google Business Profile
Essentially, this initial analysis provides the foundation for your customized SEO strategy. One of the first parts of that will be the Google Business Profile.
Why is a Google Business Profile (GBP) So Important?
As they say in real estate, it’s all “location location location!”
As you can see above, directly following advertisements and the first of the blue links for “med spa near me” are the “Businesses” listed in the map results. You will not be surprised to learn that many of our clients get between 25%-60% of their website traffic from their Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business).
Because GBPs are so close to the top of the page, they get the most traffic. It’s not your geographic location, but your location on the SERPs.
Where a business appears in the map listings depends on its Google Business Profile.
A Google Business Profile will list your business and its services, anchoring them to a very specific location. Your business must have a GBP, and it needs to have a consistent NAP, which stands for Name Address Phone number. If your name, address, and phone number are not the same on your site and in your
Important Med Spa SEO Data In Google Analytics and Google Search Console
Google Analytics (GA) collects detailed information about user experience in addition to more general data about traffic sources. Look to GA to learn how:
- Users are interacting with your website
- How long they are staying on pages
- The frequency with which they are converting, like booking appointments.
Google Search Console
Google Search Console (GSC), by contrast, will show you how your website is being found by search engine users.
Namely, it collects information about the queries (searches) users make, the frequency with which your site is listed in pertinent searches, and the ranking of your website in those searches. This is incredibly important SEO data.
If your SEO agency doesn’t lean heavily on GSC, they are not a good choice.
GSC also highlights any technical issues affecting your site’s SEO, like mobile usability problems or crawl errors, which should be promptly addressed.
Audit Complete, Begin SEO-Informed Content Creation
Once you’ve digested information from Google Analytics and Google Search Console, you should have a sense of how well your site is performing. Now you need to figure out what is possible.
Your medical spa’s SEO strategy will be based on creating service pages and location pages. Depending on the competitiveness of your market, you may also want to work on a content strategy.
Create Services Pages Optimized For Your Location
Your medspa’s website undoubtedly has a menu listing your services, but only having a single page that lists all of those services will not be as relevant to “service + city” searches as competitors that already have dedicated pages for each of their offerings
Instead, the first step in your medical spa’s SEO strategy will be to construct pages for each of those individual services and optimizing them to include references to the city where you would like customers to find you.
For example, if someone searches for “fillers Cherry Hill, NJ,” a local medical spa that has a page that includes the offering and city name in the title tag, H1, and throughout the content will be more relevant to that search than a catch-all page that talks about all of your offerings.
The goal of SEO is to make your website’s content as relevant as possible to the searches your prospective customers are performing. A dedicated page optimized around “fillers miami” will be more relevant for internet users than a general page about injectables.
Read The SERPs (Search Engine Result Page)
A quick look at the search engine results for any given query will tell you what Google has learned people are interested in finding when they perform a search.
For example, look at the results for the query “fillers:”
This is a purely informational query—Google does not show local map results, nor does it show a single local medical spa, dermatologist, or plastic surgeon. Targeting “fillers” as a target keyword for your fillers page would be unfruitful as it doesn’t align with what people want when they perform this search.
To create service pages, examining Google SERPs can be incredibly informative if you know how to read them. It can be easy to just see SERPs as simply a listing of sources of information. But remember that a lot of choices have already been made before this list was created.
For example, you need to pay attention to the way that your competitors are writing title tags, as they will be one of the factors under your control that may entice someone to click on your result instead of theirs.
What value can you communicate about your medical spa in the search results?
Are you better? Cheaper? Faster? Whatever your value proposition is, this could be a way to get people to click on your result despite lacking a #1 position.
Frank talks about this in this short video:
@sagapixel Medspa SEO tip: your title tags can be adjusted to earn more clicks. #medspaowners #medicalspamarketing #medspamarketing #medspaseo ♬ LoFi(860862) – skollbeats
Perhaps more importantly, SERPs show you what Google thinks is valuable content and what is not. Click on the “blue links” in the SERPs and examine the content found on the ranking medical spa websites. The best ranking pages show you what you need to have in order to beat those web pages. So when you look through a page’s content, keep in mind that Google decided, based on this content, to give it a specific priority.
Publish Location Pages Where You Want to Attract Customers
If you’re thinking seriously about SEO, it is because your city or neighborhood already has other medical spas and you need to differentiate your business from those. For this very reason, a location page strategy is necessary.
A location page strategy is an SEO plan that aims to make sure that your services dominate searches for specific cities or neighborhoods. For this, we create a service page for one of your basic services (e.g. fillers), and then we create individual location pages for each of the places where you want to be found. For example, even though your medical spa may be located in Cherry Hill, we want it to be found when people in the other municipalities surrounding Cherry Hill, such as Mt. Laurel or Maple Shade or Haddonfield, search for fillers. So we would create pages for fillers Mt. Laurel, fillers Maple Shade, etc.
One of the primary benefits of location pages is improved local search engine rankings. By optimizing these pages with location-specific keywords, you increase the chances of appearing on the search results when potential clients search for services in their specific area. This can significantly enhance your visibility and attract more local traffic to your website.
PRO TIP: Searches are determined by the search terms (the much vaunted “keywords”) AND the location. All searches are indexed to locations. Google knows where you are searching from (or thinks it does).
If you’re searching for “death of God theology” (oh, it’s as real as a heart attack), the location doesn’t matter. But if you’re searching for “juvéderm lip filler”, Google will show you who sells it locally.
Give that a think.
Optimizing Your Google Business Profile
Where a business appears in the map listings depends on its Google Business Profile.
A Google Business Profile (GBP, formerly Google My Business) will list your business and its services, anchoring them to a very specific location. Your business must have a GBP, and it needs to have a consistent NAP, which stands for Name Address Phone number. If your name, address, and phone number are not the same on your site and in your GBP, Google’s algorithm will be confused.
Don’t hesitate to add images in your Google Business Profile that put the best face (ha!) on what you do. Unless your side hustle is as a commercial photographer, hire someone to do the job. Remember these images will do a lot of work for you: they’re a valuable investment.
Last but probably first: category selection.
Google Business Profiles require you to select a category that accurately reflects the services offered by your business. In this case, it will be “medical spa.”
Develop A Content Strategy Informing (And Converting) Your Clients
While creating services pages is the sine qua non of SEO and location pages are required for all but the least competitive of markets, a content strategy — blogging — is another tool that can help raise the ranking of your website.
But first, let’s correct a misconception about blogging and content strategies: Lots of people think you must have a blog! Au contraire!
Not all businesses need a content strategy!
For example, a local medical spa ranking for a keyword such as “what is microneedling” can count on getting lots of traffic to that article. The problem is that almost of it will be coming from visitors that live too far to become a customer.
The goal is not to get visitors to the website; your goal is to get customers through your website.
There are, however, opportunities to rank for blog topics that need a local response.
The results for a query such as “how much does a hydrafacial cost” will give results from a website that Google has deemed “local” if possible. This can be an opportunity to get in front of prospective clients in your market.
Featured Snippets?
If you are using a content strategy—and even if you’re only creating service pages—you may have created content in competition for what are called “featured snippets.” These are the answers to what SEOs call “long tail keywords” like “how many units of B-t-x will I need?”
Although in the past we have optimized our content to be able to answer these questions—and we still do because users perusing your content will have those questions—featured snippets are like what art was for Hegel, a vestige of the past. Before long search engines will provide these answers without citing “featured snippets.”
So, still write answers to long-tailed keywords, but don’t expect them to win a snippet. Expect them to win a conversion.
Not the Last Things for Med Spa SEO: User Experience, Mobile Usability, Technical SEO
Now that your site’s content has been created, be it in the form of service pages, location pages, and possibly a content strategy, you need to address backlinks, your site’s user experience, mobile usability, and “technical SEO.”
In truth user experience is something that should have guided the creation of your service and location pages. Similarly, you should already have been attentive to mobile usability.
User Experience
Your website’s effectiveness in conversion depends on how seamless its user experience is. Can users find what they need quickly? If they cannot, don’t expect them to stick around. Must they scroll to the bottom of the page to find contact information? I sure hope not! Is a call to action visible before the fold? Does the page load quickly?
A positive user experience increases the likelihood of users taking desired actions, such as booking appointments or making inquiries.
By prioritizing user experience, med spas can foster trust, credibility, and satisfaction among visitors, encouraging them to convert into loyal clients. Ultimately, a superior user experience plays a significant role in maximizing conversions and driving the success of your med spa business.
Mobile Usability
Depending on your services, your website’s users could be accessing it as much as 60% of the time by mobile devices, making it necessary to optimize for this experience. Google and other search engines prioritize mobile-friendly websites, considering factors such as responsive design, fast loading times, and easy navigation on mobile devices. This means that responsive web design, legible fonts, intuitive menus, and touch-friendly buttons are all absolutely necessary. By prioritizing mobile usability, med spas can enhance their visibility in mobile search results, attract more mobile users, and ultimately improve their SEO performance.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO involves elements such as website speed, mobile responsiveness, XML sitemaps, structured data markup, canonical tags, and optimizing URL structures. Ensuring proper technical SEO implementation can improve your website’s crawlability, indexability, and user experience. Medspas should pay attention to technical SEO to ensure their websites are technically sound, which contributes to a strong foundation for successful SEO strategies.
Need a Medical Spa SEO Agency? Sagapixel Is a Full-Service Medical Spa SEO Agency
I hope that this information was helpful as you begin building your medical spa’s online presence. Because so many factors affect how lucrative your online presence can be, it’s vital to know each aspect of the SEO process so you don’t waste time and money.
Sagapixel is a full-service SEO agency that can handle every aspect of your medical spa SEO strategy. We have experience working with medical spas and know what keywords and strategies lead to traffic growth and conversions.
Schedule a meeting so we can show you what’s possible.
