Most medical practices are missing a crucial opportunity to attract more patients. While traditional website SEO gets all the attention, local SEO for doctors —specifically your Google Business Profile listings—is actually the more powerful driver of new patients.
At RUNNER Agency, our data consistently shows this pattern across our medical practice clients.
The Critical Difference Most Agencies Miss
Most agencies take only a traditional approach to SEO. We’ll call this “website SEO.” Website SEO = Your website pages appearing in organic search results
But at RUNNER, we know that the more impactful SEO strategy is “local SEO.” Local SEO = Your Google Business Profile listings for your practice and physicians
This distinction matters enormously for your patient acquisition strategy, and the data proves it. Here are the 3 primary reasons why:
1. Local SEO Drives MORE Qualified Traffic Than Website SEO
We don’t just make this claim—we measure it precisely. How? Through Google Search Console, which measures all traffic you receive from SEO.
While Google Search Console shows you all SEO traffic combined, we implement tracking to separate local SEO from website SEO. We do this by adding UTM tracking codes in the links from Google Business Profiles.
Let’s look at an example of a real medical practice. This client, a multi-location medical practice, saw the following:
- Total SEO clicks in 90 days: 23,100
- Google Business Profile clicks (Local SEO): 15,500 (67%)
- Website listing clicks (Website SEO): 7,600 (33%)
This pattern repeats across medical practice specialties. Local SEO consistently delivers the majority of search traffic—and if it’s not, that signals an urgent need to improve your local SEO strategy.
2. Local SEO Targets Your Actual Potential Patients
One of the biggest weaknesses of traditional website SEO is poor geographic targeting. At RUNNER, we know that this is a critical issue for medical practices. The challenge is easily seen when you analyze traditional “website SEO” in Google Analytics.
Let’s take the same medical practice example we used before. This practice is based in Dallas, Texas. Here’s what we see:
- Only 72% of their website SEO traffic comes from Texas
- Only 31% of visitors are from Dallas itself
- This means 69% of website SEO traffic comes from people too far away to realistically become patients
Local SEO, by contrast, naturally targets people within a reasonable distance of your practice—people who can actually book appointments. Which leads us to the final benefit of local SEO.
3. Local SEO Delivers MORE Qualified New Patient Leads
Because local SEO is more likely to target patients near your practice, it’s much more likely to generate leads than website SEO.
Let’s take a look at our same practice:
Out of 7,666 new patient office visits from SEO in the last 90 days:
- 6,204 came from local SEO (81% of conversions)
- 1,462 came from website SEO (19% of conversions)
This is proof that visitors from the Google Business Profile for your practice are more qualified and ready to become patients.
Building Your Local SEO Strategy
By now, it should be clear that local SEO deserves a primary focus in your medical practice marketing. Unfortunately, most agencies still center their efforts on website SEO because that’s what they understand best.
At RUNNER, because we specialize exclusively in medical marketing, we know what medical marketing strategies are most likely to drive patients to your practice.
Our approach to local SEO includes:
- Building and optimizing Google Business Profiles for your practice and physicians
- Posting relevant, engaging content that attracts local searchers and increases the rank of your practice listings.
- Implementing a robust Google review management strategy to increase your high-star ratings
If you’re ready to prioritize the marketing channel that actually delivers more patients, take a look at our local SEO plans for doctors and then request a free consultation with a RUNNER medical marketing expert to see how we can transform your practice’s online visibility where it matters most.
