The Clinic Marketing Podcast - Local SEO & Healthcare Online Marketing Tips for Clinic Owners & Wellness Providers

Why Your Clinic’s SEO Isn’t Working (and How to Fix It) | Healthcare Marketing | Ep. 134

• Darcy Sullivan • Episode 134

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Is your SEO plan really working—or are you just hoping it is? This episode breaks down the 10 biggest red flags that your SEO strategy might be missing the mark and exactly what to do about each one.

You’ll discover how to identify issues like stagnant traffic, low conversions, outdated content, and missing local visibility—plus simple ways to fix them. From optimizing your Google Business Profile to improving your keyword targeting and refreshing old pages, you’ll get a clear action plan to attract more qualified patient leads and rank higher in search.

If your website isn’t driving new appointments or your SEO results feel stuck, this episode will help you pinpoint what’s broken and how to get back on track.

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📞Book a discovery call - Book a discovery call with Propel to see how smart SEO and website design can help your clinic get found online.

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Does this sound like you? You're blogging, you're posting, you're optimizing your website, or at least you feel like you're taking the right actions to do so. But still, the phone just isn't ringing as much as you wish it was, or you're just not getting the website traffic you know that you deserve. Or you're just not getting the website traffic you know your clinic deserves. And you're asking yourself, so how do I know if my SEO plan really is working? Well, quick reminder SEO isn't just about traffic, it's about qualified leads and appointments. This episode was inspired by two listeners who wrote in. One was Laura. She said, I have great reviews. People generally love what I do and offer, but I can't seem to get more than 10 to 15 people in the door each week. And then there was Sam. Sam said, I tried the strategy of adding new specific services pages, and I took a few other actions, but I'm still not seeing traction. I think I'm missing something, but I can't figure out what. My promise to you is this: by the end of this episode, you'll know how to spot the signs that your SEO plan needs a tune-up and know what to do about it. Hello and welcome to the Clinic Marketing Podcast. I'm your host, Darcy Sullivan from Propel Marketing and Design. Listen, SEO is a long game, but it shouldn't feel like a guessing game. Many clinics waste months and money, tons of money thinking SEO just takes time when the issue is actually a strategy problem, not patience. Your website should be bringing in leads. If not, something's off in your foundation. Today we're gonna go over 10 red flags that your SEO plan isn't working, along with how to fix these common issues. Now listen, if you feel like you can relate to all 10, ooh, boy, do you have some work to do. And I am guessing if you can't relate to all 10, you can probably relate to one or two. So listen up and let's dive in. And we're gonna start with really the basics, which is red flag number one. There is a disconnect from your target audience. Your target audience could also be called your ideal patients, right? These are the people that you want walking through the door. And the question is: is there a disconnect? Is there a disconnect in the language that you're using, your messaging, or who you're trying to target? In the resources associated with this episode, you'll see tons of additional resources. And one of those is an episode where we break down really how to target your ideal audience. So if you feel like that's a disconnect, that's a really good episode to listen to to help you get on track. And if you're not sure, simply map out who your target audience is and have somebody look at your website and see if your website truly reflects that target audience. For example, of a disconnect here, and we're gonna be talking about your website a lot, and some of these red flags do overlap a little bit. But I can give you one example. If you're gonna say that your target audience is somebody who doesn't work out often, for example, we've seen this with some chiropractors' websites where their website is just covered with almost gym-like images that showcase people working out and that are really extremely active, but that doesn't match their target demographic. So red flag number one is a disconnect from your target audience. And this really filters over or flows over rather into all aspects of marketing. So it's really something that you want to get honed in on because if you're missing the mark when it comes to connecting with your target audience, it again is gonna overflow into your social media, your email marketing campaigns, your in-person campaigns, any and all campaigns. So that is red flag number one. Red flag number two. When you Google your business, you are nowhere to be found. Your website just doesn't come up. Oh, this can be heartbreaking. And it can happen, especially if you have a brand new website. Typically, we see this if there is an indexing issue, meaning that maybe your web designer didn't set your website to be indexed by Google. So therefore, it's just not showing up on Google. And if that is the case, usually it's a technical issue that is a little easier sorted out by somebody who has more tech knowledge. So if you feel like that's an issue for you and you just you Google your website and it just doesn't show up anywhere. Please do yourself a favor and either connect with somebody that can help you work through that, or as you'll find with a lot of these red flags, you can always visit propileyourcompany.com and book a discovery call, and we can take a look at things for you. Okay, red flag number three. You're not seeing an increase in website traffic. So, how do we check this out? Well, you need to have Google Analytics installed or another form of analytics, and you're gonna look at it month over month, quarter over quarter, year over year to see what's going on with your organic website traffic. And if you're not seeing at least a little bit of growth or recovering from seasonal dips, you want to dig into your keyword ranking, do a quality check on the content on your website. In fact, when we talked about Sam earlier, when I told you he wrote in, that was his case. Again, he had listened to a lot of our podcast episodes and he started to build out these pages. But when he booked a discovery call and we looked at them together, you know what? They were super short. They were only like a paragraph each. And he had used AI. So if you're leaning heavy, heavy on AI, you might see a decrease in your website traffic. So you want to make sure you have quality, unique traffic. And if you're using a WordPress plugin, make sure you don't just set it and forget it, that you're actually following through. We see this a lot of times when people say, Oh, well, my website platform that I'm using is SEO friendly. And when that those SEO options auto-populate, they're not doing you any favors. So you need to make sure that you're actually going in and optimizing your meta title tag and your meta descriptions. And another good use of your resources is to have a colleague or a friend review your website and make sure that your offering is clear, that the text is easy to read, that you don't have crazy fonts over images or anything like that, that it's obvious what you offer, who you offer it to, and how you offer your services. You also want to make sure that you take a look at your website on mobile and make sure that it displays correctly and quickly. Oh boy, we're getting into it now. Oh, and there's still so many more to go. Okay, this episode might be a little bit longer than some of the more recent episodes, but that's okay. You're here for it, right? You want to make some SEO changes and see improvement. Okay, red flag number four. Let's say you're getting website traffic, but you're not getting any new patients. Hmm. Well, there's a few reasons for this. Maybe he wrote a blog post really on something that's trendy, trendy, trendy, trendy. So you're ranking for it, maybe you're ranking for keyword terms around it, but they're not associated with your target keywords that you're trying to rank for. Let's say you jump on some trend, and so you're writing about Taylor Swift, but you're not like fully tying it back into the services that you provide or the conditions that you treat. There's a disconnect there. So oftentimes when people are getting heavy traffic but no new patients, it's that. And it tends to usually be like a blog post or two. Maybe it's even a blog post or two that you wrote years ago. They're driving traffic, but it's not the right traffic. And in that case, you want to reassociate your keywords, identify what they are, and make sure that you're focusing on content that surrounds them and is local if you're trying to rank locally, which most of you are. It could also be that your calls to action aren't obvious, or that there's too much friction between your website and booking an appointment, right? So if they have to fill out a form and then contact somebody, but then somebody doesn't get back to them in time, and then they're not returning your calls when you do get back to them. That could also be an issue. So you want to identify that. Okay, red flag number five, and this kind of overlaps with the previous one, but you're ranking for the wrong pages. So this goes back to maybe the example of you've got a couple blog posts that you wrote. Oh my goodness, there was one chiropractor where they were getting so much traffic, but what they had done was like the anti, like why chiropractic's bad, or something that they were trying to stir up a conversation. And the blog post sounded so negative, and that's why so many people were clicking through on it. And it did do a spin on it to identify that no, you know, even though the title sounds like it's leaning this way, we're really gonna turn the content to make you realize why you do need this service. But it was so controversial that again, it was driving traffic, but it wasn't the right traffic. It wasn't people that were actually searching for the services that they offered because they were looking for an answer to why what they provided wasn't the right option. I hope that makes sense. So you want to make sure, again, that you're optimizing for the correct pages, for the correct keywords, and that your calls to action are very clear. So if somebody does end up on a blog post that they can still navigate to the core pages that will help them convert. Okay. Red flag number six. And I know a lot of people are gonna really relate to this one. You haven't updated your website content recently. Or maybe you have updated it, but you've relied way too much on AI. Man, I should have just made AI its own red flag, but that's okay. We're working it into this one. Listen, SEO can become stagnant if your website is outdated or inactive. And sometimes people think, oh, well, the easy button is to just go to AI and have it write content for me or let me buy canned content. Don't do that. Just don't do that. In the resources associated with this blog post, you'll see some related to canned content. What to do if you had purchased canned content? There's also a really great resource if you had relied too much on AI about how to humanize that content. Again, you can find those in the show notes slash blog post associated with this episode, or you can just kind of scroll through the podcast after you're done listening to this one. But that can definitely be a major red flag. And sometimes you'll see an overlap. So for instance, maybe that's you, maybe you haven't updated your content, or you relied too much on AI, and then Google does an algorithm update, and all of a sudden your traffic slows, slows down. That could be what's happening, folks. Okay, red flag number seven. You're not actually tracking your progress. Maybe you don't have Google Analytics set up, and so you're just flying blind. Well, it's really hard to tell what's going on if you have no way of monitoring it. So you do want to make sure that you set up Google Analytics. And listen, I get it. Google Analytics can sometimes feel like you are drinking water from a fire hose. If you can relate to that statement, we suggest that you install Clicky as an analytics system. Clicky offers a free and a paid version. You can always start with the free version, see what you think about its simple, simple dashboard. And if you like it, you could always upgrade to the paid version. Again, we'll include that link in the show notes. Red flag number eight. We've been talking a lot about your website, but what about your Google Business profile? Maybe your Google Business profile isn't growing or improving. We have tons of resources, tons of podcasts, tons of guides. We've got guides, we've got tons of stuff to help you improve your Google Business Profile listing. But you want to check your Google Business Profile listing. Check the insights associated with your Google Business Profile listing. Google Business Profile Listing is what controls your Google Maps listing to make sure that you are getting calls from it, that people are able to find it, that you're getting more reviews, and that you're staying up to date with it and not just allowing it, again, to sit stagnant. Red flag number nine. Maybe you focused on your Google Business Profile listing, but that is the only thing that you focused on outside of your website. You've probably listened to a couple of our other episodes. Again, we'll include those in the show notes about your nap, your name, your address, and your phone number. You want to make sure that you have online consistency when it comes to your company's listings. And there are other core key listings that you should include. Those are your Apple Maps listing, your Bing Business listing, your Yelp listing. The list goes on, and again, we'll include those in the show notes, but you want to make sure that you're evolving past your Google Business Profile listing when it comes to your online listings. And then we have red flag number 10. Maybe your SEO strategy is completely separate from other marketing activities. Ooh, we see that happen a lot, right? Listen, if you've got a good SEO strategy, you're adding content to your website. You're optimizing your website. You should be sharing that content via social, via email. You should be pushing that out and also connecting with your local community to drive more traffic to your website through programs that you're involved with and links that you're gaining from other websites in your community. So here's what I suggest once a quarter, give this a listen, go back through, check to see if there's any spots or issues that you feel like could use some improvement. Because let's be honest, everybody's SEO plan can use improvement. So don't panic. Fixing SEO isn't starting from scratch, it's about refining your approach. As always, you can book a discovery call by visiting propelyourcompany.com. Click book a discovery call. And if you're interested in learning more about SEO, you'll also see a link to a free SEO training where we dive into all of this stuff. So remember, SEO shouldn't feel like a mystery. It's your if your traffic isn't growing, if your calls or people booking online are starting to fall flat, or your rankings feel stuck, it's time to review. If you want expert eyes on your SEO plan, go ahead and visit propelyourcompany.com. And again, you can book a discovery call or check out any of our helpful resources on our website. That's it for today.

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Darcy Sullivan

Host