It’s because you’ve been lied to.
Where making money is concerned, search engine optimization (SEO), for plastic surgeons, has little to do with search engines. I’ll tell you why.
You’ve been marketed to ad nauseum about SEO and the benefits of being online. Every big meeting and plastic surgery conference has a session on search optimization, ready to tell you all about how you’re missing out, and how your competitors are optimizing their way to untold riches. What BS.
If it’s so great, why didn’t it work for you? Why is it that even when you managed to rank, it wasn’t the goldmine everyone promised? Why can’t your SEO guy explain why you’re not seeing a return on your investment? Why is your competitor still getting the business even when you outrank him? Or worse, why did you pay just so your site wouldn’t rank in the first place? (More on that later.)
It’s because you’ve been lied to.
Key Takeaways
- Rankings are not revenue. Traffic that doesn't convert is a store people walk into and out of without buying.
- The most common failure isn't bad SEO. It's SEO with no conversion strategy behind it.
- Cheap SEO isn't a deal. $2,000/month that produces nothing costs more than $12,000/month that works.
- Give a real strategy 3-6 months. Quit sooner and you paid for the slowest part of the curve, then left before the payoff.
Search rankings have nothing to do with good business. Being at the top of Google isn’t a guarantee of success. It just means people are coming to your site. That’s no different from you walking into a store at the mall and walking back out without buying anything. Why didn’t you buy something? Why aren’t your site visitors calling? Website visits are NOT the same as paying clients.
In A Cut Above, I describe why success with your website is about patient psychology. It’s about giving your prospect the information she needs to make a decision about going with YOU. It’s about making her BELIEVE that you’re the right person for the job. Get that wrong and every ranking you earn turns into frustration and wasted web traffic.
The 6 SEO Mistakes That Keep Doctors Broke
1. Hiring SEO geeks instead of an experienced marketer
Everyone and their uncle does SEO these days. You can hire anyone from offshore link mills to local and national SEO firms promising you the moon. They may or may not get results. (Most often it’s not.) They might get you more visits, but what they can’t do is get you more business. At least not in a meaningful, practice-changing way. After all, you’re not investing in your practice for a meager outcome, are you?
The thing most doctors don’t understand is that your search ranking is important, but it’s immaterial if you can’t convert the traffic. If your SEO firm doesn’t have specialized expertise in setting up your whole business marketing machine to generate, and handle, incoming leads, they’re not worth anything. No matter how little you pay or what kind of a bargain they talk you into.
Yes, search results are about rankings. Anyone who KNOWS what they’re doing may eventually get you rankings. But getting traffic doesn’t equal money in your bank account. Influencing the patient to choose you over the other five doctors she’s considering takes more than SEO. It takes marketing, in every sense of the word.
2. Letting the SEO company dictate their site content
SEO firms don’t know your industry. They don’t know a cosmetic patient from a hole in the wall. Even the large “medical marketing” firms claim to do “cosmetic” marketing, but they don’t know the first thing about your buyer because they’re working on an optometrist’s site one day and your site the next. They put up page after page of generic content, which they use on all their other client sites. Your prospective patient isn’t stupid. She’s not gullible, she’s not ignorant and she’s not ill informed. Sounding the same as your competitor just makes it that much harder for her to go with you.
She’s visiting multiple websites and forming an opinion of your expertise, your trustworthiness and your ability to deliver RESULTS.
Take a look at your content and your competitor’s content. What is it saying about you? Are you “Dr. Smith plastic surgeon Dallas who specializes in Dallas plastic surgery and Dallas liposuction and tummy tuck Dallas as well as an expert in Breast Augmentation Dallas”?
What does that say to her when she’s visiting your competitors who look and sound like pros? Don’t let your SEO company dictate the voice and tone of your practice. You can rank without stooping to ridiculous tricks. You wouldn’t let your SEO guy sit in a consultation and tell you what to say, would you? So why are you letting him talk to the patient before she even gets a chance to call you?
Generic content has gotten even more worthless since I first wrote this. Google’s AI now answers generic questions before anyone clicks a result. I cover what still earns clicks in my guide to healthcare SEO in 2026.
3. Giving up too quickly
SEO is about the long game. It’s also the reason so many bad SEO companies get away with their shenanigans. Because they don’t need to deliver results right away, they can sell you on their “services” and milk you for several months.
I watch our clients’ competitors start the SEO process over and over just to give up. I stopped worrying about competition because most doctors don’t have the fortitude to see things through to the end.
Most doctors give up because they don’t perceive any discernible results. I can’t really blame them. It’s not their fault, it’s the fault of their SEO company. Letting you pay for optimization on a site that stands no good chance of converting patients is borderline criminal.
The trick to online marketing is to have a game plan. You need a STRATEGY for success. In A Cut Above, I outline our marketing formula for winning online. It has little to do with SEO. SEO is just ONE tactic you can employ. When you have a working strategy, you’re able to stick it out and make things work. Throwing money at Google is not the solution. Giving up is not the solution either. If other doctors are getting the business, there’s no reason it shouldn’t be YOU.
4. Taking their foot off the gas
The difference between a doctor giving up and taking his foot off the gas is success. It’s easy to give up when you’re not winning. It’s just plain WRONG to give up when you’re in the lead. If you’re the leader in a car race, do you take your foot off the gas? No. That’s how you win. Yet time and again, I see doctors get in the lead, become complacent or cheap, and start thinking about saving money. They either stop paying for marketing or try to do things on their own, which they shouldn’t be doing at all.
That leads to a lack of focus, which leads to stagnation or contraction in the practice. When you’re in the lead, you should put as much, or more, into your marketing than when you were aggressively growing. It’s your opportunity to put competitors out of business or take a real bite out of their market share. Taking your foot off the gas opens the door for a competitor to pass you. Once your lead is gone, it’s very hard to get back.
5. Mistaking activity for progress
In A Cut Above, I talk about activity not equaling progress. It’s the single biggest trap that doctors, and their staff, fall into. I’ve seen staff do a lot of immaterial things that contribute nothing to the bottom line just to justify their salaries. I see it most in contracts from SEO companies that sell things like article publication, press releases and link building. A bunch of activity that does not necessarily lead to progress in your practice. It’s a way for them to justify their fees and give you the illusion of progress and accountability. But it makes no difference to your bottom line.
The truth is there’s only one result that counts when talking about SEO: how high you rank for your searches. And there is only one result that counts in your practice: how many paying clients you take out of the market. How much money you deposit at the end of the month.
All the articles and social media links and press releases won’t count for squat if you can’t rank and convert that traffic into real PAYING patients. The rest is just activity. Don’t let SEO salespeople confuse you about the difference between activity and results.
6. Being penny wise and pound foolish
Cheapness is a disease. Doctors are taught about business the way office workers gossip. They hear bits of advice here and there and assume it’s the truth. They’re told to cut expenses and reduce costs. Don’t overpay for staff or services. What a bunch of BULL.
Get all that nonsense out of your head. You will NEVER grow by cutting or by investing in low-quality people. Nothing in life grows by having its lifeblood reduced. No business in the world can grow without the conditions it needs to develop.
There Is a Difference Between an Expense and an Investment
Think about it. If you took $100,000 to the bank and they outlined an investment that could give you a 200% return, would you not think it was a good deal? Would you then ask the bank manager if you could only invest $500 instead? No, you wouldn’t, because IT MAKES NO SENSE.
If your bank offered a 200% return on $100,000, you wouldn't ask to invest $500 instead. That's exactly the logic behind hiring the cheapest SEO firm you can find.
You need to clearly understand the difference between an EXPENSE and an INVESTMENT. Just because one SEO firm is willing to work for $2,000/month instead of $12,000/month, it doesn’t mean you’re getting a deal. It probably means you’re throwing away $2,000/month. Is paying less and getting less the logical thing to do? No, it’s not.
Doing what it takes to succeed takes money. You need to feed your marketing if you want it to grow your practice and produce results. Don’t confuse spending money with wasting money. Investing in yourself is NOT a waste.
What If Nothing Ever Ranked in the First Place?
So you paid money to more than one company and none of them produced results. You paid and you paid, but still nothing.
So what? That means absolutely nothing about SEO or online marketing. All it means is that you had poor judgement in the past. Is failing a good reason not to get back up? It isn’t.
Imagine if all babies gave up the first time they fell flat on their ass. You wouldn’t be walking now and neither would I. Even a baby has enough good judgment to keep going.
The world is full of incompetent people. It’s full of people with good intentions who even believe in what they sell. But they can’t get results. That doesn’t mean you should give up and go cry in a corner. Your competitors are succeeding online. Your colleagues across the country are. There is NO reason you can’t make it work too.
There are a million and one reasons a site won’t rank, from poor content strategies to a lack of exposure to the search engines. The key is picking a company with a long-term strategy that can show you real results. One that doesn’t grab any business it can get, but focuses on marketing your kind of practice and converting your kind of patient.
That’s the exact playbook we run at our plastic surgery marketing agency: strategy first, rankings second, conversion always. It’s how Skin Vitality went from the #4 Botox provider in Canada to #1, by Allergan’s own numbers, and how one midtown Toronto surgeon went from 72 consultations a month to 125 during a recession. If you’re tired of paying for rankings that don’t ring the phone, get in touch.
5 Fixes That Turn Rankings Into Revenue
1. Have a clearly defined strategy and stick to it
Understand that SEO is just one tactic you can use. If it’s not part of an overall strategy, it doesn’t stand a good chance of working. It’s the same as fighting a war and saying that a handgun is your weapon of choice. That’s all well and good until you come up against a tank.
Your marketing company should have a clear strategy that defines your position in the market and pushes your advantage. They should have a method for growing your site content in a way that attracts relevant visitors, then offer the services required to push that strategy forward every week. The fundamentals haven’t changed, but the tactics have. My medical SEO guide covers what that looks like today.
2. Don’t do it yourself. You’re wasting your time.
You’re a doctor. Don’t waste your time writing content or tweeting. That’s the lowest possible use of your time. You don’t make any money from posting your latest social update on your own. Hire the right people for the job and spend 100% of your time on activities that either make you money or grow your practice by doing things only YOU can do. Get your office in order and focus on your consultation closing rate and customer service. Don’t hire a dog and do your own barking.
3. Don’t stop halfway through
SEO is a lot like steering a large tanker. The action you take now may not show results for several months. Don’t throw good money after bad, but if you have a clear and effective strategy, give it at least three to six months to produce meaningful results.
4. Don’t take shortcuts
Don’t buy into the latest fads or snake oils. Good SEO is just like good business. It has fundamentals built on content development and online exposure. Don’t use tactics that rank you for a few weeks and then get you banned from the search engines. You should be building a long-term asset. Set up a practice that converts patients and keeps them coming back for more. Develop a site that informs your patients and helps them choose you. You’ll make millions by doing things right.
5. Learn how to do it right
If you’re a doctor or practice manager, get a copy of A Cut Above. You need to understand how things should be done before you can make an informed buying decision on a marketing company.