A Step-by-Step Framework for Auditing Your Pharmacy Website's SEO Health

This diagnostic guide is written for independent pharmacy owners, pharmacy directors at small regional chains, and marketing staff who manage the pharmacy's digital presence without a dedicated SEO team.

It assumes you have basic access to your website's CMS and Google Business Profile. You do not need developer access or paid SEO tools to complete the first three sections—though tools like Google Search Console and PageSpeed Insights (both free) will make the technical section faster.

This guide is not a replacement for a full technical audit run by an SEO professional. It is a self-assessment framework designed to surface the gaps most likely to affect your pharmacy's local ranking and patient acquisition. Think of it as a diagnostic intake form—the kind a professional would use before deciding where to focus remediation effort.

A note on YMYL context: Pharmacy websites fall into Google's Your Money or Your Life category. This means Google holds them to a higher standard of expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E-E-A-T) than a standard local business site. The compliance and content sections of this audit reflect that elevated standard.

If you're already past the diagnostic stage and want to know whether your current SEO vendor is doing the right things, the red flags section at the end of this guide applies equally to evaluating an existing engagement.

Technical SEO is the foundation. A pharmacy site with excellent content and strong local signals will still underperform if Google can't crawl, index, or load it efficiently.

Core technical checks

• Mobile load speed: Run your homepage and top service pages through Google PageSpeed Insights. A score below 60 on mobile is a ranking liability. In our experience working with pharmacy sites, slow load speed is the single most common technical issue—driven by unoptimized images and bloated plugin stacks.
• SSL certificate: Your entire site must serve over HTTPS. Any HTTP pages are flagged by Chrome as insecure, which is particularly damaging for a healthcare site where patients expect data protection.
• Crawlability: Open Google Search Console and check Coverage > Excluded pages. Pharmacy sites with multiple service pages frequently have indexing errors caused by misconfigured robots.txt files or accidental noindex tags.
• Canonical tags: If your site has duplicate URLs (e.g., /services and /services/ or location pages generated by a directory plugin), missing canonical tags cause Google to split ranking signals across duplicates.
• Structured data: Pharmacy and LocalBusiness schema markup helps Google understand your business type, hours, and service area. Check your current markup using Google's Rich Results Test.

What to document

For each item above, note: pass, partial, or fail. If you're using a spreadsheet, add a column for estimated fix complexity (low/medium/high). This becomes your prioritization map.

For most independent pharmacies, local search is the primary acquisition channel. A patient searching "pharmacy near me" or "compounding pharmacy [city]" needs to find you in the Map Pack or in the top organic results. This section evaluates whether your local signals support that.

Google Business Profile checks

• Category selection: Your primary category should be Pharmacy. If you offer specialty services—compounding, immunizations, durable medical equipment—add those as secondary categories. Missing secondary categories means missing searches.
• NAP consistency: Your Name, Address, and Phone number must match exactly across your GBP, website footer, and every directory listing (Yelp, Healthgrades, WebMD, pharmacy finders). Even minor formatting differences (St. vs Street) create signal inconsistency.
• Review volume and recency: Industry benchmarks suggest that local businesses appearing in the Map Pack typically have a consistent pattern of recent reviews—not just a high total count. Check how many reviews you've received in the past 90 days compared to competitors in your market.
• GBP posts and Q&A: Most pharmacy GBP profiles are static. Adding weekly posts (flu shot availability, new services, holiday hours) and answering Q&A questions signals active management, which correlates with local ranking improvements.

Location page audit

If you have more than one location, each location needs its own page with unique content—address, hours, services offered at that location, and a locally relevant description. Thin or duplicated location pages are one of the fastest ways to suppress multi-location pharmacy rankings.

Check whether your location pages include an embedded Google Map, a local phone number (not a call-tracking number as the primary), and structured LocalBusiness schema. All three matter.

This section connects directly to the Local SEO for Pharmacies guide in this cluster, which covers Map Pack optimization in greater depth.

Google evaluates pharmacy website content against a higher standard than most local businesses. Your pages need to demonstrate that the information comes from or is reviewed by qualified pharmacy professionals. This is the E-E-A-T requirement made practical.

Service page depth check

Pull up each of your core service pages—prescription filling, immunizations, compounding, MTM, specialty pharmacy, or whichever apply—and ask these questions:

• Does the page explain who this service is for and what the process looks like?
• Is there a licensed pharmacist's name or credentials visible on the page or in a site-wide author byline?
• Does the page answer the questions a patient would actually search before calling?
• Is the content unique to your pharmacy, or is it templated copy used by dozens of other pharmacy sites?

Templated content is more common than most pharmacy owners realize. Many pharmacy website platforms ship with generic service descriptions that appear across hundreds of sites. Google identifies and devalues this content. If your service pages read like a brochure written for no one in particular, they are likely contributing to low organic visibility.

Drug-related content disclaimers

If your site includes drug information, dosing guidance, or medication-related FAQs, those pages require clear disclaimers. FDA rules on drug claims prohibit promotional language about prescription medications without appropriate context. LegitScript and Google both evaluate pharmacy sites for compliance with these standards—this is not optional even for informational content. Educational note: This is general guidance. Verify specific requirements with your legal or regulatory counsel and review current FDA and LegitScript requirements, which may change.

FAQ and question-based content

Most pharmacy sites have no FAQ content. This is a missed opportunity—patients search specific questions ("can I transfer my prescription same day," "do you accept [insurance]," "how does compounding work") and a site that answers those questions ranks for them. Audit whether you have any FAQ pages or FAQ schema markup currently in place.

Pharmacy websites exist at the intersection of healthcare marketing regulations and search engine trust signals. These two sets of requirements overlap more than most pharmacy owners expect.

HIPAA-related website checks

Your website itself may not handle Protected Health Information directly, but several common website features can create HIPAA exposure:

• Contact forms with health-related fields: If your contact or refill request form asks for medication names, conditions, or patient identifiers, that data must be handled through HIPAA-compliant form infrastructure—not a standard web form plugin.
• Chat widgets: Third-party chat tools that log conversations may inadvertently capture PHI. Verify your chat vendor's BAA status.
• Analytics pixels: Some advertising pixels (Meta Pixel, in particular) have been subject to enforcement attention in healthcare contexts. Review what data your analytics setup transmits. Educational note: HIPAA compliance requirements are complex and fact-specific. Consult qualified healthcare legal counsel for guidance specific to your situation.

Trust and certification signals

• Privacy policy: A current, detailed privacy policy is a baseline requirement. It should specify what data you collect, how it's used, and how patients can request deletion.
• Pharmacist credentials on-site: Displaying the name and license number of your pharmacist-in-charge is both a consumer trust signal and in some states a regulatory requirement. Check your state board requirements.
• LegitScript and NABP/VIPPS: If your pharmacy sells or ships medications online, LegitScript certification and NABP VIPPS verification are significant trust signals—and required for Google Ads pharmacy advertising certification. Even if you don't run paid ads, having these certifications displayed affects how Google evaluates your site's authority.

The compliance section of this cluster covers HIPAA, FDA, and LegitScript requirements in greater detail. If any of the checks above surfaced gaps, that guide is the next logical step.

Once you've worked through the four sections above, you have a list of gaps. The question is what to do with it. Use this simple scoring framework to triage.

Score each gap by impact and effort

• High impact, low effort: Fix immediately. Examples: correcting NAP inconsistencies, adding missing alt text, updating GBP hours, adding a missing privacy policy link.
• High impact, high effort: Schedule with a clear owner and deadline. Examples: rewriting thin service pages, implementing structured data, consolidating duplicate location pages.
• Low impact, low effort: Batch and delegate. Examples: adding GBP posts, updating business description, adding secondary GBP categories.
• Low impact, high effort: Deprioritize. Revisit quarterly.

When to handle it yourself vs. hire

DIY remediation makes sense when your gap list is short (three or fewer critical issues), you have a staff member with time to implement, and the fixes are content or profile-based rather than technical.

In our experience, the inflection point is when the audit surfaces technical issues requiring developer access, compliance gaps that create regulatory risk, or content deficiencies across more than five pages simultaneously. At that point, the time cost and risk of getting it wrong typically exceeds the cost of professional remediation.

Red flags that suggest your current SEO vendor isn't addressing pharmacy-specific needs

• No mention of HIPAA compliance in their deliverables or reporting
• Reporting focuses on keyword rankings without any connection to new patient acquisition or prescription volume
• Content produced without pharmacist review or credential attribution
• GBP is not included in their scope of work
• Link building strategy uses generic directories rather than healthcare and pharmacy-specific sources

If your audit results or your vendor evaluation reveal gaps you're not confident addressing internally, the next step is a professional pharmacy SEO audit scoped to your specific market and compliance requirements.