Your Website Is Live, Your Ads Are Running — So Why Is Google Sending Patients to Competitors?

The most common SEO failure we see on plastic surgery websites is procedure content that describes services at a marketing level rather than a medical one. A page that says 'We offer rhinoplasty to help you achieve the nose you've always wanted' gives Google almost nothing to rank — and gives the prospective patient almost no reason to trust the practice.

Google evaluates healthcare content using elevated quality standards. For procedures involving surgery, recovery, and clinical risk, thin content consistently loses to pages that address:

• What the procedure involves anatomically
• Candidacy criteria — who is and isn't a suitable patient
• Recovery timeline with realistic milestones
• Risks and how the surgeon mitigates them
• What differentiates the surgeon's technique or training

In our experience working with surgical practices, procedure pages under 800 words rarely rank for anything beyond branded queries. The practices capturing non-branded traffic — 'breast augmentation recovery tips,' 'what to expect after a facelift' — are publishing pages that function as genuine patient education resources.

The fix isn't just adding word count. It's answering the questions patients are actually searching. Use Google's 'People Also Ask' for each procedure to find the specific gaps your current content doesn't address. Each question answered is a potential featured snippet, a trust signal, and a ranking opportunity.

Disclaimer: Content should be reviewed for accuracy by the treating physician and should not constitute individualized medical advice. Consult your state medical board advertising rules before publishing clinical claims.

For Most practices [understanding the core framework](/resources/plastic-surgeon/what-is-seo-for-plastic-surgeons), the Map Pack — the three local results that appear above organic listings for searches like 'plastic surgeon near me' — drives a significant share of new patient inquiries. Yet many practices have Google Business Profiles that haven't been touched since initial setup.

Common GBP neglect patterns include:

• Primary category set to a generic option rather than 'Plastic Surgeon'
• Services section empty or incomplete — missing specific procedures patients search by name
• No practice photos beyond a single exterior shot
• No recent Google Posts, leaving the profile stale in Google's freshness assessment
• Q&A section unanswered, allowing unverified third-party answers to represent the practice

Beyond basic completion, review velocity matters. Practices that consistently generate new patient reviews — within HIPAA-compliant processes that do not reference specific treatments — tend to maintain stronger local rankings over time than those with an older batch of high-rated reviews and no recent activity. (Note: never incentivize reviews or request reviews in ways that violate FTC guidelines or your state medical board's advertising rules.)

GBP optimization also intersects with before-and-after photo compliance. Photos posted to GBP are subject to the same HIPAA patient authorization requirements as photos on your website. Posting identifiable patient images without proper written authorization creates both a compliance risk and a reputational one.

For a deeper breakdown of profile-specific tactics, see our GBP optimization guide for plastic surgeons in this cluster.

Many plastic surgery practices optimize their homepage for 'plastic surgeon [city]' and consider keyword strategy complete. This creates two problems. First, competition for that exact phrase in most markets is intense — established practices, aggregator directories, and hospital systems all compete for the same term. Second, it ignores the much larger pool of specific, high-intent searches patients conduct before they ever type a surgeon's name.

Patients researching elective surgery behave differently from patients searching for urgent care. The consideration cycle is longer, and the search journey reflects that. Common high-value search patterns include:

• Procedure-specific research: 'tummy tuck vs. mini tummy tuck'
• Recovery and risk questions: 'how long is rhinoplasty recovery'
• Cost exploration: 'breast augmentation cost [city]'
• Surgeon evaluation: 'board certified plastic surgeon [neighborhood]'
• Post-procedure: 'what to expect after blepharoplasty week 2'

Practices that build content across this full journey capture patients at every stage — not just the moment of decision. In our experience, procedure-specific supporting content (FAQ pages, recovery guides, comparison articles) generates consistent organic traffic that compounds over time.

The opposite mistake is equally damaging: keyword stuffing outdated tactics, like repeating 'plastic surgeon [city]' excessively throughout a page. Google's quality evaluators are trained to identify content that prioritizes ranking manipulation over genuine patient value — a particular risk on healthcare pages given the elevated scrutiny applied to medical content.

Plastic surgery practices serving multiple cities frequently create location pages by duplicating a template and swapping in the city name. On the surface, this seems like a reasonable approach to local SEO. In practice, it often does more damage than good.

Google's quality systems are effective at identifying pages where the only meaningful difference is a geographic term. When a site has ten near-identical pages — each describing the same procedures, with the same copy, pointing to the same location — those pages tend to earn little to no organic visibility. In some cases, the pattern can suppress other pages on the domain.

A compliant, effective location page for a plastic surgery practice should include:

• Locally relevant content — community references, local hospital affiliations, or specific patient demographics that are genuinely different by location
• Location-specific patient questions and answers, not just procedure descriptions
• Embedded Google Map and accurate NAP (Name, Address, Phone) consistent with GBP and citation sources
• Local schema markup (LocalBusiness or Physician schema with geo coordinates)
• A distinct internal link structure pointing to procedures most searched in that market

For single-location practices, the focus should be on a well-optimized primary location page, accurate citations across directories, and a strong GBP profile — not on manufacturing location pages for cities the practice doesn't actually serve. Fabricating service-area pages for locations where the practice has no presence is both an SEO risk and a potential advertising compliance issue under some state medical board rules.

Before-and-after photo galleries are among the most-visited sections of any plastic surgery website. Prospective patients return to galleries repeatedly during the consideration process — they are evaluating results, building trust in the surgeon's aesthetic, and confirming that the practice achieves outcomes similar to what they're seeking.

From an SEO perspective, galleries are consistently under-optimized. Common mistakes include:

• Images uploaded with generic file names ('IMG_4023.jpg') rather than descriptive names ('rhinoplasty-profile-view-female-patient.jpg')
• Missing or non-descriptive alt text — a technical requirement for accessibility (WCAG 2.1 AA) and a practical ranking signal
• No surrounding descriptive content — galleries presented as standalone images without context for Google to interpret
• Large, uncompressed images that significantly slow mobile page load times

The compliance dimension is equally important. HIPAA's Privacy Rule (45 CFR § 164.502) requires that patient images not be disclosed without a valid authorization that meets specific requirements. Before posting any before-and-after content — on your website, GBP, or social media — ensure written authorization has been obtained and documented. This is educational context only; consult a healthcare attorney for guidance specific to your practice and state.

The FTC also requires that patient testimonials and outcome images reflect typical results or be accompanied by clear disclosure when results are atypical. Presenting exceptional results as representative without appropriate disclosure creates regulatory exposure. For full guidance, see our compliance page on before-and-after photo requirements in this cluster.

Technical SEO problems rarely announce themselves. They don't produce error messages visible to the practice owner. They just slowly reduce organic visibility — and in competitive surgical markets, slow suppression is enough to hand meaningful traffic to a competitor.

The technical issues that appear most consistently across plastic surgery websites we've reviewed include:

• Mobile page speed: Large hero images and uncompressed gallery photos create slow mobile load times. Google's Core Web Vitals — particularly Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) — directly affect ranking in mobile search, where most local health queries originate.
• Missing or broken structured data: Physician and MedicalBusiness schema help Google understand who runs the practice, what procedures are offered, and where the practice is located. Incorrect schema — or schema that references outdated information — sends conflicting signals.
• Crawl inefficiency: Practices that have redesigned their websites without setting up proper 301 redirects lose the ranking authority accumulated by old URLs. Legacy URLs returning 404 errors drain link equity and create a poor experience for any patient who has bookmarked the old page.
• Thin or duplicate meta data: Procedure pages with identical or auto-generated title tags fail to capture the specific searches each page is designed to rank for.

A basic technical audit — crawling the site with a tool like Screaming Frog, reviewing Core Web Vitals in Google Search Console, and validating schema with Google's Rich Results Test — takes a few hours and routinely uncovers issues that are straightforward to correct. If a practice's organic traffic dropped after a website redesign, a technical audit is almost always the right first diagnostic step.