Most practice websites are written in the language of the chart. Patients search in the language of the kitchen table. Healthcare SEO keywords are simply the second kind: the words people actually type when they are looking for the care you provide.
This guide covers the four kinds worth having, example lists by specialty, the free tools that find them, and how to lay them out across your pages without tipping into spam.
The four kinds of keyword that matter
- Service plus place. "EMDR therapist Austin", "concierge doctor Naples", "ketamine clinic Denver". The highest intent there is: the person has decided what they want and where.
- Condition or symptom. "help for panic attacks", "always tired and gaining weight", "stomach pain after eating". Earlier in the decision, and usually the words a clinician would never write.
- "Near me" and local. "psychiatrist near me", "weight loss clinic near me". Google answers these from the map, so your Business Profile does most of the work.
- Payment and access. "private pay therapist", "cash pay MRI", "therapist that doesn't take insurance", "same week appointment". These separate the people who will pay your fee from the people who will not.
A practice that covers all four has a page for the decided patient, a page for the searching patient, a profile for the map, and an answer for the question that ends most calls.
Example keyword shapes by specialty
Use these as patterns to fill in with your own services and city, not as a list to paste:
- Therapy and counseling. Modality plus city ("EMDR therapist [city]"), population ("couples counseling [city]", "teen therapist [city]"), payment ("private pay therapist [city]"), access ("therapist accepting new clients [city]").
- Psychiatry. "psychiatrist [city]", "medication management [city]", "ADHD evaluation [city]", "psychiatrist private pay [city]", plus telehealth variants if you hold licenses in several states.
- Ketamine and Spravato. "ketamine clinic [city]", "ketamine for depression [city]", "Spravato provider [city]", "esketamine treatment [city]". Note that Google restricts prescription drug terms in ads, so these work differently in search than in advertising — see our healthcare advertising guide.
- Concierge and DPC. "concierge doctor [city]", "direct primary care [city]", "concierge medicine cost", "doctor with same day appointments [city]".
- Functional and integrative medicine. "functional medicine doctor [city]", "integrative medicine [city]", plus the symptom searches that bring this audience: fatigue, gut issues, hormones.
- Weight loss and GLP-1. "weight loss clinic [city]", "medical weight loss [city]", "semaglutide [city]", "GLP-1 provider near me".
- Gastroenterology. "gastroenterologist [city]", "colonoscopy [city]", "GI doctor near me", plus the symptom set patients search before they know the specialty.
Free tools that find them
- Google Search Console. The only source of what your site is genuinely found for today. Start here: the queries at positions 5–20 are the ones a small edit can move.
- Google Keyword Planner. Google says you can "discover new keywords related to your business and view estimates of the searches they receive and the cost to target them". It sits inside Google Ads and needs an account with billing details entered for full access.
- Autocomplete and "People also ask". Type your service into Google and read what it offers. Those are real queries, in patients' own words, for free.
- Your front desk. The ten questions your team answers every week are keyword research that no tool will give you.
Give every keyword one page
The most common mistake is one page trying to hold everything. Map it instead:
- One service, one page, one main keyword, and say it plainly in the title and the first sentence.
- Answer the payment question on the page that ranks, not three clicks later.
- Give conditions and symptoms their own explainers, and link them to the service page that treats them.
- Keep the practice's name, address and phone identical everywhere, so the map, the site and the directories agree.
Our guides to SEO for doctors and medical practices and SEO for therapists turn this into the page-by-page work.
What not to do with keywords
Google's spam policies define keyword stuffing as "filling a web page with keywords or numbers in an attempt to manipulate rankings in Google Search results", and name two habits common on practice sites: "blocks of text that list cities and regions that a web page is trying to rank for", and "repeating the same words or phrases so often that it sounds unnatural".
The same applies to your Google Business Profile: the business name should be your real name, not your name plus a treatment and a city. And write for the patient reading it. A page that reads like a list of keywords converts nobody, whatever it ranks for.
Then watch the right numbers
Rankings are a means, not the result. Each month, look at the queries bringing impressions in Search Console, the calls and booking clicks from your Google profile, and booked appointments by source. A keyword that brings visitors but no appointments is telling you the intent was wrong.
Sources
- Google Search Central — Spam policies for Google web search (updated 28 August 2026), checked 22 September 2026
- Google Ads Help — About Keyword Planner, checked 22 September 2026
- Google Business Profile Help — Guidelines for representing your business on Google, checked 18 September 2026