Questions
Everything practices ask, in one place.Common questions about audiology SEO
The general ones first, then how the engagement is set up, then the questions specific to each piece of the work. Every answer is the same answer we would give on a call.
General
About the firm and the field
Why only audiology?
Because the useful knowledge in this work is not SEO knowledge, it is knowing that a vestibular page and a hearing aid page attract different patients with different urgency, that a third-party administrator changes what a lead is worth, and that a review request has to be written so it discloses nothing. A generalist agency learns that on your budget. We already know it, and every practice we work with makes the next one sharper.
We already have a marketing company. What would change?
Usually two things. The first is that reporting stops at booked appointments instead of sessions, which tends to reveal that a channel everyone assumed was working is not. The second is that the uncontested service lines get built. Most generalist agencies spend a practice's budget fighting national retail for the word that retail will always win, because that is the word the owner asked about.
Is this worth it against Costco and the chains?
Not on their terms, and we will not try. You will not outrank a national retailer on hearing aid prices and you should not want that search anyway — it is a price shopper who will not become a long-term patient. The winnable ground is everything retail cannot do: diagnostics, tinnitus, balance, paediatrics, cerumen management, custom protection, real audiological care. That ground is usually sitting unclaimed.
What did over-the-counter hearing aids do to us?
It took the bottom of the market and it took some of the mild-loss patients who were never going to pay for a fitting. It also produced a large group of people who bought a device, got a poor result because nobody measured their hearing, and are now searching for someone to fix it. That group is a demand pool, and it needs a page written for it that does not open by telling them they were stupid.
How long before anything happens?
Profile and listing work usually shows in sixty to ninety days, unevenly, a suburb at a time. Content-driven movement runs on a six to twelve month clock. Anyone quoting you faster than that on the content side is describing a different business than yours.
Do you write under our clinicians' names?
Only with review and sign-off. Clinical content published under a provider's name is that provider's professional reputation, and we will not put words there that they have not read. Practically that means a review pass on a shared doc before anything is published — usually fifteen minutes a fortnight.
Will you touch our patient data?
No. We work with search data, call metadata, and aggregate counts out of your practice management export. We do not need names, we do not want them, and the review flow is deliberately built so that no public artefact confirms that a named individual is a patient.
What if our website is genuinely bad?
Then we say so in the audit and price the rebuild separately rather than pretending content will save it. A site that fails an accessibility pass for a sixty-five-year-old on a phone is a conversion problem no amount of ranking fixes, and it is the single most common thing we find.
Do you do paid search too?
We will advise on it and we will read the account, but we do not run it. A practice that needs patients this quarter should be running paid search, and a practice that only runs paid search is renting a market it could own.
What happens if it does not work?
You leave, after the first ninety days, with everything in accounts you own. There is no version of this where you have to rebuild from zero because the agency held the keys. If we cannot move a market we will generally say so before you do.
Engagement
How working together is set up
Contract length
Ninety days to start, then month to month. The first ninety days exist because the measurement work in month one is worthless if the engagement ends in month two, not because it takes ninety days to leave.
What the audit costs
$1,500, credited in full against the first month if you continue. It is a real deliverable either way — you keep the geo-grid, the demand map, the audit and the build order whether or not you hire us.
Who owns the work
You do. Profiles, pages, tracking numbers, analytics properties and content stay in accounts you own. If we part company, nothing has to be rebuilt.
One practice per catchment
We will not take two practices competing for the same patients. If your metro is taken you will be told on the first call, not sold something adjacent.
The work
Questions about specific pieces
How long does profile work take to show?
Sixty to ninety days for most of it, and it shows unevenly — a suburb at a time rather than the whole catchment at once. Category and duplicate fixes are usually the fastest movers.
Local search and the map pack →Do we need a separate page for each location?
Yes, and it needs to be a real page. Two location pages that differ only by the town name compete with each other and convince nobody. If a location cannot support a genuinely distinct page, that is worth knowing before it is built.
Local search and the map pack →Can you get us into the map pack for a town we do not have an office in?
Not reliably, and we will not sell it. Proximity is doing too much work. What is achievable is the organic result underneath the map, which is a slower and considerably more honest route into a neighbouring market.
Local search and the map pack →How many lines should we build?
Usually three to five, in a deliberate order, over the first six to nine months. Building nine at once produces nine thin pages and no ranking, which is the failure mode this is meant to fix.
The service lines you have no page for →What if we do not want more of a line we offer?
Then it does not get a page. This comes up most often with cerumen and with paediatrics, for opposite reasons, and it is a legitimate business decision rather than a marketing one.
The service lines you have no page for →Do these pages cannibalise each other?
Not when they are genuinely about different things, which is the point. They cannibalise badly when they are the same page rewritten, which is what happens when lines get built faster than they get thought about.
The service lines you have no page for →Is this just SEO with a new name?
Substantially yes, and anyone telling you it is an entirely new discipline is selling a second retainer. The genuinely different parts are that measurement is binary, that corroboration matters more than links, and that hedged marketing prose is actively penalised because it cannot be quoted.
Answer-engine visibility →Can you guarantee we get named?
No. Assistant behaviour changes without notice and no one controls it. What is controllable is being the most consistently described, best corroborated practice in the catchment, which is what determines the odds.
Answer-engine visibility →How many prompts do you track?
Twenty on a single-practice engagement, fifty across catchments for multi-location. Fixed sets, so the month-over-month comparison means something.
Answer-engine visibility →How much do we need to publish?
Less than you have been told. Twenty to forty pieces that completely cover the questions preceding a booking in your market, not two hundred pieces covering everything.
The awareness library →How long before this pays back?
Six to twelve months for movement, longer for the full effect, and the attribution will never be clean because the gap between first search and booking is measured in years. Anyone promising a clean line between the two is describing a different business.
The awareness library →Can you use AI to write it?
For research, structure and first drafts, yes, and we say so plainly. For the clinical substance and the final voice, no — it produces content indistinguishable from every competitor's, which is the opposite of the point, and it cannot be published under a clinician's name without them rewriting it anyway.
The awareness library →Is this a website rebuild?
Sometimes, and we will say so in the audit rather than pretending content can save a site that fails for its own audience. Frequently it is a set of fixes to an existing site, which is cheaper and faster and worth exhausting first.
A site an older patient can actually use →Does this affect our rankings?
Indirectly and genuinely. Core Web Vitals and mobile usability are ranking inputs, and the behavioural signals from a site people can actually use are better. But the argument for doing it is the conversion rate, not the ranking.
A site an older patient can actually use →What about ADA lawsuits?
Demand letters over inaccessible healthcare websites are common and a WCAG 2.2 AA pass is the practical defence. We are not lawyers and the work is not sold as legal protection, but the overlap is close to total.
A site an older patient can actually use →Is asking for reviews a HIPAA problem in itself?
Asking is not the problem; the disclosure risk sits in how the request is delivered and how responses are written. We build the flow around that, and your own compliance counsel should sign off before it goes live. We are not lawyers.
Reviews, without the HIPAA problem →Can you remove a bad review?
Only where it genuinely violates platform policy, and that is rarer than anybody hopes. The realistic answer is to respond well and to out-publish it with steady recent reviews, which works better than it sounds.
Reviews, without the HIPAA problem →Do you use incentives?
No. It violates platform terms, it is a regulatory problem in healthcare, and it produces reviews that read as bought. The ask is the whole mechanism.
Reviews, without the HIPAA problem →Do you need access to our patient records?
No. We work from an aggregate export — counts by appointment type and channel, no names, no clinical detail. If your system cannot produce that easily, we will help you get it, and it stays aggregate.
Reporting that stops at the appointment →Is call recording legal?
It depends on your state and it is your practice's decision as the party being called. We will explain what the system can do and configure whatever notification you are advised to use. We do not enable recording without written instruction.
Reporting that stops at the appointment →Can we see the raw data?
Yes, always, in accounts you own. The report is a summary of your data, not a substitute for it.
Reporting that stops at the appointment →What does it cost?
$1,500, credited in full against the first month if you continue. It is a complete deliverable either way: you keep the scans, the demand map, the competitor table and the build order.
The practice audiogram →What do you need from us?
View access to your Google Business Profile, and to Search Console and analytics if you have them, plus about an hour of the owner's time. We do not need patient data of any kind.
The practice audiogram →What happens after it?
We walk through the findings on a call rather than emailing a file. If you continue, the build order becomes the first ninety days. If you do not, it is yours to hand to anyone.
The practice audiogram →Should our primary category be Audiologist or Hearing aid store?
For most practices that test and dispense, Audiologist, with the store category as a secondary. It keeps the practice in the clinical comparison rather than the retail one. A practice that is genuinely retail-first is the exception, and the audit will say so.
The profile Google wrote about you →We lost access to our profile. Can you get it back?
Usually, through Google's ownership request process, though it can take weeks when a former employee or agency still holds it. Whatever we recover sits in an account you own.
The profile Google wrote about you →Do Google posts help rankings?
Not in any way we can show. They are useful for telling patients something they would want to know, such as new hours or a new clinician, and we treat them that way rather than as a ranking lever.
The profile Google wrote about you →Do we need a new website?
Usually not. Most technical problems are fixable on the site you have, which is cheaper and faster. When a platform makes the fixes impossible, the audit says so plainly rather than assuming a rebuild.
The part of your site only a crawler sees →Our site runs on a vendor platform. Can you work on it?
Often, within whatever the platform allows. Some platforms give full access and some lock the templates. We find out which during the audit, before anything is promised.
The part of your site only a crawler sees →How quickly do technical fixes show?
Indexing fixes can show within weeks, once the pages are crawled again. Speed and structured data work more slowly and more quietly, and mostly show up in how the rest of the work performs.
The part of your site only a crawler sees →Ask the one that is not here.
The first call is two questions from our side and as many as you like from yours. If the answer is that we are not the right fit, that is a short and free conversation.