In this article, we’re going to explain how local SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) for veterinary practices comes in, and what impact your Google Business Profile, website, local directories, and content strategy can have.

What is “local SEO”?

SEO refers to tweaking your web presence so your website appears higher in the list of search results. Google is the search engine that most people are familiar with, but don’t forget other sources like Bing, Ecosia or AI-generated results.

Local SEO for vets just means targeting clientele who are near to you. This is especially important if you are a practice competing with other local veterinary businesses. Simply put, you want your business to be the first that people see and click on – and that’s where local SEO comes in.

Why local SEO matters more for vets than most businesses

SEO for veterinary practices matters. For most people these days, pets are family. This means customers are discerning about where they take their pet. Gone are the days of just randomly picking the nearest practice. With the rise of corporate franchises, mobile vets, and a population that are willing to travel further for their animal’s healthcare, vet practices need to put more effort into making their business stand out than ever before. One of the ways to do this is by making sure your local SEO is on point.

Local SEO for vets – top tips

To increase the chances of your practice appearing at the top of a search engine list, you need to make sure you are doing the following –

Tip 1: Nailing your Google Business Profile

This is basic, but one that can be easily overlooked – check that your Google business profile is correct. Make sure that the practice’s name, phone number, service area, after-hours info, and booking link are all up to date. Adding photos of your clinic and team pictures will also increase your credibility. When people use Google Maps to find a local vet, this is the information that will show up, so it needs to be right!

As well as the basic information, customer reviews should be visible. While this can seem a bit nerve-wracking, new clients rely heavily on reviews when deciding which business to use. It’s just like TripAdvisor or Amazon reviews, we all like to hear about real experiences!

People will go out of their way to leave a review for a job well done, so make sure to flag this to existing clients in your practice by handing them a QR code after their appointment or advertising in reception.

Lots of people worry about what to do if you get a negative review on your Google Business Profile. Firstly, don’t take it to heart (it will happen to all of us!). Your response to this will be even more important than the review itself. Take the time to craft a well-thought-out reply, and don’t get dragged into an online argument. In fact, replying to positive reviews is a very good idea too. It shows that you are approachable and appreciate owner feedback, impacting your vet practice SEO.

Tip 2: Supporting your vet practice’s local SEO with your website

Your practice website itself is key to your local SEO. There are several things it must feature, such as –

• Location keywords – listing the local areas covered by the practice means that a client typing in a specific search, like ‘North Bristol vet’, will produce you as a result. Keywords should feature on various website pages to increase your SEO. For example, in phrases like ‘vets in [region]’, ‘veterinary care in [region]’, and ‘independent vets in [region]. Some website builders have SEO help built in, or you may be able to install a plugin to help, like Yoast.
• Practice contact page – Your website should have a page so that your client knows how to get in touch, including an address so they can find you.
• Embedded Google maps – The first thing many owners will want to know is how far away you are from them and how to get to you – make this easy for them.
• Working URLs – Broken links and pages that no longer exist look unprofessional and will put new customers off.
• A fast-loading page – If your website takes ages to load in the first place, a potential client is going to get bored and lose their trust in you. Google algorithms will also mean your page starts sliding down their list of results. Running your website through something like PageSpeed Insights can help identify issues. Remember, it’s important to see how your website performs on a mobile device as well as a computer.
• Fresh content – More on this in tip 3 below!

Tip 3: Invest in your content strategy

Not only are blogs useful and interesting for your existing clients, but they also help with that SEO again! We recommend regularly putting new posts on your website so that you stay current with Google. We would suggest aiming for a new blog a couple of times a month, if possible, but even a monthly post would keep things ‘regular’. If you are struggling for ideas, then check out our blog on Content Planning for Your Veterinary Practice.  

Within your content, you will need to include those important keywords that owners are typing into Google. So, if you’re a vet that does a lot of orthopaedic work, including phrases like ‘why is my dog limping?’ or ‘treatment for cruciate ligament injury’ may lead to pet owners clicking on your page when googling answers to their questions. It’s important to know which keywords to use and how to include them in your pieces so that the tone feels natural.

We are experts at this, so don’t hesitate to contact us if you would like our team to do some of the work for you.

Tip 4 – Don’t forget other SEO tactics like local directories

As well as making sure you’re on the RCVS Find a Vet page and VetHelpDirect, use some local directories too. Think about ones like Yell, Yelp, and Thomson Local. Just make sure not to add yourself to hundreds, as these will all need to be kept up to date to avoid customer confusion. It may be worth making a list of where your practice features, so that if you ever need to make a change to something like your opening hours, then you can do this with ease.

You could also consider some positive PR, such as writing a column in your local newspaper or an advertising magazine. Alternatively, the press may also be interested in interesting cases or stories that you’ve dealt with, for a ‘feel-good’ story. This all helps to build public confidence and trust in your team.

A note on local SEO for mobile vets

All the above advice is just as important, if not more so, to mobile vets. With no physical building and a wider catchment area than traditional practices, digital marketing will be the main way that you build your client base. This includes (but is not limited to!) euthanasia vets, mobile vet clinics, house-call veterinarians and peripatetic vets. Get in touch if you’re not sure where to start!

Common local SEO mistakes vets make

Here’s a summary of the most common local SEO mistakes so that you can avoid the pitfalls –

• No Google reviews – This immediately makes your practice seem untrustworthy.
• Slow mobile site – Customers will be viewing your practice website on their phone as well as their computer, so make sure your mobile site is performing well.
• One ‘generic’ services webpage – Your website needs to be optimised for search with different pages for different things, e.g., a ‘home’ page, different services offered, and ‘about us’.
• Blocking Google from crawling your page – If you’ve accidentally blocked Googlebot, it won’t be able to explore the content on your page.
• Not doing keyword research – If you want traffic to arrive at your website, research the keywords that people are using in search engines. You can use sources like Ahrefs to help with this.
• Treating vet practice SEO as a one-and-done thing – To continue ranking highly against your competitors, you need to update your content and regularly check that your website is technically sound.
• Relying too heavily on AI for your content – You need to be a trustworthy authority. AI often has an unnatural tone, relies too heavily on keywords at the expense of well-written text, and doesn’t allow for personal experiences and opinions.

For a deeper look at SEO for vets and extra website tips, check out The Complete Guide to Veterinary SEO (2026).

Conclusion

SEO for veterinary practices is something you can’t afford to get wrong! Hopefully, our guide on local SEO for vets has been helpful and given you a few starting points.

However, we recognise that many vets are often time-poor and don’t have spare capacity to tackle the complexities of online and digital marketing. This is why The Veterinary Content Company exists! So, if you need help, then please don’t hesitate to contact us. Our dedicated SEO team will be happy to discuss your needs and produce you a ‘to-do’ list to help you rank in Google.

The post Local SEO for vets: how to rank in ‘near me’ searches appeared first on The Veterinary Content Company.

Before I write any more, I want to share something with you. Firstly, that I have been working in veterinary-specific SEO for leading brands for over 5 years now, working entirely on on-page SEO (more on that later!). And secondly, a proof point – if you’re reading this article because you found it amongst the noise, that is proof that I’m reasonably good at my job! Trust me? Let’s crack on.

Do vet practices need SEO?

Before we get started, we should probably tackle whether your vet practice needs SEO. I’m assuming, since you’re here, that you think you do, but let’s clear up a few things:

SEO is the practice of tweaking your website to make it show up better in search results.

In 2026, that’s not just Google search. That’s Google, Bing, Ecosia and all the search-enabled GenAI results. You might see a lot of chatter about GEO or AIO – optimising for AI results – but in my experience they’re all just good SEO – you don’t need two strategies, you need one good one!

Every veterinary practice with a website that wants customers needs SEO to some degree. If you’re the only practice in your region, and you show up at the top spot for search when customers look for “vet in [location]” then you probably don’t need much in the way of veterinary SEO. However, if you’re not in the top spot, and you have competition for your service, then SEO is worthwhile. It’s everything from making sure you show up for “vet in [location]” queries through to getting clicks and building trust with customers who are searching for “puppy vaccination schedule” in the hope they’ll choose you.

SEO for mobile vets

No physical location? No problem! Actually, mobile vets and house-call vets need SEO more than most veterinarians and veterinary practices – with a wider catchment, and no building to help advertise them, they rely on veterinary digital marketing more than most. The sections below are just as relevant – if not more relevant – for mobile vet clinics, house-call veterinarians, palliative care, hospice and euthanasia vets, and peripatetic veterinarians. As a mobile vet, your SEO matters!

Technical SEO for veterinarians

If your site is slow, confusing, or broken, search engine bots will not be able to look around, or understand what you are, where you are, and what you’re about.

And what about your customer? Well, pet owners are often stressed, on a phone, and in a hurry. If your page takes five seconds to load or your booking form glitches, they’ll bounce to the clinic down the road – Google notices that pogo-stick behaviour and moves you down the results page. For mobile vets, your website is the waiting room, so a rock-solid technical setup directly translates to calls and consults.

Get the tech foundations right and every other SEO win (on-page, local, content) becomes much easier. So what do you need to do?

1. Build a crawlable, logical site by checking your URLs and sitemaps

Google wants to show users the most appropriate result – but if your website is a confusing mess, the robots are going to struggle to know what you do and why. Start by making sure everything is logical, then make sure Google has a map to your site. Here’s what to do:

1. Run Google Search Console’s “Page Index” report – it highlights any pages the bot couldn’t reach and tells you why. Go through and fix them.
2. Scan your URL slugs: keep them human-readable (/services/dog-vaccinations/) and nest pages logically under /services/ or /blog/. Logical organisation is key. Make sure, if you’re changing URL’s, that you have redirects set up so you don’t end up with too many broken pages.
3. Use a one-click XML-sitemap generator I like the super-user-friendly Yoast SEO, but RankMath or Screaming Frog’s free crawl will do the same thing. This lists every page in a neat file (/sitemap.xml).
4. Submit that sitemap back to Search Console so Google always has the up-to-date map.

I know this sounds like a jumble of mumbo-jumbo, but trust me – it helps! And once you get started you’ll realise it’s actually not as hard as it sounds and can make a huge difference to your veterinary practice’s SEO.

2. Optimise security – HTTPS

I almost left this one off because it’s now such a basic requirement for a website that it’s barely worth saying. But it’s an important one, so just in case anybody is still running their website without an SSL certificate – you need one. If pet owners click on links without https, their browser will warn them (if you’ve never seen it before, it’s a scary warning about hackers stealing data!) and their trust will evaporate.

• Check your website’s URL – if it starts with HTTP://, you need to sort out a certificate. If it’s HTTPS://, you’re (probably) all fine.
• Run your domain through the ssllabs free checker, which will check your SSL certificate is set up correctly.

Found out you don’t have an SSL certificate? Talk to your hosting provider, who may be able to activate one, or you can use the ‘Let’s Encrypt’ button on the ssllabs page to get started.

Wondering how this impacts your veterinary practice’s SEO? Well, if humans disappear before entering your site due to scary warnings, Google will downrank you. And since they know that’s what happens, it doesn’t even take a human visiting for a Google bot to look at the URL and say ‘that’s not worth ranking’. It’s a small tweak, but an important one for your vet clinic’s SEO.

3. Speed up your website

You know the feeling – you click, wait several seconds to load, then get bored and try elsewhere? That’s universal. Unless pet owners are 100% sure you are what they’re looking for – and are therefore fine with waiting for it to load – they’re going to click back and try elsewhere. And, as we’ve mentioned, Google notices those signals and nudges your page down the results list to avoid upsetting too many searchers. So, fast page loads matter to Google, and to your SEO!

1. Check Core Web Vitals report on Google’s Search Console – see which batches of pages Google says are “Poor” or “Needs improvement” on Mobile vs Desktop; fix the worst group first.
2. Shrink big images before uploading (export “web” or “compressed” from your photo tool); large hero photos are a common LCP killer highlighted in both PageSpeed and Core Web Vitals reports.
3. Run your homepage through PageSpeed Insights – paste the URL, click Analyze, and note the colour (green/yellow/red) plus the “Opportunities” suggestions; repeat for key service pages.
4. Make sure you have caching on – A cache is like a memory of the website – so it doesn’t have to load from scratch every time. Make sure you have a cache in place by talking to your hosting provider.

On-page SEO for vets

So, now we’ve got the technical website-y bit out the way, let’s look at your on-page SEO. On-page SEO is what you can write on each page to make your vet practice’s website more visible to search engines.

Main website pages

The main pages of your practice website (eg ‘Home’, ‘Services’, Contact’, and ‘About Us’) need to be optimised for search. They’ll need to have the right combination of subheadings and text, and keywords for your site throughout. For example, the beginning of a practice homepage might read

“XXX Vets have been offering the highest quality vet care for over 80 years. Our independent practice of vets, RVNS and nursing assistants is extremely well equipped to deal with all your veterinary needs.”

But it doesn’t contain any keywords. You could rewrite it as:

“XXX Vets have been providing the best veterinary care in [region/city] for over 80 years. We regularly invest in our equipment and staff, and are one of the only independent vets in [city/area/region].”

In this way, the keywords ‘vets in [region]’ and ‘independent vets in [region]’ as well as the synonym ‘veterinary care in [region]’ are in the opening line of the website, and they instantly build authority and trust.

Rewriting your practice’s website can seem like hard work, but small tweaks can make a huge difference. Try to assign one unique keyword per page and then use more general keywords throughout. Some website builders have SEO help built in, or you may be able to install a plugin to help – we use Yoast.

If you need help deciding where to make adjustments, and what to write, consider outsourcing to one of our veterinary copywriters, who will work with you to rewrite your pages.

Content strategy

What about your blog? Well, we definitely recommend having some sort of regular posting happening to your website – it helps you stay current in Google’s mind. ‘Regular’ can be just one post a month, but we recommend two or more if you can manage it. One can be practice news, but for optimal SEO it’s best to have at least one a month that helps to use your SEO keywords and build trust with clients. The more ‘evergreen’ your posts are, the longer they’ll help your practice out – so plan content that won’t go out of date easily.

Need more help? We’re experienced with planning a veterinary practice content calendar that can help your clinic shine (and support your SEO). Or, try this self-help veterinary practice content ideas list here.

Keyword research

Before you can do on-page SEO, you’ll need to do some keyword research. That means finding out what your customers are searching for when they need your services. For most vet practices, some combination of ‘vets in [region]’ will be important, but depending on your service there may be other phrases that are important. If you’re a vaccination clinic, you might want to target ‘what vaccinations does my puppy need?’, and if you’re a mobile vet specialising in euthanasia, keywords around ‘how to tell when it’s time to say goodbye’ will help you get seen by your clients. Some of these will be better suited as blog posts, while others will be your main service pages.

Here’s an article to help you find the keywords your vet practice needs: 5 ways to find veterinary keywords for your clinic – TVCC

Off-page veterinary SEO, local SEO for vets, and digital PR

Getting seen beyond your own website builds authority and trust – two signals Google uses to decide which local vets to surface. It’s an important – and often forgotten – part of veterinary SEO, but it’s harder to implement, because you aren’t directly in control of so much. So how can you build your practice’s visibility online without touching a thing on your own page?

• Claim & complete your Google Business Profile. Make sure your practice’s name, phone, service area, after-hours info, and booking link are correct, and add real clinic and team photos. This is the bit that shows up when people use maps to search, so it’s worth getting it right!
• List your clinic in trusted directories & vet registers. You’re probably already on the RCVS Find a Vet page, which is great, but joining other vet registers like the one at VetHelpDirect helps build your online presence. Similarly, online directories like Yell, Yelp, and Thomson Local can be helpful. You’ll need to make sure they’re kept up to date, so keep a note of which directories you’re using to make it easier to make changes to things like opening times and avoid frustrating customers.
• Ask every happy client for a Google review. Hand them a QR card or text a link after appointments. Photos of their pet in your care add credibility and can influence which snippets show in search – if it fits with your veterinary brand, why not set up a little photo booth in reception to encourage them to take photos and spread the word. Respond to all reviews – good and bad – to show you’re listening. The VDS are a great source of advice for dealing with bad reviews.
• Engage in some simple PR. Getting the whole web talking positively about your practice is hard, but some simple PR can go a long way to building your authority. Ask your local press whether one of your vets can have a column or whether they accept occasional interesting pet stories. There are also other ways you can get websites and brands mentioning your practice – speak to us about veterinary PR.

AI optimisation for veterinary practices

‘What about AI search?‘ I hear you say. ‘Isn’t SEO dead?‘. Well, no. Firstly, the vast majority of people still use search tools, so it’s important to cater to the majority. Estimates suggest for every ‘search’ in genAI tools, over 300 searches happen in Google still. Don’t ignore the 300 chasing the one!

Secondly, as we’ve already mentioned above, AI search bots follow very similar processes in terms of deciding what to turn up in results. They still value Authority and Trust signals. They put a lot of emphasis on reviews and even recommendations from social media posts and Reddit. In other words, good veterinary SEO is good veterinary AIO – the changes we recommend above will benefit both!

You can find out how your vet practice is currently showing up in AI responses using Hubspot’s free tool. It takes some fiddling to get the inputs right!

Top tip: If you’re getting ‘0’ for ‘share of voice’ and it isn’t listing your competitors, then change the ‘industry’ you put in until it starts to look closer to your competitor mix.

Measuring your veterinary SEO

There’s little point in making your changes and not seeing whether they’re working for you. Whilst there are hundreds of SEO tools out there, the free Google Search Console will tell you most of what you need to know.

Keep an eye on your impressions (how many searches you show up for), your clicks (how many people click to your website), and your position (how high up the results page you’re coming in). You can see the phrases people were searching for when you showed in their results – if they’re not the people you need, it’s time to fiddle with your veterinary SEO. You can also filter the results for pages – eg which keywords people use when they find your homepage or your ‘services’ page – or for queries.

Top tip: Try using ‘query not including’ to remove your vet practice name from the search query – I find this helps me see more accurately how a company is faring against its competitors for more general queries, like ‘vets in [region]’. Obviously, people searching for [your clinic name] will be seeing your website, it’s the others you want to attract!

Conclusion

Veterinary SEO isn’t orthopaedic surgery, but it’s pretty complicated all the same as so many things influence search engine algorithms. We’re the experts when it comes to on-page SEO – that’s everything written on the pages and posts of your website – so if our extensive knowledgebase isn’t helping, or the above sounds too much like hard work, get in touch and let us know what you need.

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I know, you went to vet school – not marketing school. Our business lessons at vet school are sadly lacking, and the world is changing rapidly – there’s a chance you know you should be ‘doing SEO’ but you aren’t really sure what that is. Let’s take a look, before we get any further.

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. It means making tiny alterations to your website to make it stand out on Google (and other Search Engines). While nobody knows the ins and outs of Google’s algorithm, by testing and adjusting (and taking notes every time Google employees speak) we can make some pretty good guesses about ways that Google ranks websites. The goal is to make the right adjustments to your veterinary website to move into the top 10 results on Google, and ideally the top 5.

For more information, see our article “SEO for the Vet Industry“.

Do vets need SEO?

Well, yes, any business that wants customers should have a website, and unless you’re the only veterinary practice in the whole country, you probably need some sort of SEO. You’ll especially need SEO if your radius is wide – for example, if you are a mobile veterinarian – or if competition in your area is high – for example, in a city, where pet owners have their pick of vets nearby.

What about AIO?

If you’ve been trying to keep up with marketing trends, you may have heard of AIO – or Artificial Intelligence Optimisation. Because of the rise of generative AI search, there is a possibility that everything we know about ranking highly on the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) is incorrect. But so far, generative AI seems to mostly return responses that are high up on the SERPs anyway – more on that in another article. In other words, don’t worry about AIO yet, focus on your SEO, and AIO will follow.

So, let’s look at SEO. As I mentioned, this is my niche area and what I do every single day, so here are my top tips for helping your website rank above your competitors.

1. Choose your keywords carefully

Nobody can rank for everything, and there’s no point ranking for something your (potential) customers aren’t searching for. As an example, a recent client had an excellently-performing website on the surface, with really high clicks, but they weren’t making any sales. I took a closer look, and determined that less than 0.01% of their clicks were clicking through elsewhere on the website. A closer look at the keywords, and they didn’t make sense for their potential customers. I knew their customers weren’t searching those keywords – they were attracting the wrong people. Carefully choosing your keywords is important for your vet SEO.

2. Don’t write for the bots

There’s nothing worse than clicking on a high-ranking website to find the content isn’t useful. Customers click away, then find another website that answers their questions. This is a negative signal to Google, and you won’t have that coveted top spot for long. Whatever you put on your website, make sure your customers are the end goal – help them, provide them with value, and they’ll stick.

3. One focus phrase per page

Each page of your website should have a focus, so it’s only natural that the keyword (focus phrase) should be different on each page. Audit your pages and compare them to your keyword list – some will fit easily and naturally, some might need some help, and some keywords might need new pages or posts adding that meet them.

4. Test and adjust (it takes time)

You’ll need to monitor your ranking on various tools – Google Search Console, SISTRIX, or whatever your chosen option is. Make changes to your website, but expect a couple of months to see the effects – it’s a slow game, but incremental increases in ranking are a good sign. Then, adjust your vet SEO again slightly and watch it again.

Conclusion

SEO for veterinarians is just as important as it is for other industries. On the whole, we vets haven’t been used to having to market our services, but despite the technology it’s still really no different to letting the town gossip know about your new x-ray suite. In times gone by, people might have got their info from the local post office – nowadays, it’s Google they turn to, and it’s Google you’ve got to impress and tell about your services. Vet SEO is easier than you think, and anybody can improve their website and help it move up the rankings. That said, if you’re fed up of grappling with veterinary digital marketing, give us a shout – my competitive streak comes out when it comes to vet SEO and I genuinely love the challenge and reward of seeing a website beat the competition. Just pop us an email and let us know what’s bothering you – initial consultations are free!

Need more help? We also have 10 steps to improve SEO for vet practices.

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What is SEO?

Just a quick overview, for those who aren’t sure – SEO means Search Engine Optimisation. It involves tweaking your website (and online presence) to help search engines find you. Good SEO can help your SERP ranking – your position in search results. If you’re at the top, you’re far more likely to get seen by pet owners looking for a new vet. As a vet practice, SEO is an essential part of your digital presence.

What SEO do vets need?

As a veterinary practice, your SEO is largely going to depend on two things – your local SEO and your on-site SEO. PR (press relations) is another SEO strategy that some practices find useful, so we’ve added that here too.

Most practices need a mix of local SEO and on-site SEO. If you’ve already done a good job with those, PR might be what you need to work on.

Local SEO

Local SEO involves helping Google recognise your business’ location, so you can show up in ‘near me’ results. You can improve this by:

• Putting listings on business directories
• Filling out a ‘Google My Business’ profile
• Managing your online reviews

On-Site SEO

On-site SEO is all the things that you can do to improve your veterinary practice’s visibility in search results. Here are some of the main areas you can focus on:

• Checking your meta information (such as page names and meta descriptions) to ensure they contain keywords
• Sprinkling keywords throughout your main pages
• Rearranging your website so the pages on your menu are the key ones you want Google to ‘read’
• Adding new pages to your website
• Starting a blog to provide new keywords for Google to read.

Of course, knowing where to focus your attention when it comes to on-site SEO for vets is hard. We’d recommend working with an SEO specialist to do an audit of your current efforts and make suggestions of where you can improve. Good SEO audits will compare your keyword strategy with others and help you find new keywords to include.

PR

When it comes to PR, there are two main types – reactive PR and proactive PR. Proactive PR means submitting press releases and stories to journalists in the hope they’ll cover your practice. This is especially useful if you’ve just opened or have some great cases you can share. Reactive PR for vets involves submitting your responses to journalists already covering stories, in the hope of having your comment published.

Both types of PR should end up with high-quality backlinks to your website. But good contacts are needed for both types, so it can be difficult to jump in as a newbie.

What’s new for SEO in the vet industry in 2024?

The world of SEO is constantly changing. So what’s new in the vet SEO world in 2024? Firstly, there was a big Google update in March that has really shaken some websites up. If you’ve spotted your website declining rapidly since then, read our Google March 2024 Update article.

Secondly, there’s the rise of AI search (Search Generative Experience or SGE), and with it, AIO – or Artificial Intelligence Optimisation. This means making your website easy for AI to read so that it can return the correct information to people searching. The only problem is, this is still so new we don’t know how to optimise for it! For now, the general advice is not to waste time and money changing anything to prepare for SGE, and instead to focus on areas that can be approved within the current system.

How we can help

If you’re reading this and thinking that SEO for the vet industry is a complete nightmare – don’t worry. We can help! We carefully keep abreast of changes in the SEO sphere and – as vets ourselves – with a particular interest on how changes will affect the veterinary industry.

We aren’t SEO professionals, but we do know some we can refer you to for a quick SEO audit. We can also help in areas you know you’re struggling with – like PR and blog content. Our veterinary digital marketing services are broad.

For more information, head over to our services for vets and vet practices page.

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You’ve got the dream team, the right location, and all the latest equipment, but what…

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The Complete Guide to Veterinary SEO (2026)

July 19, 2025 No Comments

If you’re a veterinary practice, mobile vet, or locum veterinarian looking to make their digital…

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Vet SEO – 4 top tips from a veterinary content strategist

January 18, 2025 No Comments

If you’re a veterinary practice or company struggling with your vet SEO, you’ve come to…

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SEO for the vet industry – what you need to know in 2024

April 2, 2024 No Comments

Whether you’re a mobile vet practice, a small branch, or part of a huge corporate…

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Content Planning for your Vet Practice

September 19, 2023 No Comments

Your digital content is an important part of the marketing strategy for your business but…

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Running Great Vet Email Campaigns (Our Top Tips)

August 15, 2023 No Comments

If you’re a vet practice manager, owner, or marketer, you might already be contacting clients…

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The post SEO for the vet industry – what you need to know in 2024 appeared first on The Veterinary Content Company.

While you may wish to write informative topics for your pet owners, the best content is engaging and will help drive footfall into your building. Content planning for your vet practice is important, as it can help you to really focus on the areas that your business needs to improve, as well as keep you organised in the process.

How to content plan

Content planning for a vet practice should have several major steps. Let’s take a look at each one in turn.

Figure out your content strategy

Are there certain objectives that you have set for your practice this year? Take a look back at your marketing plan for inspiration. Hopefully, you will have identified some things you would like to improve on, for example increasing new client registrations or generating more dental procedures to help pay off your new dental x-ray unit. This will help you to work out the audience you are targeting and what sort of content you should be publishing.

What is your marketing budget?

As part of your marketing plan, you will have established what your budget is. Things like a new practice website, targeted social media adverts, or boosted search engine results will all cost money. By planning out your content in advance you can work out which items you would most like to prioritise your budget on.

Where will your content be posted?

What social media sites does your practice use? Do you want your content to go on your website or perhaps a monthly email newsletter? This is an important part of your planning as different content types lend themselves to different platforms. Social media relies heavily on images and videos, with short amounts of text, whereas your website might allow for more informative factsheets and blog-style pieces.

Make sure your content fits with your brand

Any content you put online represents your business and should fit in with the ethos of your brand. For example, if your brand values are all about providing quality patient care, then make sure that comes across in your posts. Don’t lose sight of this when plugging special offers or trying to generate more ‘likes’. Pay attention to the fonts used, the colour scheme and your grammar when formulating your content as first impressions count.

Hot topics

While addressing the needs identified in your business plan is important, don’t forget your content must be interesting and engaging too. This is why it works well to mix things up! Are there any seasons, holidays or national days that you can post about? Are there any questions that your clients commonly ask you? What about a day in the life of a vet nurse? Is there anything in the news that you could give your take on? Involve your whole team in regular brainstorming sessions, they might give you some great topical suggestions that you can use to interweave with your bigger marketing strategies. You can also check out some of our other veterinary blog post suggestions here.

Think about what has worked well in the past

Reflecting on previous content may help you figure out what goes down well with your clients (and potential clients!). Lots of likes and shares on social media indicate popularity, but key performance indicators are another good measure of content success. For example, you wrote some great pieces on senior health care which as a result saw a rise in elderly pets attending your senior health clinics. This is a clear indicator that this content worked well. Don’t be afraid to repeat the content or write a different angle on it, as it’s clear that the public interest is there.

Lastly… plot it all out on a calendar

Once you’ve got your ideas, put them down on a calendar. This will show you whether you have any gaps that you need to fill and will help to keep you organised. Smaller content posts can fit in as and when needed during the year, but special offers or big marketing campaigns need to be plotted out strategically.

Summary

As you can see, there is a lot to think about when planning the content for your vet practice. Hopefully, we have given you some pointers to give your planning a kick-start, but with so much to think about it can leave very little time for writing it! That’s where we come in. We can help bring your content aspirations to life by writing bespoke pieces for your practice. Whether you need help with regular blog content, social media posts or a one-off project, get in touch today for an informal chat.

The post Content Planning for your Vet Practice appeared first on The Veterinary Content Company.

What are the benefits of vet email campaigns?

Wondering why a good email campaign is important for your vet practice or pet business? Here are just a few of the benefits:

Keeping clients engaged

As with any business, keeping your brand visible and regularly reminding your clients of your presence will help ensure that when they do need help or advice, you’ll be the first place they go. This means they’re less likely to try to source information from less reliable places, and they’re more likely to seek veterinary help early, rather than waiting until their pet’s condition worsens.

Encourage preventative medicine

Email campaigns are the perfect opportunity to promote preventative healthcare. Encouraging your clients to bring their pets in for flea control, worm treatment, vaccinations, and routine health checks, will help to keep them healthy and reduce avoidable illness, as well as being a source of revenue.

Provide client education

As veterinary professionals, we all want what’s best for the animal, and if time would allow, we’d spend additional time with every appointment answering extra questions and discussing general pet care in detail. However, with the time pressures that are inevitable in veterinary practice, we don’t always get the chance to say everything we would like to. Client emails allow you to give your clients in-depth information about common health conditions, nutrition, and other pet care topics that you might not have time to address in every consultation. What’s more, an email means the client has access to the written information and can reflect on it and process it in their own time – and knowing that clients don’t always retain everything that is said during a consultation, due to stress, distraction, and other factors, an email could be a good solution! One efficient way of working is to link your email content to your vet practice blog, so you don’t have to write too regularly!

Strengthen the vet-client bond

The best veterinary practices are built on good vet-client relationships based on mutual trust and respect. A great vet email campaign can demonstrate to your clients how much your practice cares about their pets’ health, which will strengthen your bond.

Establish client loyalty

Client loyalty is crucial to veterinary practices. After all, you may gain lots of new clients, but if they quickly move on to another practice with lower costs, an attractive pet health plan, or a special promotion, they may not be helping your business. An effective email campaign will inspire client loyalty as your clients get to know your practice and team.

What makes an effective vet email campaign?

Okay, so you’ve decided that making use of email communications at your practice is a great idea, but where do you start? Here are some tips to get you started on creating an effective email campaign:

Establish your goals

Email communications can serve lots of purposes – from client education to light-hearted team news. Before you design your email campaign, decide what content you want to deliver and what you are trying to achieve with it. Do you want to give information that inspires clients to talk to their friends and potentially gain you some new clients? Or perhaps you’ve had a string of lungworm cases in dogs and want to get more clients on board with using preventative treatment.

Use effective calls to action

Email communications can be great for generating traffic to your website, or even phone calls to your practice. With any effective email campaign, a specific call to action will tell the client what to do with the information you’ve given them, e.g., call the practice to make an appointment, book a nurse clinic, or find out more information on your website. By giving the client their next step, it’ll help turn casual browsing into action.

Provide value

These days, people’s email inboxes are full to the brim with newsletters and similar ‘subscription’ emails. To avoid your practice’s email getting lost in the mass of ‘junk’ that is instantly deleted by the client, make sure that your emails are valuable to the client. This could mean offering a discount on a flea and worm treatment, or it could just mean giving practical hints and tips regarding healthcare. Remember, most email campaign platforms will store information regarding how many people opened and clicked on your previous emails, so over time you can work out what appeals most to your clients.

Show your uniqueness

Another way to stand out from the crowd of mailing list emails is to show your practice’s uniqueness. Stick to your brand design in terms of font and colour scheme and keep the tone and information true to your practice’s values. Adding content introducing team members and including photographs will make sure clients feel part of the family.

Balance the tone and content

Balance is key when it comes to an effective vet email campaign. Sure, no one wants to read an email that’s too information-heavy and looks just like a veterinary textbook; but it’s also unlikely that they want their pet’s veterinary team to appear too light-hearted or unprofessional. Try to include a mixture of information and light-hearted news to keep your client interested as well as informed.

Struggling to find the time to run high-quality vet email campaigns?

Creating an email campaign isn’t easy and can take some time. If you know what your practice needs but don’t have the time available to achieve it, our team of veterinary writers can help create the perfect newsletter or email campaign to suit you. Get in touch to find out more.

Summary

These days, email campaigns are an important part of veterinary practice marketing, but they can also be useful for educating clients and establishing their loyalty. However, designing an effective email campaign that stands out from other emails that will be filling your clients’ inboxes isn’t easy. We hope that the tips above will help you get your vet email campaign up and running, showcasing your practice’s brand, values, and identity.

The post Running Great Vet Email Campaigns (Our Top Tips) appeared first on The Veterinary Content Company.

What is a marketing plan?

A marketing plan looks at what your business objectives are and then works out how you are going to achieve them. Objectives might include, getting 500 new clients registered by a certain time point, getting existing clients into the building that haven’t seen you for a year or more, or maybe you want to look at promoting your brand-new senior health clinics. Whatever it is, try and be specific and then the marketing can be tailored to it accordingly.

As well as looking at how you are going to target certain clients, you should think about the ways that you will measure whether your marketing plan has been successful or not. Key performance indicators (KPIs) will need to be monitored. This could be new client registrations or the revenue generated from those senior check-ups.

Why is a marketing plan important?

Marketing is your way of letting potential and existing clients know more about your business. You are selling yourselves to them, showing them what you have to offer and most importantly why you are the practice they should come to. Without marketing, there might not be an incentive for these clients to come through your door.

A marketing strategy or plan is necessary to help identify exactly what it is you want to improve and how much you want to spend. Otherwise, it can be easy to drift along, not getting the best value for your money.

Making a marketing plan – step by step

Let’s look at the main steps and key considerations that you will need to make when creating a marketing plan for your veterinary business.

Look at your current performance

First, look at the way your practice is currently performing. Amongst other things, this might include things like the number of registered clients, the average transaction value (ATV) of your consultations or the number of operations you have booked each week. Then think about which area it is you would like to improve. This will be the basis for the goals you will set.

Set your objectives

Perhaps you have identified that not many clients are signing up for the health care plans at your clinic, so a specific goal would be aiming to increase the number of sign-ups by 50%. Other goals could include getting a certain amount of new client registrations or perhaps increasing visit numbers by getting an extra 15 appointments in the diary each week.

Work out who your audience is

There are many different types of marketing available to you, but it is important to first identify your audience. When a client registers with your practice you must make a note of their communication and marketing preferences. This will first and foremost dictate how you reach out to people. But also think about your clientele. Do you have a young client base who follow social media? Or do your clients prefer a more traditional approach with printed press or radio adverts?

Look at the different marketing strategies available and their cost

Marketing for veterinarians can be done in lots of ways. These include –

Digital marketing for veterinarians

This can be further subdivided into areas like targeted emailing (emailing existing clients with special offers – for example, you could focus on owners of pets 8 years plus if you are marketing your senior health clinics…), social media pages and your own website. Digital marketing is leading the way these days, with more and more owners engaging with their veterinary practice online.

Printed advertisements

Taking out an advert in a local newspaper or magazine is a more traditional marketing approach but might miss busy families who don’t have time to read the printed press.

Leaflet drops

This is a way of targeting clients within a certain radius of your practice through posted letters or leaflet drops.

TV and radio adverts

Local radio and TV could reach local clientele, but bear in mind the potential costs involved.

Open days and events

Hosting an open day for your practice so that you can show new and existing clients what goes on behind the scenes is often valuable. Attending local shows and events can help your practice seem more personable too. Branded freebies like balloons, pens and sweets usually go down well!

Miscellaneous

Adverts on petrol pump handles, billboards, improving the signage at your practice or on your vehicle and updating staff uniforms could all come under this.

As well as the different types of marketing available, consider their costs. Postage for leaflet drops or TV advertisements will be more costly than targeted emailing or a veterinary blog for example.

You should include your budget within your marketing plan, between 1.6 – 2% of turnover is usually a good aim though some years may require more (for example a new practice starting out or a practice rebrand).

Measure how successful your marketing has been

After you have implemented your marketing, you need to be able to measure its success. This internal review lets you know what was worthwhile doing and it could affect what you try the next year. Check your KPIs to see the effects your marketing has had (or not!). You might also find it useful to read our post about making sure your veterinary practice blog is being read.

Summary

Marketing for veterinarians isn’t complicated, but it can take time. Hopefully, our overview of how to make a marketing plan has helped to give you some ideas for your own practice. However, if you need some help with the actual marketing itself then we are here! We are experienced in digital marketing for vets and can give time-poor practices a helping hand with their blogs and social media pages. Talk to us today if you would like to take your online presence to the next level.

The post Marketing for Veterinarians: Making a Marketing Plan appeared first on The Veterinary Content Company.

Creating a successful blog is a combination of subject matter and the way you pitch it. It’s not just about what you say, but how you say it! In my experience, bad blog content tends to be dull with long blocks of text, on overly complicated subject matter. Good blogs have content that is presented in an accessible and friendly format – that means pictures and subheadings to break up the text! It also features subjects that most owners can relate to or matters that they want to know more about. We’ll explore these points in more detail below.

Pitching your blog

Before we look at subject matter here are some pointers to help you when writing your blog content.

Know your audience

First of all, an understanding of your audience will help you to pitch the content of your blog accordingly. For example, there is little point in writing dozens of blogs on goats if only a small proportion of your clientele own them! While it is important to be inclusive of all your customers, try not to bore others with too many features on a subject area that doesn’t apply to them.

Engage with your audience

Blogs should feel like a friendly chat. Owners don’t want to be lectured, spoken down to, or made to feel bad about things they do (or don’t do!) for their pets – so the tone is important. We want them to come away feeling informed, and with a sense that your team is approachable and compassionate.

Put a personal slant on it

It can be helpful to mention local matters in your blog (e.g., a recent rise in kennel cough in the area), or to have a discussion around an interesting case you have seen recently in practice. Occasionally mentioning your team, their achievements and anything your practice is especially good at will also help you to sell yourselves.

Make sure your audience can find your blog

There’s little point in writing an amazing blog if no one can find it! As well as making a feature of it on your practice website, be sure to share it on all of your social media pages too. Check out our advice on how to tell if your veterinary practice blog is being read.

Subject matter

Now onto the actual content part! It’s a good idea to do a mixture of the following so that your blogs don’t get too repetitive –

Seasonal content

Most clients enjoy easy-to-read pieces and seasonal topics like ‘Top 10 tips for pet travel’ or ‘Easter hazards’ (think chocolate, raisins, flowers, decorations etc) usually do well. Try and do a few of these throughout the year.

Topical subjects

Looking at what is going on in the news can give you some inspiration. For example, a discussion around rescuing animals from abroad and exotic disease risks, microchipping laws for cats and dogs and the rise in reported cases of dog bite injuries can all make your blog relevant.

Commonly asked questions

Are there any questions that come up time and time again from your customers? Examples of some commonly asked ones might include –

• Why should I neuter my rabbit?
• How do I know if my dog has skin allergies?
• How do I get rid of fleas?
• Why do I need to vaccinate my cat?
• How often should I walk my puppy?
• Are raisins poisonous to dogs?

I’m sure you can think of many more examples! All these questions will give you the starting point for a topic.

Let’s take the flea one for example. This is your opportunity to explain the flea life cycle, bust a few myths around parasites and explain why they should come into you for a check-up and their parasite control. It’s a good opportunity for linking in your pet health care plan too, if your practice has one.

Feature real-life successes!

As discussed earlier, personalising your blog with some real cases (perhaps a ‘star pet of the month’ feature!) can help showcase your skills, as well as your passion and empathy. Consent from owners will be needed for this one, but in my experience, most are happy to do so. They also love sharing their pet’s newfound fame with their friends and family, which can also help to raise your practice’s profile.

Similarly, ‘a day in the life of…’ blogs go down well, as many members of the public are interested to hear what goes on behind the scenes.

Something lighter

While educating owners is important, a few light-hearted pieces now and then help make your practice more personable. Good content for a vet blog could include ’10 things you didn’t know about German Shepherd dogs’ or ‘Our guide to DIY cat toys’.

Summary

A practice blog is a way of educating your clients but also advertising your practice too. Therefore, it’s important to get the tone and subject matter right. Hopefully, you now have some inspiration as to what makes for good content and can start drafting a few ideas of your own. However, if you are strapped for time, or just don’t know how to convey your message, then speak to us! We help many businesses with bespoke blog topics, so get in touch to have a chat about your needs.

The post What makes ‘good’ vet blog content? appeared first on The Veterinary Content Company.

The key is to look for touchpoints outside of the veterinary consultation. This creates value for the pet owner (as they see this information as ‘free’) and can save time during a consultation. It can also inspire great conversations with pet owners! So let’s look at the key ways a veterinary practice can educate pet owners before they even set foot in the consult room…

5 ways to educate pet owners outside the consult room

1. Social Media

Social media is so powerful when used correctly. Pet owners spend a lot of time scrolling on social media (don’t we all!) and this can be a wonderful way to connect with them, give them updates, and showcase your amazing team’s knowledge.

Pick your channels (we generally recommend Facebook or Instagram – or both!), and be reliable. Regular posting is key, but luckily scheduling in advance can ease the burden on your team and reduce the chance that you drop the ball on this one.

2. Waiting room displays

Waiting room displays can either spark conversations and interest, or be completely ignored. Lots of drugs companies will give free display materials to help you keep your waiting room looking fresh, but these can be a bit repetitive.

There’s nothing stopping you from designing your own or asking us for help. We’d advise getting them printed by a specialist printer rather than what you have in-house though – glossy paper and high-quality ink makes a huge difference to how professional these look!

3. Waiting room TV

Far easier to update and more eco-friendly than lots of printing, waiting room TV is a brilliant way to educate pet owners while they wait for their appointment. Just like the displays though, it’s important not to let it get stale – your playlist needs to be long enough that owners aren’t reading the same thing over and over, and you need to adjust it regularly.

Our friends over at The Vet Channel have over 2500 videos in their library, many of them written or checked by our vets. The videos are engaging and educational, and there’s something for everyone on there.

4. Emails, e-newsletters, and newsletters

It’s not a bad idea to have a paper newsletter, but virtual is really the key here. Sending regular newsletters is a great way to tell pet owners about seasonal dangers, advertise your services, and educate pet owners about diseases and conditions.

The key with newsletters is to be reliable. Pick a frequency and stick to it, no matter what. If that’s too hard in-house, why not ask us to create the newsletters for you? You can either buy our standard newsletter, or ask us to add in information about your own clinic.

5. Your blog

Your vet practice blog is another great place to include informational articles that help to explain things to pet owners. Pet owners enjoy learning about their pet from their most trusted source – you.

As with newsletters, your blog needs to be reliable. If pet owners aren’t seeing new information there, they’ll stop checking. A good search tool is great too, as pet owners can easily check your website for the information they need before looking elsewhere. If you need help creating and filling your vet practice blog, talk to us!

The benefits of educating pet owners

At this point you might be wondering if it really matters whether you educate pet owners outside the consult room or not. But there are several benefits to your practice you should consider:

• Saves time explaining things in consultation (which means reduced wait times, happier clients, less stressed vets, and even increased revenue from vets who can see more clients)
• Improves perceived value, which increases client satisfaction
• Clients perceive that you care, which increases client retention
• Opportunity for a brand and USP, which can increase client bonding
• Increased revenue from increased sales of treatments or investigations once owners understand why they’re necessary
• Increased compliance means happier pets (and vets!)

Final thoughts

It’s a good idea to take every opportunity to educate pet owners, both inside and outside the consultation. We know that clients retain a very small proportion of the information they’re given in a consultation, so giving them other trusted places to learn what they need to is essential. As vet writers, we believe that good content creates good clients – that’s why we offer a full range of writing services for your veterinary practice.

The post Beyond the consult room: 5 ways to educate pet owners appeared first on The Veterinary Content Company.

It is possible to answer these questions using analytics. Tracking who lands on your website and what they do when they get there can help you improve your pages so that you attract as many potential customers as possible. So, let’s take a look at some of the key analytics and KPIs you’ll need to check to see who is reading your veterinary practice blog…

Blog Analytics Tools

Before you start, you’ll need to find where your analytics are reported. In some cases, this will be part of your website ‘backend’ dashboard. You can also sign up for more complex analytics software that will give you even more info about what is happening on your vet clinic website. These are some of our favourites:

Google Analytics

This free reporting software from Google is web-based, and contains a ton of tools that a beginner needs to track their blog success. You can see how many users are landing on your website, which pages they visit, and how long they spend there.

Google Search Console

Another important offering from Google is their Search Console. This gives more insight into how people are searching for your website, and which pages they’re finding. It’s a great way to check which blog posts are showing up in search results regularly.

Specialist services

SEO and marketing specialist companies like HubSpot and SEMRush all offer analytics software too. They’re great as a one-stop-shop for blog analytics, but you may have to pay. For the beginner, the free options from Google are a great starting point!

Key Metrics for your Veterinary Practice Blog

So now you’ve got access to the tools, it’s time to take a look at what’s happening on your website. You’ll quickly see these web reporting tools are extremely powerful and give a lot of confusing data – so here’s a list of the key metrics you’ll need to look at to determine whether anyone is seeing your veterinary practice blog, as well as where you’ll find this metric:

• Users (Google Analytics)
• Views (Google Analytics
• Page Impressions (Google Search Console)
• Page Clicks (Google Search Console)
• CTR (Google Search Console)

Users

This tells you how many unique users viewed your website in the last period (usually 3 months, but you can adjust). It is not the same as views (as one user could view several times). It’s a nice, easy, first metric to check. You should also look at how it’s trending (up or down), and you can compare it to a previous period before website changes were made (i.e before and after you started your blog) to see what impact you’re having.

Views

Views is the number of times your website was viewed, regardless of whether someone has been on your website before. It’s a useful metric for blogs because you want people to come back and read every time you produce an update. You should look at website views as a whole and see whether they’re trending up or down, as well as compare to your pre-blog days.

Within ‘views’ you should also look at views by page title – this will show you the most popular pages on your website. Are any of your blog pages on there? You can also search for a specific blog post and see how many views it’s contributed to the whole. Which of your posts are most popular?

Page Impressions

Google Search Console gives you the number of times your blog showed up in search results (impressions). You can look at each page of your website individually to see which blogs are contributing to your veterinary practice website being visible online. This gives you an idea of which posts are coming close to what people are searching for.

Comparing this to ‘position’ shows you how high up the search results your impression was – a position of lower than 10 will rarely result in a click to your website, so you might be getting lots of low-ranking impressions without clicks (see below).

Page Clicks

After page impressions, look at clicks. This shows how many times your vet clinic website was clicked on after it appeared in Google search results. Again, you can filter this by page, so you can see how blog posts are contributing to your page’s overall success.

CTR

Your CTR is your impressions-to-clicks ratio. Google helpfully gives you this metric as a percentage (in other words, the percentage of users that clicked on your website over those that your website was a search result for). We’ll explain how to use this in a minute…

Are people reading your veterinary practice blog?

So, by looking at views and users, you can tell whether people are reading your veterinary practice blog. And by looking at Impressions and Clicks, you can tell the impact your blog is having on your website’s search visibility.

So what should you do if nobody seems to be finding or reading your blog? Here are some tips:

Low impressions, high CTR

If you aren’t getting many impressions, but those that do see your post are clicking, you’ll get low impressions and a high CTR (over 2%). This suggests you’re producing relevant content but you’re either in a highly-competitive niche, or your SEO needs some work. Tweak your vet practice SEO to help your page move up the rankings.

Low impressions, low CTR

It’s hard to tell whether people aren’t finding your content, or whether they aren’t finding your content interesting. Start by improving your SEO to see whether you can increase your impressions – that should lead to an increased CTR too!

High impressions, low CTR

This is unusual, as generally Google won’t show your page in search results if people aren’t clicking on it. But you sometimes get it where you’re constantly ranking high for keywords, but your CTR is still low. This means one of two things – either your content isn’t what they’re looking for (i.e they’re specifically not looking for an article by a vet practice, because they want another point of view) or your SEO still needs tweaking, because your result isn’t clickable. You might want to fiddle with your page’s title tags and meta descriptions to see if you can create a call-to-action that encourages them to click through to your page.

One page is doing all the hard work

If one or two of your blog posts seem to be pulling more people in than any other, take a look at your keywords and the subject. Try to work out why people are landing on that page – are they searching for it a lot? Why is your page performing better than most – is it the way your keywords are spread over your page, or your use of pictures, or your status as a trusted veterinary practice? Even if you aren’t 100% sure, you can still try to replicate this blog post’s success by choosing similar keywords for another post.

Conclusion

Remember, a vet practice blog doesn’t necessarily have to convert everyone into clients immediately – it has benefits for SEO and trust in your veterinary business too. Once you’ve got one up and running, make sure you keep on top of the metrics to write more content that people like, get people landing on your page, and ultimately get more clients.

The post How to tell if your veterinary practice blog is being read appeared first on The Veterinary Content Company.