Medical practice website checklist

Most practice owners know when their website feels dated. Fewer know what is actually wrong with it, or what to fix first. This checklist is meant to be run by you or your practice manager in an afternoon, with a phone, a laptop and a few free tools from Google. It applies to medical, dental, med spa, chiropractic and integrative practices alike.

Each section says what to check, how to check it, and where the rule comes from when there is one. Sources are listed at the end. If an accessibility demand letter has already arrived, start with our guide to ADA website demand letters. If your site uses pop-ups, our guide to pop-ups on a medical practice website explains what Google, WCAG and the FTC expect of them. If your blog takes comments, our guide to blog comments on a practice website covers privacy, moderation and comment spam.

1. The first screen on a phone

Open your home page on your own phone, on mobile data rather than office Wi-Fi, and look only at what shows before you scroll. A new patient should be able to answer these questions from that screen alone:

What kind of practice is this, in words a patient would use?
Where is it, and is it near me?
Is it accepting new patients?
How do I call (one tap) or book?

Then check what gets in the way. Google’s page experience guidance asks whether your pages avoid intrusive interstitials and whether visitors can easily tell the main content from everything else. A pop-up that covers the page as soon as it opens, a chat bubble over the call button, or a cookie banner that fills the screen all fail that test on a phone.

2. The pages patients look for

Go through your menu as if you were a new patient. Each of these should exist, be easy to find, and be current:

One page per main service you want to be found for, explaining what it is, who it is for, what to expect and how to book. A single “Services” page with a list of names does not answer those questions.
Provider pages with real names, credentials, a real photo and what each person focuses on.
Location details: address, hours, phone, parking, and a map, for every office.
Insurance and payment: the plans you accept, how you handle out-of-network or self-pay patients, and financing if you offer it.
New patient information: what to bring, forms, what the first visit looks like.

Check dates as well. Old holiday hours, a provider who left last year or a plan you stopped accepting send patients the wrong way, and they make every other page harder to trust.

3. Trust: is it clear who is behind the site?

Health is a topic where Google says it gives even more weight to content with strong signs of experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trust, because it can significantly affect people’s health and well-being. Google’s guide to helpful, people-first content suggests questions you can ask of your own pages, including:

Is it self-evident to visitors who authored the content?
Do bylines lead to more information about the author and the areas they write about?
Is the content written or reviewed by someone who demonstrably knows the topic well?
Does it present information in a way that makes you want to trust it, such as clear sourcing and background about the site?

For a practice, that translates into simple things. Patient education pages name the clinician who wrote or reviewed them. Provider pages show real credentials. The About page says who owns the practice and where it is. Health claims are accurate and, where it matters, link to a source. Google is direct about this: for topics that could significantly affect people’s lives, content must be highly accurate and consistent with established expert consensus.

4. Reviews, testimonials and before-and-after photos

These are among the most persuasive things on a practice site, and among the most regulated. Check three things.

Typical results. Under the FTC’s Endorsement Guides (16 CFR 255.2), a testimonial about a key result will likely be read as what patients can generally expect, so the advertiser needs support for that. The FTC also found that disclaimers such as “results not typical” did not fix the impression. If a testimonial describes an unusual outcome, rethink it rather than adding a footnote.
Real reviews only. Reviews must reflect real patients’ honest opinions. Writing, buying or filtering reviews is covered in our guide to Google Business Profile for doctors and dentists, along with the FTC’s consumer review rule.
Patient authorization. HHS explains that, with limited exceptions, the HIPAA Privacy Rule requires a patient’s written authorization before their protected health information is used or disclosed for marketing. Before-and-after photos and patient stories on your website are patient information. Make sure you have a signed authorization for each one, and ask your adviser which form to use.

5. Speed, mobile and security

Google uses the mobile version of a site for indexing and ranking, which it calls mobile-first indexing. Its guidance is that the mobile site should contain the same primary content as the desktop site. If your phone menu hides pages or your mobile layout drops sections, those can be missing from what Google sees.

For speed, Google’s Core Web Vitals give three targets for a good experience:

Largest Contentful Paint (how fast the main content loads): within 2.5 seconds.
Interaction to Next Paint (how fast the page responds to a tap): 200 milliseconds or less.
Cumulative Layout Shift (how much the page jumps around while loading): 0.1 or less.

To check, enter your home page and a busy service page into Google’s free PageSpeed Insights, and look at the Core Web Vitals report in Google Search Console if you have it. Google also asks whether pages are served securely: every page should load over HTTPS with no browser warning. Google advises against focusing on only one or two aspects of page experience; look at it as a whole.

6. A five-minute accessibility test

Put your mouse aside and use only the Tab and Enter keys on your home page and your contact or booking form. Can you see where you are on the page at every step? Can you reach the menu, the phone number and the submit button? Then zoom the browser to 200 percent and check that nothing is cut off or overlapping. These quick tests do not replace a full review, but they catch common barriers. The rules behind them, and what the 2024 HHS rule asks of practices that receive federal funds, are in our guide to website accessibility for medical practices.

7. Forms, tracking and privacy

Forms ask only what you need to call back. A contact form that asks for symptoms, medications or a date of birth collects more than most practices need at that step.
Know what tags are on your site. Ask whoever manages the site for a list of every analytics, ad and chat script, and which pages they run on. Tracking on pages where patients share health information is where the risk sits; our guide to tracking pixels on practice websites explains the HHS guidance and the 2024 court ruling.
A real privacy policy that matches what the site actually does, and a separate Notice of Privacy Practices if you are a HIPAA covered entity.

8. Local search basics

Name, address and phone on the site match your Google Business Profile exactly, for each location.
Each location has its own page, and each Business Profile links to that page, not just the home page.
Structured data. Google’s local business documentation says to mark up each location as a LocalBusiness and to use the most specific subtype possible. Schema.org includes types such as Dentist and MedicalClinic. You can test a page with Google’s Rich Results Test.
Google Search Console is set up and verified, so you can see which searches show your site and whether pages have problems.

What to fix first

You will probably find more than you can fix at once. A simple order that works for most practices:

Anything wrong or out of dateHours, phone numbers, providers, insurance plans. These cost patients today and take minutes to fix.
Privacy and authorization gapsTags on sensitive pages, forms that collect too much, photos or stories without a signed authorization.
The first screen on a phoneCall button, location, new patient status, no pop-ups in the way.
Accessibility barriersEspecially on forms and booking, where a barrier stops a patient completely.
Missing service and provider pagesThe longer-term work that helps patients choose you and helps search engines understand what you do.

How we approach it

When we review a practice site, we work through this same list and give you a written summary of what we found, in this order. If you decide to rebuild, our medical website design page explains what we build and how the cost is shaped. If the site is fine and the problem is being found, start with local SEO for practices.

Frequently asked questions

What should be on a medical practice home page?

On the first screen of a phone: what kind of practice it is, where it is, whether it is accepting new patients, a tap-to-call number and a booking link. Further down: services, providers, insurance and new patient information, each linking to its own page.

How fast should a practice website be?

Google’s Core Web Vitals give targets for a good experience: Largest Contentful Paint within 2.5 seconds, Interaction to Next Paint of 200 milliseconds or less, and Cumulative Layout Shift of 0.1 or less. PageSpeed Insights shows these for any page.

Can we put patient testimonials and before-and-after photos on our site?

Often yes, with care. HHS says the HIPAA Privacy Rule generally requires a patient’s written authorization before their information is used for marketing, and the FTC’s Endorsement Guides expect testimonials about results to reflect what patients can generally expect. Get signed authorization and avoid presenting unusual outcomes as typical.

Does Google rank practice websites differently because they are about health?

Google says its systems give even more weight to content with strong experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trust for topics that could significantly affect people’s health. Clear authorship, real credentials and accurate, sourced information matter more on a practice site than on many others.

How often should we review our website?

Check hours, providers and insurance whenever they change, and run the full checklist at least once a year or before any redesign. Search Console shows problems Google finds with your pages, so look at it now and then.

Sources

More in Practice websites, privacy and tracking

What makes a good medical practice website: a checklist you can run yourself