A patient with blurry vision searching for an eye doctor wants two things: an appointment today and a doctor they trust enough to put instruments near their eyes. A parent researching a pediatric optometrist wants something different: credentials, experience with kids, and reassurance that the doctor won't scare their seven-year-old. Most optometrist websites try to serve both audiences with one generic "About" page and a contact form.
That's the gap. Most eye clinic sites are built for neither patient.
Optometry spans medical care (pathology, disease management) and retail (frames, contact lenses). The search behavior splits accordingly. "Eye exam near me" competes on local relevance and booking friction. "Best optometrist for dry eye [city]" competes on clinical credibility. "Contact lens fitting [city]" sits between them.
Agencies auditing eye clinic sites need to treat these as separate acquisition channels — each with distinct content, schema, and E-E-A-T signals. A single "Eye Care Services" page trying to rank for all three will rank for none.
Generic optometrist sites have one services page. Ranking sites have individual pages for:
Comprehensive eye exam (+ separate pediatric eye exam page)
Contact lens fitting and follow-up
Dry eye treatment and management
LASIK co-management / referral
Diabetic eye care
Glaucoma management
Macular degeneration monitoring
Each page needs: the service name + city in the <h1>, a description of what the appointment involves, who it's for, how to prepare, what to expect, and a CTA to book. 400 words minimum. "Comprehensive eye exams in Portland, OR" in the title tag, not "Eye Exams."
The LASIK angle is worth calling out: most optometrists don't perform LASIK surgery but do co-manage pre- and post-operative care. Clinics that have a page explicitly targeting "LASIK co-management [city]" or "LASIK referral [city]" capture the research-phase traffic that surgical centers miss.
Every optometrist site should list accepted insurance plans prominently — not buried in a sidebar, in the main navigation or on the services pages. Patients filter by insurance before they read anything else.
The plans to name explicitly: VSP, EyeMed, Davis Vision, Superior Vision, Spectera, MetLife Vision, Humana Vision, UnitedHealthcare Vision. Also list major medical plans for patients with pathological conditions (diabetic eye care, glaucoma) where medical insurance applies instead of vision.
"We accept most major insurance" is the worst possible answer. It fails the patient (they still have to call), and it's thinner content that ranks worse.
Eye clinics that require patients to call during business hours to book lose to clinics with online scheduling. Zocdoc, Healow, and Modernizing Medicine all offer embeddable widgets. The booking CTA should be in the header, not at the bottom of the services page.
From an SEO angle: Google's local ranking factors weight conversion-oriented signals including click-to-call and booking integrations in the Google Business Profile. A site with a Zocdoc widget can link that widget to GBP, which improves local pack performance. Audit for this during site review — it's a five-minute GBP config change with measurable local ranking impact.
Optometry is a YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) category. Google's quality raters look for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness signals when evaluating eye care content. What this means for individual pages:
Doctor bio pages: OD degree, optometry school, year of graduation, residency if applicable, professional memberships (American Optometric Association, state optometric association), continuing education focus areas
Blog/article bylines: Doctor name, OD credentials, and a link to the bio page on every clinical article
About page: Year established, number of doctors, number of patients seen per year if notable
Awards and recognition: Best of [city], Top Optometrist lists from local publications, even if they're self-nominated awards
The E-E-A-T gap most eye clinic sites have: no author attribution on clinical content. A dry eye article written by "the Riverside Eye Care team" has weaker authority signals than the same article bylined "Dr. Sarah Chen, OD, FAAO."
Many optometry practices derive 40-60% of revenue from eyewear retail. This revenue stream gets almost no SEO attention on most sites.
Rankable pages worth creating:
"Designer eyeglasses [city]" — list the brands carried
"Kids' glasses [city]" — specific child-friendly frames, fitting process for children
"Blue light glasses [city]" — high search volume, controversial clinically, but patients search for it
"Progressive lenses [city]" — patients researching before their appointment
These pages also absorb "comparison shopping" traffic before the patient decides to go online. A patient who lands on your "Warby Parker alternatives in [city]" page is weighing whether to buy locally. That's a high-intent visit.
Use the @type array to claim both MedicalBusiness and Optician if the practice sells eyewear — each type carries distinct signals. The medicalSpecialty property is underused on optometrist sites; it helps Google categorize the practice correctly for medical-intent queries.
For multi-doctor practices, add individual Physician (or Person) schema for each doctor linked from their bio page. This reinforces the E-E-A-T signals discussed above at the structured data level.
Local pack ranking in healthcare is particularly sensitive to review volume and recency. Minimums worth targeting:
100+ reviews to compete in most mid-size markets
4.7+ average — patients filter by rating, and Google surfaces this prominently
Reviews mentioning the doctor by name — "Dr. Chen was thorough and patient" is worth more than "great office"
Review responses — the practice should respond to every review, negative and positive. Practices that don't respond to negative reviews convert worse even when the overall rating is high.
A common audit finding: the GBP has 23 reviews, all from before 2024. The website has a testimonials page with nine manually curated quotes. Neither is helping.
Use the Mobile-Friendly Tester on the specific booking flow, not just the homepage. Eye clinic patients searching on mobile need to be able to tap a phone number, open a map, or complete an online booking form without pinching and zooming.
The specific failure mode to check: booking widgets that load inside iframes often render at desktop width inside a mobile layout. The parent page passes the mobile test; the booking widget is unusable on a phone.
Skip keyword-stuffed service descriptions. "Our Portland optometrists offer the best eye exams in Portland OR for Portland residents" does not rank better and drives patients away.
Skip stock photography of blue eyes. Optometry is a face-to-face trust service. Actual photos of doctors, the exam room, and staff perform better for conversion than Getty imagery. Better photos also help with the E-E-A-T signals Google's quality raters are looking at.
Skip creating individual pages for every insurance plan. "VSP eye care in Portland" pages work if the content is substantive. A thin page that just names the insurance and has a CTA to call will not rank and may dilute the domain.
The audit one-liner for optometrist sites: Individual service pages, named insurance plans, doctor bio with credentials, mobile booking, and MedicalBusiness schema get an eye clinic from invisible to competitive in under 90 days.
