The starting point
We took over this clinic's Local SEO in July 2025 from another agency. Local SEO means making sure the clinic shows up when people nearby search Google for a chiropractor.
The results
Visits to the clinic's website from Google roughly doubled between July and November, from about 350 a month to about 780. The graph marks the point where we started: the line turns upward as soon as we took over.
More importantly, those visits turned into booked patients. We tracked every booking back to Google search.
New patients, month by month
- August: 18 new patients
- September: 24
- October: 26
- November: 57
That's 125 new patients in 4 months, with no money spent on ads. SEO keeps building on itself month after month, which is why November brought in more than three times as many new patients as August.
What the first visits brought in
This clinic's first visit is $150.
125 patients × $150 = $18,750 in first-visit revenue.
Revenue over time
At this clinic, the average patient brings in $500 in revenue over their time as a patient.
125 patients × $500 = $62,500 in revenue from four months of Google search.
There was no ad spend behind any of it. The only cost was our monthly SEO fee. By mid-December, the website was on track to pass 800 visits from Google a month.
Why search patients behave differently
Someone who sees an ad on Instagram wasn't looking for a chiropractor. Someone who types "chiropractor near me" into Google was.
That difference shows up everywhere in the numbers. Search traffic is smaller, but a far higher share of it turns into booked patients, because the person had already decided they needed care before they ever saw the clinic's name. All we have to do is make sure the clinic is the one they find.
Why it keeps building
Work done in August was still bringing in patients in November. That's the part owners find hardest to believe, and it's the whole reason SEO is worth doing: you are not renting attention by the day, you are building a position that keeps earning after the work is done.
August brought 18 new patients. November brought 57 from the same clinic, the same town and the same monthly fee. Nothing about the clinic changed in between except how easy it had become to find.
What the numbers mean for your clinic
With no ad spend, the test is simple: does the revenue from patients who found you on Google beat what you pay to be found? Here, four months produced 125 new patients, $18,750 collected at first visits and $62,500 in revenue over time, against one monthly fee.
Run it on your own prices. If a new patient is worth $500 to you over their care, every patient Google sends is worth $500. Ten a month is $5,000 in revenue a month; thirty a month is $15,000. Compare that with what you pay to make it happen, and you have your answer.
One more number worth noticing: the clinic was getting about 350 website visits a month from Google when we took over and about 780 by November. The traffic roughly doubled. The new patients more than tripled. More visitors is only half of it; the other half is a website that turns visitors into booked appointments.
Questions clinic owners ask
How long before SEO starts working?
This clinic was already ranking for some searches when we took over, so movement showed in the first two months. A clinic starting from nothing takes longer to build the same position.
We already pay an agency for SEO. How is this different?
This clinic did too. The difference wasn't effort, it was what the work was pointed at: being the obvious choice for people nearby who are ready to book now, and a website that turns those visits into appointments, rather than traffic for its own sake.
How do you know these patients came from Google?
Every booking was tracked back to its source. That's a deliberate choice: an SEO report full of rankings and traffic charts tells you nothing about whether the phone rang.
What happens if we stop?
Rankings don't vanish overnight the way ads do, but they do slip as competitors keep working. The position you have built is an asset, and like any asset it needs maintaining.
Does this work in a small town?
Usually better, not worse. There are fewer clinics to outrank, and the people searching are all within driving distance of you. The totals are smaller, because fewer people search, but the share of them you can win is higher.
Why not just run ads instead?
Most clinics should do both. Ads give you patients this week and stop the day you stop paying. Search gives you patients every month and keeps compounding. This clinic spent $0 on ads during these four months and still booked 125 new patients.
How we count revenue
Revenue counts what new patients spend over time, not just the first visit. Each study multiplies its new patients by that clinic’s own average revenue per patient. First visit revenue is shown separately.