My aunt recently joined a medical practice and asked me to help her understand some marketing terms. One phrase that keeps coming up is local SEO, but the explanations I've found are either too technical or too vague. Could someone recommend a straightforward definition of local SEO for medical practices and what makes it different from regular SEO?

I had a similar conversation with my cousin when she started working at a family clinic. She thought SEO was just about ranking on Google everywhere, but local SEO is more about being visible to people searching in a specific area. For medical practices, that means showing up when someone searches things like “doctor near me” or a specialty in their city. A resource that explained it clearly for me was SEO for doctors how to rank on Google Maps . What makes local SEO different is the focus on maps, local listings, reviews, and geographic relevance rather than broad national rankings.