This page is for orthopedic practice owners, administrators and marketing leads. It is about page structure and conversion. Everything clinical on your procedure pages should be written or approved by your surgeons.
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A knee replacement page has two jobs. It has to explain the procedure accurately, and it has to get the right patient to book a consult with your practice. A page that does only the first reads like a patient education handout with a phone number in the footer, and its reader finishes better informed and goes back to the search results.
I come at this from the marketing side, with over ten years in digital marketing and 450 websites built. I will not tell you what belongs in the clinical explanation. I can tell you what a page needs around it.
What I can and cannot tell you from the data
When I ran the same checks on 21 orthopedic practice homepages for my website study on November 1, 2026, I looked at how a patient gets from the homepage to the next step. Leaving out the two hand-only practices, four of the remaining 19 had no direct homepage link to a joint replacement page. Fifteen of the 21 showed no sign of online scheduling, and 14 had no form on the homepage.
That study covered homepages only, on a small hand-picked sample. I did not grade procedure pages, so I have no count for how many do this well, and I will not make one up. What follows is my own checklist.
On the patient side, a survey of 329 orthopedic patients in Las Vegas, published in 2022, found that 39.5% searched online before their first visit. Of those, 48.5% went to the surgeon’s website and 26.9% to the office or group website. It was a convenience sample with surveys collected in 2017, so treat it as a rough signal. Only 8.5% said they chose their surgeon through an internet search, while 45% came through a primary care physician. A procedure page often speaks to someone who already has a name in hand and wants to check you out.
The checklist
| Section | What it does for the patient | Who signs off |
|---|---|---|
| Plain headline with procedure and city | Confirms they are in the right place | Marketing |
| Booking options near the top | Lets a ready patient act now | Marketing and front desk |
| Who performs it here, linked to bios | Puts a person behind the procedure | Marketing |
| Plain explanation of the procedure | Answers what it is | Surgeon |
| What the process looks like at your practice | Shows the path from first call to follow-up | Surgeon and practice manager |
| Questions patients ask before booking | Removes the reasons to wait | Surgeon, billing |
| Insurance and what to bring | Clears a practical barrier | Billing |
| Recent reviews, with permission | Adds reassurance from other patients | Privacy officer |
| Named reviewer and date | Shows who stands behind the content | Surgeon |
| Booking options again at the end | Catches the reader who finished the page | Marketing |
Open with where and how, then explain
The first screen on a phone should answer three questions: is this the right procedure, is this practice near me and how do I reach them. That means the procedure and city in the headline, a tap-to-call link and a short request option.
Starting with an anatomy paragraph pushes all of that down the page. A patient who already has a referral wants the phone number, and a patient still reading can scroll past it. The button costs the second reader nothing.
Use one main heading on the page. On the homepages in my study, only seven of 21 had exactly one, with four having none and 10 having several. Procedure pages were outside that check, so it is worth looking at yours. Put the city and procedure in the page title too, since 10 of those 21 homepages left the city out.
Put the surgeons on the page
People book with a person. Name who performs the procedure at each location, with a photo, one line on their focus and a link to a full surgeon bio page. Then link back from each bio to the procedure. I cover that structure on the bio page, and those two links do more for a patient’s confidence than another paragraph of general copy.
A survey of 50 new joint replacement patients, published in 2025, at one academic center gives a hint of what they weighed. Institution reputation scored 4.1 out of 5, years in practice 3.8, and the insurance network and a primary care recommendation both 3.7. It is a small, single-center sample, so it may not match your market. It does support showing experience and insurance details plainly on the page.
Answer the questions patients ask before they book
This is where a page earns the consult. Ask your front desk for the ten questions new callers ask most about this procedure. Those questions become a section on the page, with answers written or approved by a surgeon. For a joint replacement line, I would expect some of these:
- Does the practice take my insurance, and what will I need to find out about costs?
- How long does it take to get a first appointment?
- Do I need a referral or imaging first?
- Who would I see at the first visit, and at which location?
- What does the process look like from first visit through follow-up?
- Where would the procedure take place?
Your answers should describe how your practice works and leave individual advice for the consult. In the Las Vegas survey, 79% rated insurance coverage as very important, so I would not hide the insurance answer on a separate page.
Write it so Google and your surgeons can both trust it
Google says that on topics affecting health, its systems give more weight to content showing strong experience, expertise, authority and trust, and that such content must be highly accurate and consistent with expert consensus. It also says readers should be able to see who created a page.
In practice, that means four habits:
- A named surgeon reviews each page, with the review date shown. Never invent a reviewer or credential.
- Every number has a source you can open. If a success rate or a recovery figure has no source a surgeon will stand behind, leave it out.
- No guarantees. Avoid promised outcomes and comparisons with other surgeons. Your state’s medical advertising rules may apply too, so ask counsel.
- Reviews and stories carry written permission. See my guide to orthopedic patient reviews before you add any.
Make the booking path work on a phone
Repeat the booking options at the top, middle and end of the page, and use the same ones each time. If you do not offer online scheduling, a short callback request is the easiest place to begin, and my guide to online scheduling and callback requests covers what to ask for and who should own it. Tap the phone link and submit the form yourself on your own phone. On the homepages I checked, five had a phone number with no tap-to-call link.
Link your homepage straight to your highest-value procedure pages as well. If you are rebuilding the site anyway, this structure belongs in the brief for your orthopedic website design.
Start with one page and measure it
Do not rewrite 40 procedure pages at once. Pick the one line where a booked consult is worth the most to you, using your patient acquisition cost numbers if you have them, and build that page properly.
Take a 90-day baseline of booked consults that started on that page, and use the orthopedic marketing KPIs I recommend so you count appointments rather than visits. Rebuild it and measure the following 90 days. If booked consults have not moved and the page is getting steady traffic, look at phone handling and scheduling lead time before you touch the next page.
Frequently asked questions
How long should a procedure page be? As long as it takes to answer the questions patients ask before booking. I would not set a word count. A short page that answers those questions beats a long one that only explains anatomy.
Who should write the clinical sections? Your surgeons, or a writer working from their notes with a surgeon’s final approval. Marketing should own the structure, the booking path and the plain wording.
Should each location have its own procedure page? Only if the content truly differs by location, such as different surgeons, facilities or insurance details. Copying a page and changing the city name gives patients nothing new.
Should we show success rates? Only with a source your surgeons will stand behind, and with counsel comfortable about your advertising rules. If you cannot source a number, leave it out.
Want your top procedure page reviewed?
I will record a free walkthrough of your website, your Google listings and your top three local competitors, including how a patient gets from search to booking. You do not need a call to get it.
Stuck on any step above? That is normal, and it is the work I do all day. Free 30-minute call here, or call +91 97297 12388.
