Our phones, tablets and laptops take up a majority of our daily attention. Even more so for the younger generations.
These devices are always within reach and we use them for everything that we can; specially when looking for services.
So if the a vast majority of the market is searching for the services they need on the internet, it’d be great if we can get in front of them when they need our service right?
Well, that’s where healthcare SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Comes into play.
What is SEO?
For those who aren’t sure what SEO is, don’t worry, it’s a pretty new marketing technique. Search engines like google haven’t been around for too long.
SEO is the process of ranking a website higher on search engines for desired search terms.
For Example, if someone is looking for a “Dentist in San Diego”. They would type that into google right?
Well Google displays the most relevant websites first and the least relevant websites last.
Do I need SEO?
Most healthcare professionals are very busy and think they do not need SEO. While that is understandable, it’s also important to think that your business may not stay busy year around, forever.
SEO can get your healthcare business the stability it needs. It can bring in a consistent amount of clients to your business. Clients that would have otherwise gone with your competitor.
SEO is ideal for modern healthcare marketing campaigns and those interested in serving more patients.
14 Best Healthcare & Medical Practice SEO Strategies
Healthcare and medical practices need an effective digital marketing plan in place, one which will boost website traffic and bring in new patients.
An effective SEO strategy that will attract both search engines and potential patients can help. In this article, we’ll cover 15 effective healthcare and medical practice SEO strategies you can implement to increase online visibility and gain more patients.
1. Ensure Your Website is Mobile-Friendly
Your healthcare website is often the first stop for patients looking for information about your practice, so take advantage of its full potential by optimizing it for mobile use.
Your mobile-friendly website must be easy to navigate, feature features that cater specifically to mobile devices, and load quickly. Furthermore, make sure you test it across various devices to make sure it looks and functions equally well across them all.
Your website needs to be mobile-friendly to attract the majority of healthcare information seekers who use smartphones as they search. Google also prioritizes sites with mobile-friendly designs in its search results.
2. Optimize Your Local Listings
As a doctor or healthcare provider, your online presence is paramount in order to attract new patients. A key component of healthcare local SEO strategy should be optimizing business listings across a variety of directories.
Directory listings allow search engines to index your business’s information, including location, contact info and services offered. Consistent listings across these listings as well as your practice website give your practice the best chance at ranking higher in local search results.
3. Optimize Your Social Media Profiles
An effective online presence is one of the easiest and most cost-effective ways to market your healthcare or medical practice and make an impressionful first impression with patients. Furthermore, this helps your practice stay in front of its patient base by keeping them informed of any new services or events, or offering medical advice they can use themselves.
Optimizing your social media profiles can boost search engine rankings and attract more patients, not only through Facebook but also LinkedIn or any other appropriate platforms.
Make sure that your business information is consistent across various websites, including NAP citations (name, address and phone number). Furthermore, Google considers including your location in the name as an effective ranking signal.
4. Create a Google My Business Page
Your Google My Business page is an effective way of keeping customers and potential patients up-to-date. With it, you can post about special events or promotions and create Google Ads specifically targeted to healthcare practices.
GMB offers many text fields where your medical specialty-specific keywords can be included to increase its ranking on search engine results pages. By including keywords relevant to your specialty in these texts fields, your profile could increase its SEO.
Local listings are essential to multi-location SEO and helping your healthcare business dominate online searches in its local area. This involves maintaining accurate physician and facility details on major directories as well as submitting NAP data through Google My Business.
5. Optimize Your Reviews
Reviews can play an essential part in helping patients select a healthcare provider online, and ratings campaigns can help your practice build trust among prospective patients and expand its reputation while simultaneously creating new patient leads.
Google is known to place high value on patient reviews, meaning a healthcare website with positive online testimonials could generate more traffic than one without.
An effective rating campaign can also help your practice to build backlinks that boost healthcare SEO rankings.
To generate reviews effectively, it is best to offer reviews on both your own website and third-party review platforms like Google My Business, Vitals, Healthgrades, RateMDs and Facebook. Encourage patients to share their experiences while responding quickly when necessary.
6. Optimize Your Video Content
Video SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is an emerging type of search engine optimization (SEO), focused on optimizing video content to be easily indexed and ranked by Google search. This allows potential clients to find your business through video searches while making it simpler for them to comprehend the products or services you offer.
Videos can be an effective way of increasing brand recognition and expanding social media reach, but to achieve the best results it is imperative that a strategic plan be in place prior to starting production of any videos.
Optimize the title and description of your videos first – this is key to drawing in viewers while providing you with an opportunity to add keywords for SEO purposes.
7. Optimize Your Blog Posts
An optimized healthcare blog can be an extremely effective marketing tool for your medical practice, helping establish you as an authority, boost SEO rankings and enhance audience engagement.
Optimizing blog posts requires making them easily readable, user-friendly, search engine-friendly and relevant to their target audiences. They should cover a topic they will find engaging and useful.
If you’re writing about healthcare news, for example, make sure that it can be understood and related to by readers.
Your goal should be to keep visitors on your website for as long as possible and encourage return visits for additional information, which will increase overall traffic and conversions as well as word of mouth marketing for your medical practice, with those who find your content useful suggesting it to their peers.
8. Optimize Your Images
Image optimization can be an invaluable SEO strategy to increase rankings, speed up user experiences and provide accessible images to those with visual impairments or those using screen readers.
Optimizing images involves making sure they are of appropriate sizes and compressed in order to load as quickly as possible, so as to provide your visitors with an enjoyable online experience. This will guarantee a positive encounter.
Utilizing descriptive alt text for each of your medical images is another essential part of optimizing them, helping search engines recognize them more quickly.
9. Optimize Your Metadata
No matter the industry you work in, optimizing metadata is integral to search engine optimization (SEO). Utilizing keywords within title tags, descriptions and other aspects of website content helps Google understand what your pages are all about.
Improve your click-through rate from organic search results. In turn, this will bring more traffic and patients for your healthcare practice.
Increased SEO strategies are crucial to the growth of any medical practice in 2022. Luckily, there are various effective methods that can assist in this area.
10. Get Relavant Links
Links are essential components of how websites link together, and having many high-quality links pointing back to yours can increase search engine rankings and traffic volumes.
Medical SEO involves building external links to your website from other relevant authority sites, thereby increasing traffic from search engines and solidifying your position as an authority in your field.
Link building can help your site stand out from competitors. Google rewards sites that add value for users by providing useful information, and having a link from a reputable authority can help more people discover your services.
Implementing effective medical SEO strategies can help your healthcare practice attract more patients and enhance patient engagement. If you need assistance, don’t hesitate to reach out to a reputable healthcare SEO agency right away for advice.
11. Understand Your Target Market
Before you begin any work it’s crucial that you have a picture perfect idea of who your target market is.
Make sure you write down their Age, Income, Interests, Ethnicity, basically everything you can think of to narrow it down as far as possible.
12. Find Keywords With Solid Search Volume
This is where it gets technical. I won’t be able to go into extreme detail here but the main point is that you want to find keywords that your potential clients would type into search engines to find your service.
A general rule of thumb is that you want to rank on the first page for search terms such as “Your Service + Your City”.
So, if you are a dentist in San Diego you should be ranking on page one for Dentist San Diego.
13. Identify and Analyze the Competition
This is another technical step, but it cannot be skipped. Once you know the keywords you would like to rank for take those keywords and search them. Look at the first five websites that show up.
Analyze the Design of the website. Is the design and user experience better than yours?
Analyze the number of words on the page that is ranking, and also the number of backlinks going to that page. Lastly, analyze the on-page optimization.
14. Write Content
Once you’ve done all of that begin writing content for the keywords you wish to rank for.
If you intend to rank on the first page, position one, you have to make sure your content and overall website’s user experience is better than you competitors. If not, you will have a hard time ranking.
SEO Services: Definition, Importance, Types, Risks & Benefits
Conclusion
I hope you’ve taken something useful from these quick tips. SEO is not easy, but it is very rewarding. It can bring in a consistent amount of leads.
