Sharing is caring!
Are you looking for SEO solutions that actually work?
You’re likely here for any of these reasons:
- Patients can’t find your website.
- Your website traffic has been steadily declining in the past months.
- Your volume of leads and calls suddenly dropped.
- You’re starting a healthcare website and need to quickly scale up your business.
Healthcare search engine optimization (SEO), if done correctly, can be your most powerful tool in digital marketing.
An effective healthcare SEO campaign can be launched, especially if it is built on an intelligent strategy. This article will focus on the five proven medical SEO solutions that you can implement today to increase the number of visitors to your website and convert more patients.
1. Focus On Your Niche
Niche marketing means that you focus all of your marketing efforts on a specific market segment. It’s usually the best place to start if you want to achieve your SEO success.
Focusing on a healthcare niche can help you grow your business, convert more patients, and become a leader in your industry. You’ll have less competition and be more relevant to your target audience.
For example, if you’re a medical aesthetician, you can focus on non-invasive procedures if they are your specialty. It’s important to research keywords and create blogs and web pages that are relevant to these services. You should also target website visitors who are interested in non-surgical treatments for their skin problems.
Doing so will help you build a stronger relationship with your clients because you’ve narrowed down your expertise to a specific area of interest to them.
2. Boost Your On-page SEO Strategy
On-page SEO is about improving your website’s many aspects, such as the keywords used and the quality of individual pages.
Keyword Research
Well-chosen keywords wouldn’t guarantee high Google rankings but they can help you become more competitive in search engine results.
Have an SEO specialist perform an audit if you have an SEO campaign in place. Find out the current rankings of certain keywords relevant to your niche, look at how the ranks have changed over the past weeks. Compare their performance also with that of your competitors.
Likewise, if you’re building a new campaign, start by examining the current keywords that your website is ranking for, have a keyword wishlist, and conduct thorough keyword research to pick the most relevant ones for your website.
Once you’ve picked your high-performing keywords, use them strategically in your content marketing and page optimization strategies to boost your SEO rankings.
Page Title and Meta Description
SEO rankings depend on the title tag, meta description, and URL of a website. Each page should contain your primary keyword(s) to help Google understand its semantic meaning. Remember to avoid keyword stuffing, though. Use synonyms and word variations instead.
Meta descriptions and page titles are important as they help you distinguish your website from your competitors. If Google can determine that one page is being visited over a longer time, it will rank that page higher in search results.
An interesting page title and description will improve click-through rates and lower bounce rates.
Headings (Headers)
Google and other search engines reward websites that are well-structured and organized with prominent headers.
The proper use of header tags can have a significant impact on rankings. Headers such as H1 and H2 can be used to identify macro ideas, while H3 and H4 are for minor ones.
Making simple changes to the H1 tag (like including the primary keyword in the H1 header) on a website’s homepage can make a big difference in the organic search results rankings.
On-page Content
When it comes to search engine optimization, content is always the king.
A Google-friendly site is an authority in its field. It offers valuable content that is relevant, concise, and well-written for its visitors. Web crawlers will flag websites with unauthoritative or poorly optimized content.
Google tracks website visitors’ usage metrics like bounce rate, time on page, and other metrics. If you’re only optimizing titles, meta descriptions, and headings, your Google rankings will only improve temporarily.
Additionally, engaging with more customers is highly possible by creating the right content. Visitors must find value in the content. They will find the page more useful if they can see the benefits or value of the services. It should be clear and attractive, with a simple layout and rich media (videos and graphics).
3. Include Local SEO
Local SEO is an important ranking factor, especially if you’re running a local healthcare facility.
Over 50% of all website traffic comes from an organic search using a search engine. With local SEO and the help of reputable local SEO agencies, you can appear when patients search for your business online. Then, you can attract more patients to your practice.
For example, if you’re running an ob-gyn clinic in Prescott, your patients can find you if they search for keywords like “ob-gyn near me,” “ob-gyn clinic in Prescott,” “prenatal services in Prescott.”
But then again, your practice website will only appear on the results if you have optimized your local SEO.
Optimizing for local rankings allows you to land in the local map pack. This is an area of Google results that displays a map and a listing for 3 local businesses. If your clinic relies on local customers, then you’ll have a great opportunity in the local listings area.
Local SEO also includes citations or online references to your healthcare organization’s name, address, and phone number (NAP). Google and other search engines also use them to assess the online authority of your company.
[Related: What’s so Important About Location in Healthcare? (Hint: Everything)]
4. Speed Up Your Technical SEO
Technical SEO covers all the hidden elements of search engine rankings, such as your website development and optimization.
The goal of search marketing is to make Google find your website as quickly as possible and to give them a reason for ranking your website higher than your competitors.
Page Experience is now an essential ranking factor for Google. The user’s experience from the search results page to your website and then on the page itself will affect your rankings.
How fast your pages load will be a significant factor in delivering the best possible experience to the visitor. Most web users will abandon your site if it takes more than three seconds to load.
Two seconds is the current threshold for Google. Any longer loading speed than that is considered to be slow.
To learn more about the impact of having a well-designed and developed website on your search engine rankings, check out this SEO web design case study.
5. Reputation Management
Modern patients like to read online doctor reviews to find new health providers nowadays.
Usually, patients will volunteer to leave reviews if they either had an above-average or extremely poor experience.
Unless you ask for reviews before they leave your facility, you might miss an opportunity to receive feedback from satisfied patients that may help you grow your online presence. Using automated customer review tools can make this process more efficient for your practice.
A trusted healthcare digital marketing agency usually offers automated customer reviews and reputation management software that are guaranteed HIPAA compliant, so you don’t have to worry about disclosing any sensitive and private health information online.
[Related: 7 Medical Practice Marketing Tips To Attract More Patients]
Pro Tip: Hire the Right Healthcare Search Engine Optimization Experts
Your medical practice needs to adapt to various changes, both industry-wide and globally. Search engine marketing is one of them.
SEO is not something you have to do on your own. Expert assistance is one of the best SEO solutions for your practice growth.
Hiring a team of healthcare SEO marketers can help you manage your digital marketing needs better, so you can focus on giving the best care to your patients.
Digitalis Medical specializes in online marketing for the healthcare industry.
We work alongside doctors to improve their website’s performance by implementing the best SEO practices to increase traffic and conversion rates.
Do you need more tips in growing your healthcare practice through search engine optimization? Read our blogs or ask us a question in the comments section below! We’d love to hear from you!