Search Engine OptimizationFor Healthcare
SERVICES / DIGITAL MARKETING / SEOThe Importance of SEO for Healthcare
The majority of people (70%) now search online for their medical information. It’s the first place they go when researching symptoms, treatments and healthcare providers.
Your practice should appear on the first page of search results if someone searches for you specifically. This is where the importance of a Local SEO strategy comes in.
Local SEO
Local SEO is exactly what it sounds like and is imperative if you own a practice with a physical location. The aim of local SEO is to ensure your practice shows up when someone searches for a healthcare provider in your area.
Think back to the last time you searched for a physical store’s location. You likely typed in the words “near me” after the name of the store. If you did this, you’re in the vast majority of people who search online. 82 percent of smartphone shoppers conduct ‘near me’ searches. (Search Engine Land, 2018).
This “near me” part of the search, aka proximity, is now the number one ranking factor in Local SEO. We also ensure when patients find you on google, your google business listing is correct and up to date.
This is imperative as your google business listing consists of your practice name, address, phone number, hours of operation and patient reviews. Apart from google, we also ensure your listing information is correct on Bing Places (Mircosoft’s search engine) and Apple Maps.
Organic SEO
Venturing beyond your local SEO, if your practice website has:
- Medical Information
- A Medical / Wellness Blog
- Offers Digital Products/Software
- Contains Video or Informative Media Content
You require a wider ranging Organic SEO strategy. Organic SEO is a term that comprises many related strategies that help improve your search engine ranking based on your website's content. These strategies include a site audit, keyword research, content marketing and link building.
Website SEO Audit
Before developing an SEO strategy, we carry out a full technical SEO audit of your website to see where it currently stands and address any issues which could lead to problems down the road. We review your google analytics, your websites pages to ensure there are no broken links and measure your site's performance.
We also make sure all your website pages have proper titles, descriptions and meta tags. Only once these issues are addressed, do we move forward with your SEO action plan.
Keyword Research
Keywords help you appear in search results for search phrases associated with your Healthcare Practice. Keyword Research is the process of finding keywords that users are searching for when trying to find healthcare providers similar to yours.
The process of researching keywords involves analyzing competitors keywords, researching keyword volume, and ultimately determining the cost associated with keywords which are doing well in your particular healthcare niche.
It's then important to take these findings and tailor the content on your website to include keywords which are ranking high and your patients are searching for. This is crucial to drive more traffic to your website. These keywords can also be used to run Pay Per Click Ad Campaigns alonside your Organic SEO efforts.
Content Marketing & Link Building
Being seen as a reliable source of healthcare information can dramatically increase your search engine rankings and website traffic. As a healthcare professional, you have incredible knowledge about your specific niche and you can share that knowledge through informative blog posts, short videos and long form content.
Your patients will find this information very valuable. You can also further promote this content thorough various social media channels. Learn more about our social media marketing services here.
Other websites may also find this information valuable and link to your content further increasing your search engine rankings. As more websites link to your content, the more authoritative your content becomes.
This is called Link Building. It is essentially getting other websites to link to your content. Link Building is a process which takes time but is very worthwhile if you are producing content and want to rank higher in search engines and drive organic traffic to your website.