In this era where the internet is evolving more every day, the stats of people who turn to google for even their smallest query is greater than ever.
This fact applies to the field of healthcare too, and according to a study, more than 72% of patients settle for a doctor only after having searched them online.
As a result, search engines such as Google and Yahoo have become valuable channels for doctors to attract new patients. And it is only with the right implementation of search engine optimization-SEO marketing that you can take control of the size of their practice that is generated online.
Now that we have established the fact that digital marketing and healthcare have merged, it is so important to understand the DOs & DON’Ts of the same. And that’s because of the fact that a lot of us aren’t really well versed with marketing online.
Digital marketing is still something that even experts seem to keep learning about – it is not an established science!
What works for one, might not work for another. Here, we would address a few common DOs & DON’Ts, which can be tweaked a little as per your requirements. You’ll figure that out as you get on with your healthcare marketing journey.
SEO, also known as Search Engine Optimization, can be understood as a set of practices designed to enhance the appearance and ranking of web pages in organic search results. With a well-strategized SEO for medical practice, your healthcare website can achieve more visibility and can dominate the medical search results.
A website is the first step of interaction that you may have with your patient, and therefore, having a robust and well-architected website is crucial for your successful medical practice. Most people search for a healthcare provider online before actually visiting their clinics, and, therefore, you must have a wide and authentic presence on the internet.
A professional and attractive website sets you apart from your competitors and provides reliable information to your potential patients. Furthermore, with a responsive website, you receive more calls and appointments and, eventually, a waiting room full of patients.
Keywords can be referred to as the words or phrases that people type in google while searching for answers to their queries. It won’t be wrong to say that Keywords are the backbone of great local SEO for medical websites, and they are important for off-site content and social profiles as well.
Extensive research of keywords and their optimization is necessary to increase your medical practices website relevance in the eyes of a search engine.
While choosing the SEO keywords for doctors, these questions should be asked:
Tools such as Ubersuggest and Google Keyword’s planner can help you find the best keywords for your industry, comparing what is and isn’t being searched for. Studying the competitors is also a great way to be able to target the right keywords.
Content is the king of the healthcare business. A website that has share-worthy educational content is recognized by Google as an authoritative brand within the healthcare industry and thereby ranks you high. Content can take various forms, such as email newsletters, guest blogs, videos, case studies, and e-books.
However, whether it is a detailed description of your services or compelling blog posts that target specific search queries, high-quality content always increases your website’s exposure.
For creating great content, always ask these questions:
Google algorithms tend to rank those websites higher that publish new content regularly.
This means that a website that practices posting blogs three times per week is likely to rank higher in SERPs than a website that publishes only once per month, as long as it’s producing plagiarism-free, well-written, and well-optimized content.
A URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is the web address of a site and, when optimized properly, helps the website gain more traffic. The SEO-friendly URLs are the ones that are short, keyword-rich, and meet the needs of users and searchers.
Therefore, the URLs, meta titles, and meta descriptions should be clean, easy to share, and give the reader an idea of what content they should expect on the page. Proper use of these building blocks can help draw high CTRs (click-through rates) wherever the links are shared, thereby bringing you more patients.
Local SEO is an SEO strategy that helps your healthcare business to be more visible in local search results. Naturally, most patients prefer to go to a doctor located nearby, so their search queries may include a specific area.
For instance, when you search for a doctor, millions of results will come up. But if you search for a doctor in a particular town or neighborhood with expertise in one specialty, the results will drop sharply.
Therefore, the medical websites that serve a geographic area or have a physical location get benefitted from local SEO.
For your medical practice, just developing a website is never enough.
A website must be easy to use and capable of providing a great user experience to your patients; otherwise, you will end up losing potential patients.
User experience, from a consumer’s point of view, can be defined as how s/he feels while interacting with it.
A website with a great user experience is one that is easy to navigate, has a fast-load speed, and has a compelling user interface on any device.
Given below are some such technical SEO ranking factors that get a website to the top of the results on search engines:
Backlinks, also referred to as “inbound links,” play an important role in search engine algorithms. A backlink is a link that gets generated when one website links to another.
In other words, it is a clickable link that lives on a website and points to another site. Earning additional backlinks helps immensely for a website to rank high because it infers to google that the website possesses valuable content.
However, it is important that the backlinks that your website gets are natural, highly reputable, and highly relevant. The ever quality backlinks serve as an additional validation point that another credible website is agreeing to the credibility of your practice.
SSL (secure sockets layer) is a crucial step in SEO strategies that helps encrypt your website, ensuring the security of online collected data from hacking attacks.
Such data may include passwords and credit card information of your and your patients. You can’t miss an SSL certificate during acceptive sensitive information of your visitors on your healthcare company’s website because then Google will penalize its rankings.
Other than maintaining the security of your website, SSL has the following benefits:
Knowing that the private information won’t easily fall into the hands of someone who shouldn’t have access to it indeed gives you and your patients peace of mind.
Snippet and schema markups are another great way to optimize your healthcare website. Schema markup is essentially a code (semantic vocabulary) that is installed on your website to help it stand out in SERPs.
By creating an enhanced description, these codes tell the search engine to find and deliver the most important and relevant information to the patients.
SEO tracking is the process of evaluating the success of your website. It involves measuring the following metrics:
SEO tracking is necessary to understand whether your strategies are working, what kinds of results you are achieving, and how you can improve your medical business model.
The benefits of SEO for doctors can be concluded in the following five points:
An efficient SEO strategy boosts the visibility of your website and shows it on the top pages whenever a user makes a medical search query on google. When your website is more visible, you can outshine your competitors. You get more traffic and eventually more conversion rates.
Search engine optimization helps your website appear on top of SERP. A higher ranking on the search results pages can show patients that your practice is credible. It builds more confidence in patients and a great reputation for your clinic.
SEO puts your website in front of patients looking for the exact treatment/service that you have to offer. In other words, these patients are a better fit for your practice, and therefore, the chances are high that for more information, they will visit your website and then your clinic!
A website that ranks higher on search engines is seen as more trustworthy. Since public trust is a major factor when it comes to choosing a doctor, a trustworthy website will always draw more patients than a website that ranks low or doesn’t appear at all.
Unlike traditional advertising, SEO is less costly and has an unlimited reach and a longer life span. You can reach a greater number of patients over a longer duration at lower expenses. Also, with more organic traffic and conversions coming from SEO, the ROI (return on investment) of your practice is also increased.
Succeeding in SEO requires a lot of expertise. This is because search engines like Google rely on more than a hundred factors to determine the ranking of a website in search results. That is why many healthcare professionals partner with SEO agencies, who provide them with a comprehensive SEO plan for the end-to-end optimization of their digital practice.
At HMA– Healthcare Marketing Agency, we provide a comprehensive and actionable SEO strategy that can make the success of your online presence. We have a great team of professionals who diligently work for the growth of your medical practice and take pride in your success. For more information, contact us today!
Running a medical practice isn’t easy. You have to constantly look out for new technologies and tools that help you up-skill or upgrade your practice in any way. At HMA, we strive to help healthcare practitioners like you to achieve small successes at every stage in your practice by helping you figure out your strategy for digital growth both organically and through paid ads.
We go beyond digital marketing concepts and help clinics and doctors find relevant business solutions through online software and apps. If you’re ready to take your clinic practice to the next level by leveraging the latest digital marketing and clinic management tools, reach out to us right now and we can get started.
