How To Make Your Website Stand Out With Medical SEO

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SEO

18 Mar, 2024

make-your-website-stand-out-with-medical-seo

Introduction

Many healthcare institutions are having a more difficult time than ever before acquiring new patients. With so many options available to patients, hospitals and clinics must make their digital experiences as appealing as possible in order to retain and attract new patients. Since most patients use search engines to find a new physician, investing in medical SEO is an important first step in creating a digital experience that will appeal to patients.

SEO for healthcare typically conjures images of keyword research and link development. While this is true to some extent, there is more to SEO. Analytics and content are two of the most important factors in increasing your healthcare website's search engine rankings nowadays.

If your keyword optimization efforts have not yielded the intended results, it may be time to look at additional healthcare marketing SEO ranking variables. The relevancy of your keywords is only one factor that search engine algorithms use when ranking your website. Other factors include the average time spent on your site, bounce rate, the number of pages seen, and any broken or outbound links.

Retaining and interacting with your website's visitors is an important ranking factor, which you may do by making your website easy to navigate and delivering relevant material.

Including well-researched keywords is only half of the equation when it comes to driving traffic to your website. You'll need to ensure that your site is search-engine friendly and that user-friendliness is a priority.

We'll take a look at the numerous factors that affect a website's ranking and how you can improve your site's usability through healthcare SEO services.

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Advantages of Investing in Healthcare Website SEO

First, let's look at the benefits of healthcare SEO for doctors. Several advantages include the following:

  1. Effective and consistent SEO methods will help you rise to the top of Google's search results page. You only need patience and the proper healthcare SEO services to succeed in healthcare SEO.
  2. In terms of ROI, SEO is widely considered to be the most effective method. There is a good return on your investment even if you put in less money. In addition, SEO is a low-cost, dependable, and effective marketing strategy.
  3. Healthcare SEO has made attracting new patients easier than ever before. But, if you don't have a lot of money to spend on offline promotion, SEO services for healthcare is all you need.
  4. Top rankings and more website traffic are the goals of search engine optimization (SEO). It is often considered to be one of the most effective healthcare digital marketing services because of its simple and effective approach.
  5. It is common for patients to conduct online searches for new healthcare providers, book appointments, read reviews, and gain valuable information about their physicians. Investing in healthcare marketing and SEO will help you create the greatest possible digital experience for your patients, ultimately increasing your patient base.
  6. One of the advantages of employing a healthcare website SEO approach is the ability to show up in local searches. The location of a patient is an important factor in the search phrases they use. A well-optimized local SEO for healthcare professionals is necessary in order to appear in local searches. Patients searching for similar services in your area are more likely to find you when your website is up and running.
  7. Because of the high level of competition in the healthcare industry, it is critical to make an investment in medical website SEO. In the event that a patient performs an online search for a local hospital and your main competitor appears on the first or second page of results, you are missing out on potential growth prospects.

With a high-quality website and online services, you'll be well ahead of your competitors in creating a digital experience that patients will want to return to after investing in healthcare SEO.

Healthcare SEO Strategies You Can Put Into Action Now

In light of the information you've gathered so far, it's time for you to begin developing a plan of SEO for healthcare providers that will assist your site rise in the rankings. Use the following list of quick and easy steps to get started.

1. Prioritize the creation of high-quality content

High-quality content is unquestionably the most critical component of any successful SEO for the healthcare industry campaign. It is necessary to have search engine-friendly content on your website if you want it to appear in search engine results. Google and other search engines heavily emphasize the quality of your content because it attracts visitors to your site. Therefore, ensure that your content is complete, of good quality, and accurate before submitting it.

To increase the number of people who visit your website, you can employ content marketing. It is possible to increase the number of queries with SEO for healthcare websites by developing a blog where patients can find useful information and tools.

It's always a good idea to look at what your competitors are writing about in order to see how you may improve on what they've done. Do something different from your competition by creating more detailed material or presenting a new perspective.

Another option is using a keyword tool that can tell you what people are searching for. The more relevant medical terms you can write about, the more likely your site will be found by those looking for them.

2. Ensure that search engines can crawl and index your site

It's not uncommon for search engines to retain and arrange the content they discover on your site as they crawl it. When a search engine indexes your page, it recognizes its content and can present it to visitors as a search result.

So it's vital that search engines can easily index your healthcare information. Using a sitemap is an efficient method for accomplishing this. You can use a sitemap to tell search engines what URLs you want them to index and display to visitors. Creating a sitemap in accordance with Google's recommendations is a smart place to begin.

3. Keep an eye on your SEO for healthcare professionals\' progress

In order to manage an effective healthcare SEO campaign, you must keep track of how much money you're making. This is where hiring a healthcare SEO agency seems logical.

measures for  healthcare seo

You'll need a website analytics solution to see all of these metrics. Always check these indicators and ensure your analytics solution is in harmony with your healthcare SEO tips and strategy. You should also make use of an SEO tool that keeps track of some of these indicators for you and displays your progress over time.

4. Make a comparison with the performance of your competitors

Proving the value of your SEO efforts can only be done by keeping track of and reporting on your progress.

But remember that SEO performance is always a function of your competitors' performance. So even though your organic traffic has increased, if you're still on page two of search results and your rival is on page one because of high-priority keywords that attract the proper kind of patients, you're not catching the right traffic.

Use enterprise SEO software to see how your SEO score compares to the competition. This will give you an idea of the overall amount of work you need to put in to improve your SEO score, as well as precise information on optimizing your most critical keywords.

5. Enhance the user experience of your website for patients

It's not enough to have a great healthcare SEO strategy to bring in new patients; you must also give a fantastic digital experience to maintain them. Search engines also take into account the quality of a website's user experience when determining its ranking. Discuss the following factors with your healthcare SEO consultant while designing your web browsing experience:

  • Your website's load time. Is it fast? If your site takes longer than 2-3 seconds to load, most users will move on to another site.
  • A simple menu for visitors and search engines will make your site easier to navigate and index.
  • In healthcare websites, it's critical that your site's design adheres to universal design standards, which make it simple for users to browse.

broken buttons

  • Don't make it difficult for your customers to accomplish an action. Reducing the number of stages and making the procedure clear and simple will encourage people to arrange online appointments.
  • For persons with impairments or the elderly, healthcare websites should be accessible. Therefore, color contrast, typeface legibility, and accessibility for individuals with impairments should be considered while designing your website.

You'll not only keep patients but also convey signals to search engines that your site is worth visiting by delivering a smooth and interesting website experience. A healthcare SEO company takes care of everything for you.

6. Increase the trustworthiness of your website

Your website's authority is another technique to boost your SEO for medical website strategy. Backlinks are the greatest way to accomplish this, in which another website links back to yours.  Search engines see backlinks as a vote of confidence.

However, not all backlinks are equivalent. You don't want spammy or untrustworthy sites linking to yours; you want reputable high-quality links. Inquire with the website owner about providing a link to your website when they mention your hospital or clinic for noteworthy research, successful outcomes, or community service.

Request a link to your website if your material, company name, or a staff member is mentioned or interviewed by reputable third parties.

7. Focus on local healthcare SEO with Google My Business

Your healthcare organization's local search engine optimization is crucial. Most of the time, patients try to find a local doctor or hospital. Begin by creating a Google My Business account and claiming your business's business listing.

Create a complete business profile, including images, a link to your website, a list of business hours, and current contact information. Reactions to consumer reviews can also help you boost patient confidence. A well-rounded local profile that appears in local searches and on maps is the result of all of the above.

8. Pay attention to the criteria of the EAT

EAT Google algorithm upgrade took place in 2018 and substantially impacted medical websites. In an effort to encourage medical websites to meet higher requirements, a standard known as EAT (expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness)  was released.

It's critical that patients and search engines alike know you're a reputable healthcare provider with up-to-date information. Consider the following when you work on the EAT of your website:

EAT criteria

9. Look into your website’s mobile friendliness

Mobile devices account for roughly half of all worldwide website traffic, according to Statista. Therefore, your healthcare website must be designed for mobile use. Mobile SEO for your medical website and usability go hand in hand, so here are a few pointers to remember:

  • Make your website mobile-friendly
  • Consider the type of device customers are using when designing your website. 
  • Make sure all material, including videos, photos, etc., can be viewed on a mobile phone or tablet.
  • Touch-responsive elements should be placed at a distance that makes them easy to tap on a mobile device.
  • Avoid pop-ups and other overlays on mobile devices since they take up a lot of screen real estate.
  • On mobile devices, don't use too small or thin fonts so that consumers have to zoom in constantly.

10. Monitor your healthcare website speed

Most people will simply go elsewhere if a page takes more than 2-3 seconds to load. However, a quick website is essential for a positive patient experience as well as for improving website visibility in SERP. When it comes to improving the speed of your website, keep these points in mind:

  • For the vast majority of a page's loading time, an HTTP request is required to download various components. Therefore, you may speed up your website by reducing the number of elements on it.
  • The more redirects your site has, the more HTTP requests it makes and the slower it becomes.
  • In addition to causing a poor user experience for your visitors, broken links can also slow down your website.
  • Make your photographs smaller in file size. The larger your file images are, the longer it will take for your page to load. Use a free online image optimizer to improve the quality of your image files.
  • Because video files are much larger than image files, you should avoid including them in your website's main uploads section. Instead, embed videos from a video hosting provider to conserve space on your site and speed up loading times.

11. Technical optimization

Crawlers are software that search engines like Google and Bing employ to read your website's content and code. Because crawlers may have a tough time reading and understanding your practice website's material, it may drop in search engine rankings. So make sure you have a look at these technical aspects:

  • The URL structure: Use dashes instead of underscores in URLs, and avoid special characters.
  • Title Tags: Every page should have a unique title tag, and the length of the title tag should not exceed 75 characters. Make sure the title tag contains relevant keywords.
  • Meta Description Tags: Ensure each page has its own meta description tag. There should be no more than 160 characters in a meta description that explains the content of the page.
  • Heading Tags: Visitors can see headings since they are part of the HTML code on the page. Only one H1 heading tag should be used on each web page. Your material will be easier to understand if you use header tags correctly.
  • Duplicate Content: Having the same material on your website under several URLs is a common problem. As a result, search engines may not know which version to put in their index, which might have an impact on your website's ranking. Creating redirects between different page versions is a better option than removing redundant material.
  • Data Structure: You can add specific markup to your material using structured data, which helps search engines comprehend what your content is about. As a result of structured data, your web pages will appear in search results with rich snippets that can help you rise in the ranks.

We would suggest you take the help of an SEO company for healthcare professionals to get started with these healthcare SEO strategies.

Additional Healthcare Medical SEO Strategies That Shouldn’t Be Missed

1. Social Media Presence

SEO ranking can be greatly influenced by the number of posts and shares on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and other social media sites. In addition to making it easier for patients to share your content, social sharing buttons can also help you rank higher in search results. Purchasing decisions might be influenced by what others say about products on social media.

2. Outbound and Inbound Links Quality

In order to provide your viewers with more in-depth information, you can link to authoritative websites. Increased credibility of your content and increased time spent on your website will also convey trust signals to search engines in order to improve your SEO rating. Too many outbound links, on the other hand, can make it difficult to read the material. Healthcare SEO companies recognize these drawbacks and take care of these hurdles.

3. Videos

Multimedia content such as videos and slideshows can enhance the user experience and offer information in a way that is most relevant to your intended audience. As a result, user engagement and conversion are becoming increasingly dependent on video content. According to studies, websites with video material have a conversion rate of approximately 5%, while those without video content only have a conversion rate of 3%.

To Sum It Up

You're approaching SEO incorrectly if you feel you have to fit a keyword into a sentence.  If the content of your website reads as if it was written just for the purpose of search engine optimization, you should revise it. 

Search engines are getting tougher on keyword stuffing, which means your online reputation is likely to suffer as a result.

To sum it up, SEO is about making your healthcare website easier for patients. Search engines are more likely to like you if you make your website easier to use for your customers.

Good Luck!

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C

Corbin Stewart

Thank you for sharing such amazing strategies.

K

Kash Sanchez

This has been an eye opener.

R

Reid Morris

Any other tools to use for Healthcare SEO?

K

Kameron Rogers

Great guidance.

H

Hayes Bell

Please suggest the keyword search tools.

JanBask

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