Are you looking to improve your medical business? Do you have a website and want to increase your online presence and expand your patience roster? If yes, then you are on the right page. Gone are the days when medical practitioners post an advertisement in the local newspaper to attract potential patients. In this digital era, most people prefer to go directly on the internet and search for products and services. And if your website isn’t ranking well as compared to other medical businesses, you could be losing significant numbers of the market share. Be competitive and stay on top of your field through digital marketing by utilizing the latest medical SEO strategies.
Why Medical SEO Matters?
As mentioned, most people nowadays are utilizing the internet to search for doctors, dentists and other health professionals. By implementing effective medical SEO techniques, you will not only increase your online presence but also rank your website higher in major search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo. Below are our top two (2) reasons why medical SEO matters:
- Public Profile Credibility. When people search for your service, there is a greater chance that they will land on your site and discover you, especially if you’re in the top three (3) search results. Also, patients would think that Google trusts this website to be reliable, then it must be. Note that high search engine ranking makes your website credible in the minds of potential patients.
- Increase Return on Investments (ROI). We can say that implementing medical SEO is the most cost-effective digital marketing strategy. You just need to be visible online while people are looking for medical services like yours. Obviously, medical SEO can help you save more money as compared to traditional marketing strategies such as cold-calling, television advertisement, or local newspaper and magazine advertisements. The traditional marketing strategies are proven to be working effectively but aside from it’s incredibly costly, it’s also time-consuming and inefficient.
As a busy medical practitioner, we know that you spend more time on your patients and less time keeping up with the latest updates on the field of medical SEO. Luckily, there are a lot of medical SEO professionals in the field of digital marketing ready to help optimize your website’s online presence. By using the best SEO practices, up-to-date SEO tools, and highly-trained staff, they can assist you in achieving higher rank in the major search engines and boost your website’s traffic.
Best Medical SEO Practices
Over the years, SEO has gone through immense changes. One key factor of these changes is the never-ending update of Google’s SEO algorithm. Below are the best and up-to-date SEO practices that are essential to help improve your website’s performance and organic search engine ranking.
Technical SEO
Most websites with good URL structure, have a secure connection, mobile-friendly, or fast-loading speed are likely to achieve a higher ranking on top three (3) popular search engines. Some medical SEO practitioners will offer a free technical audit of your website and then provide recommendations on what to improve on. Below are some of the practices you may want to consider on your site to meet search engine’s technical requirements:
- Install Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) – Many websites that rank well in Google are using SSL to secure their business. These are the sites which URL starts with ‘https://’ rather than ‘http://’. Having an SSL installed is preferred by Google over non-secure websites in search results.
- Responsive Web Design – A website that automatically adjusts to be easily navigated with a user-friendly format in any device especially mobile phones and tablets are also favored by Google. With the recent Google’s algorithm updates on ‘mobile first’ approach to indexing site, a responsive website has an advantage.
- Enabling AMP – this will speed up the loading of your webpage in mobile devices. AMP is a project recognized by Google that strips the codes, forms, and comments in your page, leaving only the texts, images, and videos.
Content Marketing
There are many speculations on the internet that SEO and content marketing are two different things. Well, the truth is, and if you really understand the concept of SEO, these two perfectly work together. Having consistent high-quality content on your medical website is a key factor to increase your ranking in organic searches. By using the relevant keywords and phrases, a good SEO professional will help write informative medical content that educates potential patients.
On-Page SEO
This is somewhat a combination of technical SEO and content marketing. By implementing this method, your website will not only rank higher in organic searches but also become more visually appealing to your visitors. Keyword density and meta tags, SEO-friendly URLs, outbound links, and content headings are the relevant SEO areas to improve on in order to rank high in organic searches.
Off-Page SEO
Major search engines especially Google prefers to rank high trusted websites. Of course, they want the searchers to find the most valuable and reliable information on the internet. In order to build trust, your website must have a significant number of high-quality backlinks coming from a reputable website or blog within the same niche as yours. To build this type of links, contribute as a guest author to the most popular medical blog. Post content with insightful ideas and put a link back to your website. Social media advertising also helps increase your website’s credibility. Sharing relevant content and ideas on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn is the best way to reach out to potential patients.
Wrap-Up
Although traditional medical marketing strategy is proven effective, medical SEO is less expensive and more efficient. As a medical practitioner, investing in digital marketing to increase online visibility is always a good decision. If you consider looking for a digital marketing agency, make sure to hire a team that provides a comprehensive approach to guide you in learning and applying SEO best practices. It’s also advisable to learn the basic knowledge of SEO prior to engaging this service provider. In this recent age where internet rules the business world, SEO plays a major role to grow your medical practice.
