Healthcare SEO Tips: Get To Rank Higher

Six million people per day search for information that is related to health and healthcare, in the US alone. This means that health seekers are actively looking for medical information online. Many of them search for information before visiting the local clinician or hospital.

SEO makes an effort to get your site to rank higher on search engines. For healthcare professionals, such as doctors, dentists, physicians, and clinicians, SEO has become ever more important. No matter how qualified and relevant they may feel, if their online presence isn’t strong enough, the patients may go to some other expert.

If you’re a healthcare SEO agency looking to get your website to rank higher so that your services can reach patients most effectively, here are some tips you need to know:

1. Keyword Research Should Be Optimized Specifically For The Health Sector

Your goal is to make your services known to everyone in your vicinity. Your keywords should reflect the services you or your healthcare service offers.

People search for problems that they can most relate to. They will search for terms like “back pain”, “groin area pain”, “paediatrician near me”, “dentist near me”, “cardiac hospital near me”, etc. People aren’t too scientific with information. So they won’t search for “Bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy” or “Dyspnea on exertion” (another name for shortness of breath on activity).

Make sure you target the right keywords for your website. When you start ranking for the right terms, you are more likely to provide the right information and, in turn, also more likely to schedule an appointment.

2. Establish Some Authority Within Your Area Of Expertise

Your website should show that you’re an expert on the subject. You are a healthcare expert after all.

People should see you as a valuable resource. When people visit you more and your information is appealing and well-written, Google (or Bing or Yahoo, whichever was used) recognizes that your website is reputable, and therefore, ranks you higher.

This comes from regularly updated quality content. Quality content also makes it more likely to be backlinked for higher domain authority.

3. Focus On Local SEO

Given that the vast majority of your patients will be most likely from the area you provide your services in, it’s best to optimize for local SEO. Best use of the Google My Business profile is key.

If you plan on hiring an SEO agency for your task, you should hire a local SEO agency, because they know the local keywords and language better, they know what the market trends are, they can create content accordingly, and they can help establish domain authority (DA) within your area.

4. Off-Site Linking

When some website links some other relevant websites, those websites are considered more important to Google. Backlinks should be relevant to the services you provide. This is only possible when you create great content updated regularly.

Off-site sources that could link to your website include

·        Healthcare Directories

o  Patients can easily find your services in health directories. Ranking factors include how many listings your services are placed in.

·        Press Releases

o  Medical journals, healthcare publications, and advertisements of your new products and services can go a long way.

·        Other Healthcare Blogs

o  Getting other blogs referencing or linking you to your work contributes to good SEO.

·        Citations

o  When your healthcare service’s name, address, and phone number (NAP) is referenced by some other page, it also contributes to your business being ranked higher. This is because the information of your Google My Business profile is now linked directly.

5. SEO Will Not Produce Immediate Results

Good SEO takes time. You won’t immediately see results even if you hire a team of experts to work on your website.

Building your authority and credibility online among the search engines is not an overnight effort and can take a few months or more. However, you might see some organic traffic gradually increase, and a lot of it might convert into appointments.

If you want immediate results, you should opt for inorganic SEO such as pay-per-click ads. Paid results appear on the top of Google search results. However, inorganic SEO can be quite expensive.

6. Google My Business Profile Tips

Optimizing the GMB profile has proven to increase the visibility of your business. Google provided some tips for improving GMB for healthcare providers in March 2021:

·        Hours of operation and contact information should be made clear

·        The physical address of your business should be exclusive to you on Google Maps

·        Upload photos so that patients know what they’ll see before coming

·        Make sure all your services are mentioned so that you could rank accordingly

·        Engage with patients using Google Posts

·        In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, Google has also awarded websites that tell people to stay at home. But this also means that the websites have to provide as much information as possible before they book an appointment.