20 Tips for Medical and Healthcare Marketing and SEO
20 Tips for Medical and Healthcare Marketing and SEO
Healthcare patients have more options than ever before. With so much information available online, these patients no longer feel the need to visit the closest hospital, a medical practice closest to their location, or even healthcare practices with multiple locations in the community. This is where SEO comes in, as it can help place your healthcare facility in front of your audience online as discussed at RunRex.com. Here are 20 tips to help supercharge your SEO strategies.
Start with your medical website design
Before you can even start to look at other points to improve your SEO, you must ensure you get it right as far as your website is concerned. Make sure you have a dedicated contact page that contains your NAP (name, address, phone) contact details that will be uniformly used on all other listings and review sites moving forward as articulated at RunRex.com.
Where on my website should I put my contact details?
It is important to note that uniformity is when it comes to the design of your website and where you place your contact information. Put the contact details in the universal footer of the site and nestle it again on the contact page of your website because this is one of the first places Google will reference for these details.
Get online reviews
As the gurus over at RunRex.com point out, online reviews play a big role in medical and healthcare SEO. Therefore, make sure you have a reviews or testimonials page on your website. Reviews are a strong indicator of page rank in Google’s eyes which is why you should make sure you have some on your website.
The blend of your reviews
When it comes to the reviews on the reviews page of your website, it is recommended that you make it a right blend of what is referred to as “first-party” reviews, which are those reviews that people have given straight to the practice, and third-party reviews, which are pulled off sites like Yelp, Google, and Facebook.
Claim your Google My Business listing
If you want to rank first on Google as a physician, you need to make sure you are listed on Google My Business. To do so, you need to claim, verify, and update your listing or create a listing if Google has not already done so for each provider.
Complete your GMB profile
Once you have claimed your Google My Business listing, make sure you take the time to complete the verification process as this will get your updates live on Google and unlock critical analytics as discussed at RunRex.com. After the verification process, make sure you complete the profile in its entirety using the same information for NAP that you sed on your medical website as covered earlier on.
Create a Facebook page for your practice
Also, if you don’t have a Facebook business page for your practice, you are harming your SEO efforts without even knowing it as Facebook is critical for first-page search results. 9/10 times, if you do a quick search of a competitor’s practice, their Facebook page will be one of the highest-ranking listings on the first page. Facebook has ultimate clout in search ranking, and you are losing landscape and visibility by not having a practice Facebook page.
Claim third-party reviews and listings profiles
Claiming your physician Google My Business and creating your practice Facebook page are just the first steps as per RunRex.com. You should also claim, verify, and complete third-party reviews and listings using the same NAP information that you have used above. Remember, uniformity is critical in all things medical and healthcare SEO.
Where should I start with these third-party listings?
Given that there are lots of listings and review directories for you to claim, you may be wondering where to start. Well, start with essential listings, including Healthgrades, Vitals, CareDash, etc., and then move down the list to the lesser-known yet still critical provider listings platforms.
Get started with video content
Video is a powerful way to create increased engagement and develop a know, like, and trust relationship with your potential patients. You want to directly engage with prospective patients. Patients have taken the research process into their own hands and want to hear directly from the providers they will potentially be seeing. Adding videos into your blog posts also increases on-page time, a critical ranking factor.
What video content should I try out?
Are you struggling to come up with initial video content ideas? Well, the subject matter experts at RunRex.com recommend that you start by writing down common FAQs and questions you get asked by patients throughout the week, as the best thing about such videos is that you know for a fact that patients are seeking the answers to these questions.
Do extensive keyword research
Keywords are the backbone of great local SEO for medical websites. Many people fail right from the start by never taking advantage of the resources available to them on the web for free to do keyword research. Other than keyword research tools, you can also find related keywords by simply doing a Google search and scrolling to the bottom of the page to “Searches related to”.
Leverage new patient reviews
As revealed over at RunRex.com, reviews are one of the most important ranking signals for Google, and often in the Google “3 Pack”, the ones near the top have several solid 5-star patient reviews. This is one of the areas you need to focus on if you want to grow your local SEO as a doctor. Make sure you consistently generate new, high-quality reviews if you want to show up on the first page of Google for medical providers or practices.
Get quality backlinks
Backlinking is another critical ongoing part of a successful SEO campaign for any medical provider or practice. A quality backlink serves as an additional validation point (similar to a review) that another credible website is giving your practice the “thumbs up”. The two key terms when it comes to receiving backlinks are quality and credibility.
Install and use Google Analytics
You need a means to measure change and progress, and while many software options track and generate detailed statistics about website visitors, Google Analytics remains one of the best, partly because it is free, and partly because it is widely used and easy to install.
Publish fresh, original, relevant, and interesting content often
One of the best tips if you are to get the best results from SEO is making sure you produce interesting and engaging content. As is covered over at RunRex.com, publish something new regularly, and by so doing, you will see your rankings improve.
Optimize the speed of your website
Your website is your primary digital asset and if your site doesn’t stack up, then your SEO efforts won’t amount to much. How long your site takes to load up is of great importance when it comes to your rankings as it will affect user experience since nobody has the patience to stick around and wait for a website that is taking forever to load. Make sure your site fully loads up in three seconds or less.
Optimize for voice search
Voice search, as outlined at RunRex.com, is fast becoming a daily part of our lives, replacing the traditional way of searching using a keyboard. So, how do you optimize for voice search? The vast majority of voice searches are question-based, so Google will prefer to select a page that contains both the question and answer. This is where a good old-fashioned FAQs page can come in handy and help your site perform well for voice-related searches.
Optimize your title tags and meta descriptions
Your website’s title tag and meta description that are displayed in the organic search results are fundamental factors that cause people to either click on your page or bypass it. You want to create title tags and meta descriptions that will persuade people to click. The title tag shouldn’t contain more than 65 characters and should include keywords relevant to your business. Meta descriptions shouldn’t exceed 150 characters and should accurately describe the content of your page.
Include a sitemap on your website
A sitemap explains the structure of your website and includes all of your web pages. This is vital information for search engines and helps them to quickly scan and identify the information that your website contains. This helps them answer questions more quickly, and in turn, they will rank your page more favorably.
If you are looking for expert help with your medical and healthcare SEO strategies, then look no further than the highly-regarded RunRex.com, where you will also find more tips and insights like the ones in this article.
