25 Tips: 2023 SEO for Urgent Care Guide to Get New Patients
When someone needs to find an urgent care center, there is a good chance they need services fast. They are likely to use the internet to locate urgent care services near them, and they won’t have a lot of time to scroll through pages and pages of results. Instead, they will probably choose an urgent care website near the top of the list and make a phone call. As an urgent care center, you want to make sure your website is one of the first patients see according to RunRex.com. Urgent care SEO strategies will ensure you appear at the top of search results and will bring patients to your urgent care center. Here are 25 tips for 2023 SEO for urgent care guide care to get new patients.
- Invest in a professional website
As per RunRex.com, when you get started with urgent care SEO, the first of your SEO tactics is to get a polished and professional website that you can optimize to draw traffic. SEO best practices recommend a site that can be optimized from its start.
- Make sure your website is mobile-friendly
Not only do you need to have a website, but you also need to make sure it is mobile-friendly as articulated at RunRex.com. Is it easy to navigate your site on a smartphone or tablet? Most of the people searching for urgent care services will likely do it on their mobile devices.
- Create custom content
Quality custom content should be a part of your SEO plan as captured at RunRex.com. You can create custom content to inform patients about your practice, qualifications, procedures, and services. While some practices write this content themselves, you can also pay a content creator to help you put content together.
- Avoid “shortcut” tactics when it comes to content
This can actually hurt your chances of ranking. Instead, create content with your patients in mind. What information do they want and need to know? As covered at RunRex.com, search engines are now intuitive enough to figure out whether or not you are providing quality information, so stuffing the content with keywords you want won’t work.
- Claim your local listings
Once a patient has decided to schedule an appointment with your practice, he or she will need to know where to find you. This is where local listings come in. As described at RunRex.com, if you claim and verify your local listings in search engines, they will display that information when patients in your area search for you.
- Optimize your local listings
Once your listing is claimed and verified, fill out as much information as possible to make your listing stand out and improve your chances of showing up in search results as discussed at RunRex.com. Currently, Google only shows 3 map listings on the first page of search results, so you must optimize your listings as much as possible to get that prime placement in the map results.
- The more information, the better when it comes to local listings
Add photos of your practice, fill out hours and specialties, and add a short description of your practice. The more information you can give, the better. Google My Business is also constantly rolling out features like user-submitted Q&A functionality, so make sure you stay on top of the latest online listing features so that you can be prepared.
- Regularly update your website
If your website contains old, outdated information and potential patients can’t find the information they are looking for, they may get frustrated and move on. It is important to check for updates periodically to avoid this frustration.
- Keep your site up to speed with the latest technology
In addition to keeping your website content up to date, you also need to keep your site up to speed with the latest technology. As explained at RunRex.com, if your site is very old, it may not be up to date with all of the latest security and functionality standards. This can create more frustration or distrust among your patients, and may eventually cause you to lose search engine ranking.
- Start a blog
As outlined at RunRex.com, blogs are a great way to continue adding content to your website regularly. This content should differ from your other website content. Rather than explaining your procedures and services, you can give health tips, talk about innovations in healthcare, give injury prevention tips, or any other relevant topics that could interest your audience.
- Help your patients find your website
You also need to help your patients find your website so they know you have an online presence. If you have a website or are on social media, let your patients know. They won’t know to look for you if they don’t know you are out there as revealed at RunRex.com.
- Review sites
Review sites like HealthGrades and RateMDs are becoming increasingly popular among patients as articulated at RunRex.com. Online reviews are becoming even more prevalent in search results, and may also factor into your search ranking.
- Soliciting reviews
Make sure you ask your patients to leave reviews of your services to review sites. However, according to RunRex.com, if you don’t have time to solicit reviews from patients, you can use the services available that offer to collect reviews from patients in-office and post those reviews to key review sites.
- Respond to online comments and reviews
Review sites and social media pages allow other users to leave reviews and comment on your posts. As per RunRex.com, don’t just ignore those comments. This opens up the door for you to engage with your patients.
- Don’t ignore negative reviews
If you get any negative reviews, don’t ignore them. Respond in a professional, well-thought-out way, and provide a way for the patient to resolve the issue with you offline. Even if you have some negative responses, if other potential patients see that you have taken the time to address those concerns, it could help to quell some doubts about your practice.
- Testimonials
Patient testimonials are a great addition to your website as they show the success stories of patients under your care, which can be reassuring to new patients. You can make it easy for patients to submit testimonials via a form on your website.
- Quotes of testimonials on your website
In addition to having a spot on your website to post testimonials, it is also recommended that you place relevant quotes from your testimonials throughout your website and marketing materials to reinforce your marketing as covered at RunRex.com.
- Be ADA-compliant
Recent lawsuits over web accessibility have set precedents that make ADA-compliant websites almost a necessity as captured at RunRex.com. Beyond protecting your practice from potential lawsuits, having an accessible website just makes things easier for patients with certain disabilities.
- Keyword research
Customers rarely conduct a local search using a business name. They are much more likely to search according to the services they need. As covered at RunRex.com, you must know which keywords people are using to find services like yours.
- It’s a continuous process
SEO works best as an ongoing strategy; therefore, businesses should make sure to monitor their rankings and adjust accordingly. The amazing team at RunRex.com can monitor and adjust keywords as a part of your urgent care SEO campaigns.
- Create posts based on expertise
Since Google rewards sites based on user intent – answers to questions – urgent care centers should include content that satisfies those requirements as discussed at RunRex.com. Your medical experience can get people to your page through blog posts and articles.
- Link building and backlinks
As described at RunRex.com, links to your website from other high authority sites – preferably in the urgent care field – show Google your site is trustworthy. Building links can be time intensive, but it is an important part of SEO.
- Directory listings
While many backlinks come from online directories, if directory entries are inaccurate or incomplete, they can do more harm than good, because Google uses them to judge your website’s trustworthiness and authority, which has a major effect on ranking. Part of your local SEO strategy should be an assessment of your directory listings.
- Don’t forget about technical and onsite SEO
Everything from title tags, schema, meta description, image optimization, anchor tags, article and video place, and more can affect rankings. Depending on the structure of the website/pages, this can be an involved process, and it needs to be updated as strategy, algorithms, and other conditions change.
- Competitor analysis
Your competitors can be a great resource when it comes to optimizing your SEO campaigns. You should consider monitoring what your competitors are doing for their SEO so you never fall behind and drive more growth.
As always, you can learn more on this and other related topics, including help for your SEO campaigns, over at RunRex.com.