Medical SEO, which means medical search engine optimization, is the process of using the best practices and tactics to improve the search engine rankings of a healthcare-related website for targeted high-volume, desirable keywords for long-lasting organic traffic. It allows your medical center to reach a higher demographic of patients who search for your services. While the health industry has an incredibly high level of competition, a well-implemented good medical SEO strategy, especially from a Medical SEO Company, should bring significant results within 4-6 months.
1. Research and Use Appropriate Hospital-Related Keywords For Your Content
It is important to focus on the right keywords in the health industry while optimizing your content. Start with your medical services as keywords. With a tool such as Google’s Keyword Planner, you can find the best keywords for the health niche while comparing them with what people are searching for. You don’t want to add too many keywords to your content.
Google sees this as a spammy tactic, and it will be quick to penalize your website. Instead, target long-tail long-tail keywords and add them to your content in the most natural, readable, and relevant in the right way. It is crucial to separate yourself from other medical websites such as WebMDs and get patients attracted to you.
To drive more traffic to your website, opting for medical SEO services for content marketing will go a long way.
2. Invest in Off-Site Medical SEO Techniques
Backlinks are very important to SEO. Google respects and pays more attention to a health website that other relevant healthcare-related websites link back to. Google has the impression that such websites are ‘more important. Having other websites linked to yours gives your web pages credibility and authority for search engines to rank.
Try to get backlinks from off-site sources such as press releases, healthcare directories, blog posts, and articles, and health care social media. Press release allows you to leverage the strength of journalists and healthcare publications by getting their audience to know about your products or services.
Blog posts and articles help position your website as an authority with the relevant answers to their questions. Social proof from social media - a higher number of likes and follows – helps to improve your health care website’s relevancy and increases its chances to rank better on Google’s first page.
3. Optimize Visual Elements
Video is a popular way by which people consume content. Including videos on your web pages can help you increase your website’s organic traffic.
Videos make people spend more time on your web pages, which tells Google there’s something valuable for users on the page. Include high-quality videos in your content as you optimize your health website search engines.
The video can be information on a medical condition or how to reduce the risk of developing certain diseases or a virtual tour of your health facility. It will draw many users closer than a 700-word blog post.
Use a variety of images. Infographics work best with educative or informational blog posts. Good visual elements make your web pages more engaging and interactive. They increase your new visitors and ensure returning visitors.
Ensure you optimize your videos, images, and infographics for search engines. You do this by including appropriate alt text. Image alt text helps Google crawlers and visually impaired users understand what you have on your web pages. It is an opportunity to add some of your keywords but does it moderately.
Add the images of your office, health facilities, staff, and equipment.
While blog posts, white papers, and other off-site SEO for medical service techniques are good digital marketing tactics, you still have to include content on your health website. Visual content is a powerful tool. The visuals and visuals of your office, health facilities, staff, and equipment are styles of content to share. Including these images increases your users' trust in your brand and increases conversions.
4. Optimize your health website for Website Speed, Security, & Mobile Use
The speed, security, and mobile-friendliness of your health website are good factors that can help you rank on Google. Your website is slow if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. It may make people back out from your web page.
When this happens, they will go to your competitors whose websites provide a speedier experience. A slow website doesn’t affect your ranking on search engines. Google doesn’t penalize a good website because of its long loading time but optimizing your speed will help you boost your overall user experience.
A good website speed takes about half a second. While it is not a must for you to achieve that, you should strive for, at most, two seconds of loading time for your website. With a tool like Google’s PageSpeed Insights, you can check for the current site speed of your health website. It will also help you identify the things you need to do to improve your website’s loading time.
Your website’s security is another crucial factor to pay attention to for the improvement website’s ranking on search engines. With an SSL certificate, your health website will is encrypted. It ensures that your website’s and visitors' data is not vulnerable to a cyber attack.
If your healthcare website does not use SSL security, it will attract a penalty from Google towards your rankings. It is a must to have this certificate, and it is more important for a healthcare website like yours because you are accepting sensitive information from patients on your site.
Another important factor is your website’s mobile-friendliness. Your site must be mobile-friendly. Most people search for information on Google with their mobile devices. A website that is not optimized for mobile hurts the user experience of your visitors. It will make them opt for your competitors.
The best way to optimize your site for mobile is by getting a responsive design through medical SEO services. Doing this ensures that your website automatically changes to fit whatever screen people are viewing it on. It also reduces the risk of bad user experiences from different devices.
5. Pay Attention To Local SEO
Optimize and update your Google My Business page. It will help patients who are after local services to discover you. On mobile, these groups of related businesses are the first thing people see before they scroll down. The information about your healthcare business should be available and accurate about your business categories, primary phone number, business description, operating hours, address, and reviews.
