When patients are searching, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) helps them in finding your practice.
In today’s digital world, medical SEO or search engine optimization for doctors is an important buzzword, but very few know its importance. Like every other industry, the medical industry has become a highly competitive one. Having the right SEO practices can take your ‘practice’ to newer heights.
SEO is the method used to improve the visibility of your page or website in search engine rankings. Most consumers will not trawl page after page of results on web when looking for a particular service or product. In fact, the top 3 search results for a query receive over 75% of the clicks.
Image Source: Backlinko.com
A strong healthcare SEO strategy requires an investment of time, money, or both, in order to get your website found on page #1 on search engines like Google. With healthcare SEO, the methods or strategies you use will make all the difference in terms of your rankings, website traffic and patient growth compared to other medical providers.
Thus, these elements of inbound marketing the ways how top health websites gain high-quality links, which are the lifeblood of SEO. As you further read, you’ll discover top 7 SEO techniques your healthcare website needs, which you can swiftly implement and enjoy a top place in the search engine results pages (SERPs).
Further Reading: A Healthcare Digital Marketing Guide: 8 Ways to Get More Patients With Digital Marketing in 2020
According to Search Engine Journal, SEO leads have a 14.6% close rate in converting patients, while outbound leads (such as direct mail or print advertising) have a 1.7% close rate.
Still questioning the value of SEO for your practice? Well, we know you’re still processing it and thus, here are top 5 benefits of implementing SEO for hospitals, clinics and doctors. Read it and you’ll believe in the power of SEO algorithm.
Here are top 5 benefits of implementing SEO on your medical website:
#1 ranking means that when people search for a particular term related to your medical practice or treatment, your web page is the first result to be seen. When used SEO techniques effectively, you’ll certainly see an improvement in ranking.
You may have heard the classic quote from Brian Clark at Copyblogger when he said: “The best place to hide a dead body is page 2 of the Google search results.” Sure, we don’t want that!
SEO is a key component of inbound sales strategy, where new customers can come to you. SEO has a high rate of return compared to other media, as it lasts longer than other Medias. It is cheaper, quantifiable and offers credibility and trust to your audience.
Going through the traditional route of acquiring new patients can cost you more than they will ever pay you. As online marketing costs are relatively inexpensive, you can reduce the patient acquisition cost with an effective SEO strategy in place.
Deploying SEO strategies helps you to increase your rank in search engine results pages, giving more exposure for your brand. This leads to more clicks, more website traffic, and eventually, more sales.
According to HubSpot, 80% of a website’s traffic begins with a search query. Having said that, optimizing your website will boost your search ranking on the results page, which helps you attract the right buyers.
Does my healthcare business need SEO? Yes, because if you are not improving, your competition will surpass you sooner or later. As your competition moves ahead of you in search results, your new web traffic, new revenue and ROI will begin to fall.
Every company with a website needs SEO. Even your healthcare website! Using SEO has great benefits for medical practices. It ensures the much-needed exposure, which guarantees a prosperous future.
Still doubtful? These stats will change your mind.
SEO has become a necessity to get patients today. It is important for every medical practice to invest in SEO strategies to stand out and stay ahead in the marketing landscape. Hence, SEO not only provides a higher ROI, but also increases credibility, traffic, visibility, reputation, and branding.
Here are the 7 actionable SEO tactics & strategies for healthcare providers and the means of attracting new patients irrespective of the size and specialty of a medical practice:
The days of getting a search ranking by stuffing your content full of keywords are the news of the BC era. Today, it’s a lot different. But that doesn’t mean keywords are obsolete. They should still play a role in your medical organization’s SEO strategy.
Focus on top medical search terms in your city or state for your website. Focusing on local keywords is extremely fruitful for medical practitioners.
For Example –
Imagine that you’re promoting your hospital’s brand-new cardiac center in Mumbai location.
Here are some sample keyword phrases you can include in your SEO campaign for Mumbai location:
Now that you understand what keywords are, now the real work starts. You must come up with a solid game plan to research the best keywords for your online healthcare marketing strategy.
Further Reading: A Healthcare Marketer’s Guide to SEO Keyword Strategy
With proper on-page optimization, you will be well on your way to getting lots of free and targeted traffic from the search engines.
On-page optimization involves creating your website’s structure in a manner that it will appear friendly to both users and the search engines. Basically, it will involve the following on your website Adding relevant Meta tags, URLs optimization, content optimization, website code optimization, internal links optimization, optimizing all the images used in the site etc.
On-page SEO is an important factor in determining your website’s rankings. On-page SEO is the act of optimizing your web pages so that search engines can find and rank them correctly.
On-page SEO prominent search engines like Google – who you are and that you should be at the top of the search results when your keywords are entered in. Without on-page SEO, your website could be left in the dust.
You want to maximize conversions? On-page SEO is your route.
When creating new landing pages – or looking to improve existing ones – consider this On-Page SEO Checklist, which can help you boost the SEO effectiveness of your medical website without impacting the ability of your pages to convert. All in all, it’s a win win – and it’s well worth the time!
Here is basic On-Page SEO parameters for healthcare website:
Title tags are an HTML (coding) element which works at the backend of your site that gives titles of your web pages. The title you read which is displayed on SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) are the clickable headline for a given search result.
The meta description is one of the most powerful tools you have in the SERPs, as it’s the only place in the search engine where you can essentially get ad copy for free. Make those characters count by utilizing the space with a call to action, USPs, your brand name, any geographic locations/featured details about your business, etc.
If you’re using images on your pages, be sure that they are relevant to the topic, are attractive, and are using relevant alt text, title and captions. As a matter of fact, using alt tags is probably the best way for your medical services to show up in Google image and web search because search engines read alt text.
H1, H2 & H3 are called header tags, and are an important on-page SEO factor. The purpose of H tags is to tell Google how the content is structured for readability. E.g. Our title describes the topic of this post, followed by sub-headings which further explains and goes into detail about On-Page SEO.
When it comes to your website, security matters. You protect yourself and your consumers by making your website HTTPS instead of HTTP. HTTPS is a way to encrypt information that you send between a browser and a web server. This protects your website’s users stealing the information, like credit card information or logins.
A URL is human-readable text that was designed to replace the numbers (IP addresses) that computers use to communicate with servers. If you want your customers to be attracted to your website and to keep returning regularly, you have to ensure your URL is simple, short and user-friendly.
Algorithms consider a higher ranking factor of a website if it’s got the ingredients of ‘mobile-friendliness’. Having a mobile optimized website increases the usability of users to browse the internet and is very good for SEO for the same reason.
Speeding up websites is important — not just to site owners, but to all Internet users. Faster sites create happy users and we’ve seen that when a site responds slowly, visitors spend less time there. Make sure you website loading speed is as good as Milkha Singh’s sprint speed 
.
In order to improve your SEO efforts and user experience, you must identity, fix and manage broken links in your website to enhance your website. Broken links are not only annoying, but it can also hurt your SEO efforts as well.
Schema markup guides search engines about your page content which in turns can affect your rankings in SERPs and improve search engine presence of your website. In other words, it indirectly influences your page’s visibility in SERPs.
XML means External Markup Language while HTML means Hyper Text Markup Language. The two markup languages serve different purposes, especially when creating sitemaps but jointly, making it easier for online users and search engines to find content pages from a billion websites. XML and HTML differ, from their creation process and purposes.
It’s amazing the difference a good Google tool can make for your SEO strategy. There are a host of awesome SEO tools that are either free to use or offer a freemium version. Our top picks are SEMrush, Moz Pro, Google Search Console, Google’s Tags Manager and Google Analytics to name a few.
Off page SEO refers to techniques you can use to improve the position of a web site in the search engine results page (SERPs). Many people associate off-page SEO with link building but its not limited to that.
Off-page SEO refers to all the things you can do outside of your website to help you improve SERP position: link building, forums, influencer outreach, and content marketing, to name a few.
In laymen terms, off-page SEO helps search engines understand what others think about your product, services, or website. Even having just a few links from strong, relevant sites with high levels of authority will increase your chances of ranking higher.
Search engines have been trying to find a way to return the best results to the searcher. To achieve this, they take into account the on-site SEO factors (described above), some other quality factors and off-page SEO.
Off page SEO gives a searcher a very good indication on how the World perceive the particular website. A web site that is high quality and useful is more likely to have backlinks from other websites. It’s like having brand mentions on social media and it is more likely to be bookmarked and shared among communities of like-minded users.
For a successful hospital, practice, or healthcare organization website, you’ll need to facilitate a communications that’ll help you win more patients. This only means little if they’re unable to find your website online. To get on page #1 for an Organic search, you’ll want a strong marketing SEO agency, a strong website, but an even stronger healthcare SEO strategy.
Within the SEO community is that the relevance, trustworthiness, and authority that effective off-page SEO affords a website still plays a major role in a page’s ability to rank.
These off-page SEO strategies are a must for your healthcare website:
Having a PR section on your website attracts potential patients to your service portfolio to determine your credibility in the business.
A good blogging structure and good content strategy is a match made in heaven! This fine blend helps your website to position itself relevant to customers’ queries.
Citations are a buildup of healthcare organization’s name, address, and phone number. Google and other search engines use these when evaluating the online authority of your business.
Most patients trust review websites to make their decisions! As a part of your reputation management, you must keep a tab on these sites, and respond accordingly.
Links are vital to improving ranking in Google and other search engines. A website without links isn’t going to get any traffic — from search, or from other websites.
User experience optimization is critical to attract retention. As you improve the website with content and other technical bugs, improving UX helps improve your conversion rates, allowing you to drive increased revenue.
User experience (UX) refers to the behavioral factors that consumers display when interacting with a website. Several factors influence UX, from website design to form design.
More specifically, user experience defines users’ impressions of your website or other application based on how easy and pleasant it is to use. When you improve UX, you create a more desirable place for customers to interact with your brand.
These days, SEO best practices include consideration for the user experience (UX), even for a healthcare website that matters. How easy is your site to navigate? Do you have quality content that makes visitors want to stay and engage? Is your site secure, fast and mobile-friendly?
Think of the partnership of SEO and UX this way: SEO targets search engines, and UX targets your website’s visitors. Both share a common goal of giving users the best experience.
UX best practices for a healthcare website often involve paring down the information you present to visitors so they don’t get distracted or confused. However, this doesn’t mean you have to take a minimalist approach to web design. While there are various tools and techniques that you can use.
Here is our UX optimization checklist for Healthcare Website:
Your website should present information in appropriate sections so visitors can navigate to what they are looking for with ease. Use high-quality original content, descriptive heading, and avoid overuse of keywords.
Having a mobile ready website is more important than ever! It means that having a responsive design, mobile friendly layout, touch-screen sensitive and cross platform compatibility.
Web navigation fundamentally encourages visitors to stay, peruse your content and have a positive user experience, which subsequently leads to more sales and brand loyalty for your business.
Broken site structure/ links and other inconsistencies hinder user experience. Broken links (error 404 or 301 re-directs), non-uniform mobile experience, and over the top ad pop ups need to be fixed.
You may have put the best of content but if it does not support clear readability it’s not going to be of any use. Font selection, font size, better background contrast, and better white space affect your readability.
While the look and feel of your website poses a great importance, usability plays a big role too. Usability and SEO are like cookie and cream, they go hand in hand. Optimizing usability will lead to higher conversion rates.
Your website loading speed is one of the primary factors in user experience. If your website loads fast, you’ve instantly made a strong first impression. You can evaluate your page speed with Google’s PageSpeed Insights.
Traffic acquisition is only half the marketing equation.
Conversion rate optimization (CRO) provides a significant opportunity for businesses of any size, including healthcare. It takes a scientific approach to optimizing websites and enables businesses (and medical organizations) to convert more visitors into subscribers or customers.
When it comes to internet marketing, you can drive additional traffic to your site in order to increase sales, or you can improve the effectiveness of your site to boost sales with the same amount of traffic you’re currently receiving. Conversion rate optimization (CRO) focuses on the latter.
With conversion rate optimization, you evaluate your website’s sales funnel to identify ways you can improve your site in order to get a higher percentage of people signing up for your service.
Within the healthcare industry, website conversion rates can vary from 3% to 8%. Therefore, a website with an 8% conversion rate is doing well. Conversion rate optimization (CRO) could be opting in for a special report or lead magnet, buying a product, downloading an app, or really just about any task that is measurable.
CRO acts as a dietary supplement for SEO efforts. Using CRO best practices, you can create a more positive user experience, establish connections, develop relationships, and build patient trust all through a digital experience.
There is a saying in the digital marketing world, “Websites are your online office.” Your website is a digital property and a representation of your actual hospital or a clinic space. It will establish the first impression potential patients have of your business! When looked at this way, the critical role of CRO is essential to maintaining the health of a medical practice.
Based on our experience with many medical and healthcare clients, we have compiled CRO checklist for healthcare providers:
Here is our Conversion rate optimization (CRO) checklist for Healthcare Website:
Style elements, imagery and text that appeal specifically to website banners in order to retain a visitor or attract a visitor.
Suitable headlines, title and subject lines draw your reader’s attention. Writing compelling headlines is a skill. Writing compelling headlines that also help rank your blog or website through the use of targeted keywords is an art.
Web page copy optimization is achieved by creating copy, text, or content that gives search engines what they want to see, where they want to see it. The first step is keyword research—or keyword optimization.
It isn’t impossible to gain the trust of your website visitors. You can implement a few visual aids such as badges, strong about us page, social proof, testimonials, contact page and other useful information to build trust with your website visitors.
A call to action (CTA) is a prompt on a website that tells the user to take some action. Because it’s so vital to get your CTAs right, you should spend some time making sure they’re optimized in terms of wording, color, positioning, and other factors.
Whether you are building a new website or doing a major overhaul of your current site, you need to have an effective strategy like website design optimization. While you want a website that is aesthetically pleasing, the most important aspect of a site today is its functionality.
Optimizing lead generation form is really important for increasing sales and conversions. Researches show that forms with great designs and layouts bring a lot more conversion than un-optimized forms.
If you’re looking to attract new patients online, you probably already know that everything starts with Google. Today, 1 in 20 Google searches is health related. And to put that in perspective, there are a whopping 3.5 Billion searches per day on Google.
Optimizing the Google My Business listing for your medical practice will dramatically affect how you show up in local search results on Google.
The first Google my Business format shows up if and when you search for a business (doctor, private practice, or hospital) by name and this pops up on the right hand side of the results page:
This box on the right-hand sidebar is known as the Knowledge Panel, aptly named to sound regal and important because it is!
The Knowledge Panel includes pictures, address, hours, phone number, and “Google reviews.” In this way, Google my Business is very similar to other third-party review sites such as Practo.
What differentiates Google My Business and makes it so important, is how the information is presented. Before potential patients have to go anywhere or click on any link, relevant information shows up right when they need it.
Because no one really wants to spend a ton of time researching- patients are more inclined to want to visit a business which answers their questions quickly. If you use your Google My Business profile efficiently, this could be a major improvement for your online presence.
More than ten years ago, writing blogs was just a bloggers forte. Today, it’s mandatory for every business to post blogs. According to Hubspot, medical practices who post blogs experience a 55 percent increase in traffic to their website and are around 13 times more likely to see a return on investment each year.
With such amazing potential of growth, you’ll probably think that every doctor is blogging, right? Unfortunately, that’s not the case. However, it should be.
We’re pretty sure you desire to show up on the first page when patients are searching for a new doctor, or clinic right? Of course, you do. In order for that to happen, you’re going to need a page that is dedicated to your topic which can lead patients to your website.
A good thing about content marketing is you don’t need to push yourself to your patients. By providing relevant and interesting blogs, your patients will definitely be the ones pulling you in. With numerous blogs about a certain topic, you can stand out by posting a blog gives your patient information that’s not generally found on the web.
Traditional marketing strategies such as TV, radio & print ads are old school techniques. They may have worked 20 years ago but as technology rose, search engines, social media, and the World Wide Web began to dominate the marketing world.
Thus, speaking of a blogging strategy, the blog section of a medical website is a highly visited page. So, jumpstart your healthcare practice’s marketing strategy with a unique blog. A great blogging presence builds a truly strong website, and strong websites succeed at search engine optimization. 77% of internet users read blogs.
You can’t argue with these blogging stats, nor can you push aside this jaw-dropping evidence. If you are a medical brand and have yet to decide whether to start blogging or not, this should spur you into action.
The competition is fierce in today’s market. Other healthcare brands are enjoying good client traction and are choosing their services over yours is a starting point for you to understand the power of SEO. We’ve said enough about it already!
Healthcare is one such thriving industry that aims to incorporate SEO as a powerful weapon to forge success. No matter whether you are a doctor, a medical representative, or a medicine supplier, you should not underestimate the importance of SEO. Your website plays significant roles in your business success in the healthcare industry. SEO has worked, currently works, and will continue to work, contributing to bring more visitors and generate leads.
We know the pulse of your patients.
InnoServ Digital is a leading provider of multichannel marketing services, automation and artificial intelligence technology, for medical companies. We work with some of the best healthcare organizations, using a customer centric approach, combined with compelling creative and ground-breaking technology to create remarkable experiences for healthcare professionals.
As healthcare specialists we have the insight to really get under the skin of your audience, so that you can inform and empower with clarity and compassion.
If you’d like to discuss how our skills in strategy, branding, digital or design could help you realize your own goals give us a call on +918793212125 or email us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
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