How to Ensure Success with Your Medical SEO Strategy
If you read this article, you’re likely beginning or somewhere amidst an SEO campaign. Maybe you’ve seen results, or perhaps you haven’t. SEO can be a long-winded process that leads many to give up. However, giving up won’t allow you to achieve the results and benefits you’ve heard abundantly. The key to SEO is consistency and persistence with quality content. Of course, SEO isn’t that simple. But if you do those things, you’ll set yourself apart from 95% of the competition.
We understand that it can be worrisome to conduct keyword research and optimize on-page and off-page SEO. So we’ve put this article together to cover how SEO works for medical practices, why it’s essential in the digital age, local SEO best practices, PPC versus SEO, and the best strategies to ensure success. We know that was a lot, so let’s jump into it.
What is medical SEO?
SEO (search engine optimization) for medical practices is the process of optimizing a website for Google search to earn higher web traffic levels and improve the site’s visibility. You can accomplish this enhancement by improving rankings for specific keywords that potential patients are known to search for when looking for medical help.
It’s no secret that organic traffic continues to be the most valuable source of website visitors. Research has shown that organic traffic converts higher than any marketing campaign, including paid advertising. It has a higher conversion rate, but it’s also less expensive than paid campaigns like PPC (pay-per-click) in terms of long-term ROI.
While SEO can be complex, there are many aspects of it that you can control. The most important part is providing high value to people reading your site, ensuring they stay longer.
Why is local SEO important for medical practices?
Medical SEO is essential for two reasons:
- It allows you to reach patients actively looking for medical help in your area.
- It will enable you to build trust with potential patients by increasing your visibility.
If you want to attract new patients, you need to make sure your website appears when they’re searching for a medical practice like yours. That’s where local SEO comes into play. Local SEO is optimizing your website to appear higher in search engine results pages (SERPs) for searches related to your location. So, for example, if someone searches for “medical help near me,” your goal is to appear as high up on the list as possible.
Many factors go into ranking for local SEO. The most important are:
- Relevance: How relevant is your website to the searcher’s needs?
- Proximity: How close is the searcher to your business?
- Prominence: How well-known is your company in the offline world?
If you want to improve your local SEO, you must start with your Google My Business.
Google My Business is a free listing that allows businesses to control how they appear on Google Maps and in the local pack (the section of the SERP that shows three local companies).
Another way to improve local SEO is by generating positive reviews and testimonials. Reviews are essential for two reasons: they improve your ranking in SERPs and build social proof, which is the idea that other people’s opinions of your business influence potential customers.
The more positive reviews you have, the higher your rank in SERPs. And the more social proof you have, the more potential patients will choose your practice over competitors.
Should you perform PPC or SEO campaigns?
If you have the budget to do both campaigns at once, we highly recommend it. Otherwise, we recommend sticking to SEO for a long-term success strategy. On the other hand, if you need quick leads, then PPC might be better in the short term.
When you pair SEO with PPC, you can get the best of both worlds: the quick leads from PPC and the long-term benefits of SEO.
The best SEO practices to ensure success
There’s no magic bullet when it comes to SEO. However, you can follow certain best practices to help ensure success.
The first is to create high-quality content relevant to your potential patients. This content should be well researched and answer any questions they might have. It should also be engaging and easy to read. If the content is easily digestible for the average person, it is more probable that they’ll stay on the page.
When you’re creating content, you start with keyword research. That’s how you make the content relevant to specific search queries. Then, you’re content needs to be valuable. Here is where you should try to differentiate your content from the competition. Look at their content, and see what you can do better. What parts are they missing? According to Digital Authority Partners, creating high-quality content is essential for medical SEO.
The next best practice is to create a mobile-friendly website. This approach is essential for medical SEO because people often search for medical help on their phones. If your website isn’t mobile-friendly, they’re likely to click off and find one that is.
To make sure your website is mobile-friendly, check Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test. This analysis will give you a report of what needs improvement on your website. Once you’ve made those changes, recheck the test to ensure everything is working correctly.
The last best practice is to keep an eye on your competition and constantly refine. Before, we mentioned persistence and consistency. That still reigns true. When you’re keeping eyes on your competition, see what they’re doing and try to one-up them.
Takeaways
SEO is a long-term game, so it’s essential to constantly learn and refine your strategy. In addition, the competition iscontinually changing, so you need to be able to change with them. You can ensure success with your medical SEO strategy by following these best practices. We recommend scheduling a few calls with some SEO agencies if you’re unsure where to begin. Partnering with an agency is an excellent idea if you want to focus on what you do best, running your medical practice. Hiring experts take a lot of frustration out of the process, so you can feel better about doing it.