Fundamentals of health SEO to grow your medical practice

When it's time to find a healthcare professional, many patients turn to Google to find the closest and best option.

Your website that appearing at the top of the list means patients are more likely to click and schedule an appointment.

If your practice is not at the top of the search results, someone from The other is.

Your competition.

Which means you may lose out on new patients.

That 's why healthcare SEO is essential for any medical website.

If you aren't capitalizing on organic queries, you're essentially giving these patients over to your competition.

Paying attention to Google's most recent recommendations for good SEO, especially inAs for the target health content , you can beat the competition and see your digital presence skyrocket.

Quality control

Many healthcare professionals think pay-per-click , or PPC, the advertisements are enough to attract the visitors they are looking for.

However, starting with CPAP is like putting an adhesive bandage on your problem. This will only be good in the short term.

As a medical or healthcare business, you need to integrate SEO into your digital marketing to attract potential patients to your website.

Consistently. And in the long term.

If your website and its content are not rated as quality in the eyes of Google, your search presence will suffer.

ESpeaking of quality, two extremely important concepts for health are EAT and YMYL .

EAT stands for expertise, authority and reliability.

The concept was created to help third-party reviewers evaluate Google search results.

While EAT is not a direct ranking factor, EAT reveals a lot about what Google considers important - basically those types of websites that Google wants to reward with higher visibility in searches.

EAT is of utmost importance for all web pages with medical information.

The information and statistics you provide about medicine and health could have an impact on the potential patients who read them.

People visit and read your web pages because they are looking for reasons to entrust their health to your practice.

Your informations must be absolutely top-notch, literally filled with expertise, authority and reliability.

It is only then that you even have a chance to rank well in the healthcare industry.

This brings us directly to the concept of YMYL, which is the abbreviation for Your Money or Your Life.

YMYL, as a concept, essentially means any content that can directly affect a reader's health, finances, or safety.

Obviously, this concept is important to understand in the competitive space of healthcare.

If your content does not meet these standards (for example, it has inaccuracies or lacks information), it will be even more difficult to rank in search results.

The Most Important SEO Strategies For Health

You can never outperform a site like WebMD.

However, focusing on longer tail keywordse and location-based content, it is possible to perform moderately well here.

By implementing the right kind of SEO to get your medical practice in front of the right users, you will put your website in a better position to outperform your competition.

The following six strategies are the most important when it comes to SEO in the healthcare industry.

1. Use appropriate medical keywords

When optimizing your content, you want target the right keywords for your industry.

Your starting point should be the medical services you offer, as that is what most researchers are looking for.

Tools such as Google ' s Keyword Planner can help you troFind the best keywords for your industry, comparing what is searched and what is not.

As in all cases, avoid "stuffing " keywords into the content.

Google quickly understands this tactical spam and will penalize your website. Instead, insert specific long-tail keywords into your content in a relevant, readable, and natural way.

Not only will this separate you from WebMDs, but you'll also begin to attract the patients you want - those who live in your geographic area and seek the specialist expertise you offer.

2. Add lots of content pages

Your content pages should contain high quality information optimized with your keywords.

For the medical industry, you want your content to help you improve or simplify the life of your audience.

Whether it is a detailed deion of your services or blog posts targeting their specific search query, high quality content is king for healthcare companies.

Google places a much higher standard on medical web pages than other industries.

This is because these pages can have an impact on the future health, happiness or financial stability of Internet users.

Poor quality content on these pages can lead to dangerous or unintended medical consequences.

Always think about your target audience when creating content for your website.

What are they looking for?

What information will help them the most for this research?

By wri When it comes to long-lasting educational content, Google will recognize you as an authoritative figure in the industry, thus increasing your ranking.

3. Optimize visual elements

LVideo is one of the most popular ways to consume content.

Web pages with videos can generate more organic traffic.

And people are spending more time on these pages because they are watching the video.

This increases a user's time on the page and signals to search engines that something valuable is on the page for users.

When optimizing your website for SEO, be sure to include relevant, high-quality videos alongside your content where you can.

Whether it is a virtual tour of the facility or an informative video on a medical condition, many users will be drawn to this content of over 600 words of text gross.

You should also include a variety of images and infographics on your website. The more interactive and engaging your site, the more visitors you will be able to attract.

Make sure all images on your site include appropriate alt text as well. The alt text in the image helps visually impaired users and Google crawlers better understand what is displayed on the page.

This can be a great opportunity to incorporate some of your keywords. (But, as with everything SEO, don't overdo it!)

4. Optimize website speed, security and mobile usage

The speed, security and usability of your website are all ranking factors.

If your website takes more than three seconds to load, a lot of people may back off and go to a competitor who offers a faster experience.

Now that said, it's important to mention that slow sites can rank well for some queries. Google doesn't penalize an otherwise perfect site just for being a bitslower.

But optimizing your speed certainly can't hurt the overall user experience.

At most, your website should take about two seconds to load, but ideally you should aim for less than half a second.

The PageSpeed ​​tool Google Insights is a great place to check your site's current speed. It also provides information on potential fixes to help you improve your speed score.

Another important SEO factor is the security of your website. An SSL certificate encrypts your website, ensuring that its data and that of your visitors is protected from hackers.

If your healthcare company 's site does not use SSL security, Google will penalize your ranking. This certificate is essentialable when accepting sensitive patient information. So there is no excuse for a website not to do this.

Most importantly, your website should be mobile-friendly. The majority of searches are now done on mobile devices, and if your website isn't optimized for them, users will choose your competition's websites instead.

The best way to make sure your site is optimized for mobile is by having a responsive design.

This means that your site automatically changes to fit the screen it is displayed on, reducing the risk of poor user experience from device to device.

5. Offsite Factors

Offsite metrics (for example, links to your site and social media traffic) are just two areas that can help you influence your search ranking.

Social networks, allIt isn 't a direct ranking factor, should be one of your top priorities when it comes to offsite SEO.

Content found on a social media page can significantly influence a patient's choice of hospital or treatment center.

Many users also take social media reviews into account before making an appointment.

You want to make sure that your social profile is up to date and relevant to your business so that users can find you and interact with you in different ways.

When it comes to links, you also want to make sure that spam links don't potentially hurt your SEO performance.

Use your favorite link building tool to check your existing link profile and analyze the links qui appear.

Are they all quality, relevant sources? Or do a lot of them appear to be spam?

Disavow all unwanted links to help clean up your link profile and improve your ranking. ( Read this first .)

6 . Local SEO

You must also keep your page optimized for Google My Business and up to date.

Patients want local services and in order for them to find you, your business needs to appear in Google's local pack.

This group of 4 to 5 companies appear above the natural search results.

On mobile, these are the only things internet users see before scrolling.

The information contained in these sheets comes mainly from your page GMB. must ensure that the following information is accurate and available:

• Business categories.
• Your main phone number.
• The deion of the company.
• Your opening hours (and all seasonal hours).
• Your address or service area.
• Google reviews of your business.

The local quotes constitute another critical factor for local SEO.

These are online mentions of your business that display your essential NAP information (name, address, phone).

Local quotes can come from business directories, social profiles, blog posts, newspaper websites and other sources.

All of this helps your SEO efforts.

Conclusion

If you want a better ranking on Google - et more patients - you need to make sure you have an SEO Strategy.

It may take some time to develop your medical practice.

The right approach can therefore make all the difference.

By implementing the SEO strategies above, you are taking the necessary steps to secure your digital presence.

Nothing is ever guaranteed in digital marketing, but by keeping the EAT and YMYL qualities of your web content in mind at all times, you put yourself in a better position to outperform your competitors and start sucking ceed online.

More resources:

• Why Bing should be number one in your healthcare research strategy [DATA]
• New guide Google My Business for healthcare providers
• 101 quick and actionable tips to improve your SEO

Image In -Post: pixabay