How important is medical SEO? Running a medical practice is difficult and time-consuming. After all, you’re a busy medical practitioner with a full schedule. Yet, if you want your medical practice to get noticed and your patients to quickly find you, medical SEO is key. Here are 5 fail-safe SEO strategies for medical practices.
Publish Your Local Listings
Be sure your website has your name, local address and local phone number on every one of your pages, not just your homepage. This is key for consistency, visibility and good SEO overall. Also, use the exact details on other sites, if you collaborate elsewhere online.
Getting a Google My Business page and optimizing it for medical marketing is a great move. Google gives three top spots for local search results. It’s highly likely patients will pick one of these choices, since Google is serving them on a gold platter. You can claim your Google My Business page here.
Local reviews are key. Google Reviews are great and so is your Yelp page, which is used by Apple maps. Use them both and you’ll have both giants working for you.
Categorize Your Website Content
Be sure to categorize your top banner for the specific products and services you offer. If you offer dermatology as the main service, have it show up first on your banner. This not only tells your patients about your most prevalent offering, it helps your medical SEO. If you’re not sure what keywords to use for your banner, do a little research as to what your colleagues and competitors are using.
Post on Your Social Media Channels Regularly
According to Pew Research Center, 74% of internet users engage on social media. About 80% of those internet users are specifically looking for health information, and nearly half are searching for information about a specific doctor or health professional. Social media expands your reach and builds trust because it lets your patients see who you are and what you’re up to.
Build Local Backlinks
Backlinks are one of the most important ranking factors for Google and other search engines. Establishing backlinks means having a relationship with other sites and content. If you’re involved in a local event, ask for your website to be featured on their site. When patients click on your backlink through someone else’s site, it generates traffic to you, which is wonderful for your medical marketing.
Building Relationships
Building localized links for your medical practice can do wonders for your traffic and also help your practice build offline relationships. Link building can often involve outreach to other relevant blogs and websites in your target industry. What does this mean for the success of your medical practices’ online presence?
By reaching out to leaders in your medical niche and asking for a link builds trust and credibility for your practice. A simple way of conducting outreach is to create a piece of content on your site that’s relevant and compelling. After you’ve completed the content, reach out to medical influencers via social media or a direct email and ask for a link.
Remember to link your social media channels on your web page. This is also a form of using backlinks.
Optimize Your Website for Mobile
How important is your mobile presence today? According to Salesforce.com, 71% of marketers believe mobile marketing is core to their business. In other words, if your website is not optimized for mobile, your competitors will outrank your practice and patience will go elsewhere for care.
Our Mobile phones are our personal assistants. They host everything from our calendars to our to-do lists, and our transportation apps. Chances are, if someone sends us a link to a website, we’ll click on it right there and then. If your website isn’t mobile ready, you may be missing on some serious traffic.
Create New Content Regularly
For medical marketing, at least one new blog post a month is key. Sticking with a content calendar provides a plethora of benefits for your practice. Google and other search engines prioritize mobile-friendly sites over ones that aren’t and creating a steady flow of fresh new content that looks great on tablets and phones are a great way to build trust with your patients.
It’s a commitment that gives your patients something to look forward to and because you’ll establish a specific cadence, they’ll know when to expect your new content.
Additionally, it builds authority with your patients in your field of expertise. They’ll know who to go to when they have a question about your specialty because they’ll remember your posts.
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The good news is, digital marketing isn’t very complicated and is one of the most impactful ways to reach new patients. We’re here to help and understand the importance of your return on investment. We’d love to hear more about your goals. Feel free and contact us at 720-491-1442 for a free consultation. In the meantime, stay in the know if our monthly newsletter.