10 SEO Tips For Growing Your Medical Practice

1. Make a good design

Medical website designs should be modernized.The process should be thought of as a constant work in progress, such as what's given for updates to various applications. More than likely, there will be something one comes across relevant to the interface that must be altered, updated, and taken out altogether. On top of updates, pages should contain easily reachable information about the name, phone number, and address of the practice. These are needed as other review sites will want them, which can go a long way to generating additional notoriety.

2. Pay attention to online reviews

All medical and healthcare SEO that successfully has a testimonial and review page. The reviews should consist of first and third parties, primarily taken from websites such as Google, Yelp, and Facebook. Reviews are a good indicator of how a page should rank based on a search engine's algorithm. They also give an air of objectivity on the healthcare company's part. Reviews also show that the page owner cares about their image and is open to change and constructive criticism. For these reasons and more, medical practitioners encourage their patients and clients to leave reviews often.

3. Ensure listing on Google My Business

Healthcare practices that are listed on Google My Business are more likely to rank higher on Google search engine results. But a list must be updated, verified, and claimed for this to occur. If no listing is yet created, it should be done if Google hasn't already.

Google may have some information about a healthcare business already, but the listing itself will probably need to be updated to correct missing, incomplete, or incorrect information. When a listing does show, it could be viewed on Google Maps, even if the owner has never done anything with it before.

Therefore, it's imperative to stay updated on SEO whenever possible, as Google and other users can interact with it. And if the info's wrong or out of date, it may cause a potential patient to look elsewhere for failure to get in touch with someone working for the company. Healthcare providers move locations quite frequently, making lots of errors show up on Google My Business profile. Even well-known industries have the probe, which is easy to correct.

Once the listing's been claimed, verification should follow. These updates will be sent to Google and allow for better analytics on the practice's website. When the verification is complete, the profile should be finalized with the correct address, name of service, and contact information.

4. A Facebook business page for starters

Whether it's for an entrepreneur in the healthcare business or a seasoned doctor working their practice, having a Facebook business page is strongly recommended. Facebook is a crucial site for getting good SEO rankings.

Facebook pages oftentimes rank high on search engines, particularly those revolving around niche practices like therapy for children, dermatology, or physical therapy clinics. When it comes to search ranking, Facebook has lots of potential to broaden a practice's visibility in a way that other social media sites have yet to match.

5. Listing profiles and third-party reviews should be claimed

Listing sites don't stop with Google. There are dozens of them just as crucial to getting visibility. These include review directories, listings pages, and similar sites primarily for the healthcare industry. Just like Google My Business, they can all be named and verified. Besides Google and Facebook, some of the most popular is Vitals and Yellow Pages.

When listings are updated on any page, the information contained in them should be uniform across the board. When Google has more information to work with based on multiple listing pages, social media sites, and others, it can attach the site of the practice to search queries that people have a higher chance of looking at.

6. Video content is a must

Video is a great way to boost conversations around one's medical practice and create better relationships with the kind of patient a healthcare company wants. It allows potential clients to understand what they do, how much they can be trusted, and foster a general relationship with their staff.

Some marketing programs done by people in the healthcare industry have providers that work in content development. This is key for organizations where patients wish to have video content showing what they do to anyone that wishes to see it.

As such, uploading videos into articles and blog posts can raise the time that potential patients spend on a company's page, thus contributing to better rankings.

7. Take advantage of keyword research

Key research should be done for more localized SEO. It's the primary component of how SEO works. There are plenty of free and paid resources for this.

One primary keyword can show businesses the volume of searches being done for it, backlinks, and top page info.

Keywords that are related to the primary can also be discovered by a quick Google search and viewing the words in the Searches related to the field. Long tail keywords are also useful, or words closely related to a company's focus keyword.

Once a group of keywords is gathered, they would be placed in section titles on any of the pages they're relevant to on a healthcare company's site. This means placing the keywords in the header tag in HTML.

8. Gathering patient reviews

Patient reviews from people that previously went to a healthcare practice can be collected. High-rating reviews are often spotted by Google's algorithms and placed near the top of web rankings.

It's a way that Google verifies when other people consider a service to be valid, one that's deserving of more people's attention. Although some practices are reluctant to place newly generating reviews on their site for fear of getting bad feedback, high-quality reviews that are generated consistently through good practice can counter this.

9. Have a content marketing strategy

With SEO, content marketing hasn't died out yet. It can come in the form of making blog posts, podcasts, infographics, videos, and additional mediums.

While this can be done, the focus should be on content media that can be made most often, either at a little expense or that fits within the marketing budget of a healthcare company.

It should be accompanied by keyword analysis and factored into a business' long-term SEO and marketing strategy. Google Analytics can be useful in this area, as it allows companies to find out what content receives the most traction and views.

10. Making use of backlinks

Backlinks are done when a website links to another website. This connection is called a backlink as it directly leads to the page that linked it. Good backlinks are good points of validation for the credibility of a website, where the public and Google view it as a trusted source of information.

Why Is SEO Important For Doctors With A Medical Practice?

SEO for medical practice can boost the number of potential clients that find a company's website and establish a company as a leader in their field of practice.

Approximately 80% of patients rely on the internet to find out information about their health each year. With that number, companies must shift their exposure to the web for them to gain notoriety in the communities they serve.It also helps to build a relationship with prospective employees and other related businesses.

When relevant people in the healthcare industry see high-ranking sites closely aligned to their niche, it encourages them to make recommendations to their viewership.Here are additional benefits of SEO for doctors:

• Keeps up with the trends - Instead of phone books, the average person will look for a medical practice through their favorite web portal, which usually has a search engine attached. Medical professionals have to make sure that their sites are close to the rankings their potential patients see. No longer is what they're looking for likely to be in every phone book listing.
  
• Can boost private pay - private pay patients are those with the financial backing or health insurance capable of giving them the ability to pay for their medical costs outside of a primary care organization. Such people will often go to Google instead of seeking recommendations from their primary physician.
  
• Good ROIs - Return on investment occurs favorably when a healthcare company earns good profit over the costs of them setting up an SEO strategy. More patient revenue will come in when more people that need their practice are made aware of its existence.
  
• More attractive to repeat patients - Good patients might be judged according to the number of times they come in, whether it be through their insurance company's request or other factors. The best method of getting more patients willing to see the same practitioner can boost recommendations, good reviews, and in turn, more revenue for a company.