SEO strategies for doctors entails optimizing your medical practice online content to rank higher in SERPs (search engine results pages). At this point, you may wonder, “Is there a search engine for doctors?”
The most straightforward answer is yes; common medical search engines include Pubmed, OpenMD, and ScienceDirect. Nonetheless, medical search engines are different from what the SEO strategy for doctors focuses on.
Potential patients, your primary target audience, usually use something other than such engines. They use search engines like Google when looking for medical practices or information. This means ranking higher on SERPs helps you capture their attention.
SEO strategy for doctors is all about optimizing your online content. This is designed to offer users valuable information that fulfills their search intent. The site structure and content should also be designed to appeal to search engine crawlers. The combination helps medical practices in many ways, including:
- Websites ranking higher
- Improving online visibility
- Become easily discoverable
- Drive more organic traffic loaded with leads to your medical practice
So, how do you build a strong SEO strategy for doctors? Herein, we’ll highlight measures medical practices can employ to rank higher, establish their niche authoritativeness, and realize long-term success.
Start With Local SEO
Clients physically visit medical practices to receive most healthcare services. Despite the massive technological shift, healthcare significantly relies on physical presence. As such, most potential clients are within your geographical boundaries. It means that local SEO is a crucial starting point.
What is local SEO for doctors?
Local SEO for doctors aims to optimize your practice’s online presence for local searches. This is critical since most searches in the healthcare industry often include a location.
For instance, potential patients include phrases like “near me.” They also use specific location-based keywords, for example, the best primary care doctor in Seattle. Here are the top local SEO measures to consider.
Google Business Profile (GBP)
GBP, formerly Google My Business, is a valuable free tool that lets you be found on Google Maps and search engine queries easily. Doctors can optimize their GBP with aspects including:
- Detailed listing: Provide detailed information about medical practices. This includes the correct address, phone number, services offered, and hours of operation. The main focus is usually NAP (Name, Address, and Phone number). The details make it easier for potential patients to find and contact your medical practice.
Including more details like business hours and services offered further helps potential patients make an informed decision. It also enables you to optimize the listing for search engines, improving your ranking for relevant healthcare services.
- Videos and photos: You can spice up the About section with photos and videos. It is a great way to introduce your team and the healthcare facility. This creates a better sense of the medical practice’s environment, which can help attract more patients.
The information also helps your private practice rank better. This is optimizing the section with relevant keywords and descriptions.
- Google Posts feature: Updates, such as promotions, upcoming events, announcements, and new services, among others, are a great addition to your Google Business Profile listing. The Google Posts feature lets you share short posts, including videos, photos, links, and a CTA button on your Google Business Profile.
Sharing the updates can boost your search engine rankings and attract new clients by keeping them updated about your medical practice.
- Enable bookings: Search engine rankings improve when your online activity signals that you are a valuable resource to the crawlers. Enabling booking directly through the GBP listing can help you achieve this.
Patients won’t have to leave the listing to book an appointment. It means the bounce rate will drop, signaling usefulness to search crawlers. You offer patients a better experience, which drives more clients to your business. You also improve online visibility by consistently increasing the search engine ranking.
- Display online reviews and ratings: Reviews and ratings offer social proof and act like word-of-mouth recommendations. Positive reviews inspire confidence and build trust.
Moreover, search engines usually rank businesses with good ratings and positive reviews higher. The higher ranking improves online visibility. These contributions make attracting new patients to your medical practice easier.
Local general and specialized online directories
Google Business Profile is the most popular business listing directory, but others exist. Yelp and Yellow Pages, among other business directories, can help improve your SEO efforts. Listing on such directories is a common Barnacle SEO strategy. Barnacle SEO lets you leverage popular sites to improve your site’s visibility, credibility, and traffic.
As you focus on local SEO, the trick is to pick local directories. Specialized directories are a great starting point. This is because such directories generate more qualified leads.
Users visiting specialized directories mostly intend to find and engage a service, meaning you’ll easily attract leads ready to convert.
General directories offer an extensive reach. This can drive more traffic to your practice. The main trick when listing on general directories is to ensure consistency, especially concerning your NAP.
Geo-targeted landing pages
Using geo-targeted landing pages is crucial to your SEO strategy for doctors. This is more so if you operate in different cities. Geo-targeted pages ensure that you include keywords specific to a given geographic area. The keywords help improve ranking in local SERPs.
Geo-targeted landing pages offer better click-through rates. This is because users click more on results relevant to their search query. In healthcare, location is a significant check. Geo-targeted landing pages will help drive more traffic to your medical practice website and generate more qualified leads.
Local SEO is at the heart of a successful SEO strategy for doctors, considering the need for in-person services in health care. Implementing the above measures can supercharge your SEO quests and improve your local search ranking. This makes it easier to attract prospective patients in your area and improve conversion rates with helpful content.
Consider Technical SEO
A healthy website makes it easier for search engine spiders to crawl and index your pages. If concerns like broken links characterize your website, your ranking efforts can’t deliver the best results.
Technical SEO doesn’t just affect how search engine spiders crawl and index your site. It is a significant part that impacts user experience.
Investing more in technical SEO ensures healthcare providers have healthy websites that search engines love and offer a great user experience. Among the measures to help improve your technical SEO aspects include:
Site speed
Picture this: a prospective patient has some symptoms they aren’t sure if they warrant an emergency or urgent care service. They hit the search engine and find your website with the content that covers the symptoms. However, the page takes a few minutes to load.
What is likely to happen is that they’ll leave and look elsewhere. This is more so since they are already anxious, and the wait only worsens the situation. Site speed is a critical technical SEO check that helps offer users a better experience and improves site ranking.
You can improve site speed through measures like:
- Optimizing media like images
- Using a caching plugin
- Selecting a reliable hosting service
- Minimizing plugins
- Keeping the code updated
- Increasing the bandwidth
A site that loads quickly is valuable since it helps minimize bounce rate and rank higher.
Responsive and mobile-friendliness
Ensuring that your site performs well across all devices is critical. This is more so now that more consumers prefer their mobile devices. Ensuring your site is responsive and mobile-friendly touches on areas such as:
- Text
- Images
- Buttons
- Navigation
Simply put, when users browse your site using a smartphone, they enjoy the same experience as when using a PC. This lowers the bounce rate and signals to the crawlers that your website is reliable, resulting in better SEO rankings.
Structured data
Have you added a structured data code to your website? Clear site structure can significantly boost your search ranking. Search engines easily understand the content on each page and index them accordingly.
Users also have an easier time navigating the well-structured pages. They are more visually attractive and easy to navigate, offering a better user experience. This improves visibility, lead generation, and conversions since users spend more time on such websites.
Privacy and security
HTTPS is a light ranking factor, but it is crucial. That “Not Secure” warning, as users interact with websites, can result in higher bounce rates and, consequently, a drop in search ranking. Users want to feel secure when interacting with you online.
Using HTTPS protects potential patients. Such privacy and security can inspire confidence and make it easier to keep them hooked on your website long enough to convert.
Site errors
Technical SEO can only be completed by addressing concerns like URL redirects, broken/dead links, and 404 error pages. Such problems significantly impact your site’s performance. Fixing them ensures that users enjoy a seamless browsing experience. This sends positive signals to search engines, improving SEO rankings.
Concerns like broken links don’t just impact the browsing experience. They can affect the link juice, diluting your link-building efforts. You can address this by using broken link checkers and fixing the dead links promptly.
Duplicate content
Your website has many pages. Sometimes, it is tricky to keep a stock of the content therein. Page descriptions, title tags, and Meta tags can also prove overwhelming to craft. You might decide to use the same content, but this can significantly sink your SEO as it results in duplicate content.
Duplicate content means you have similar content on different pages, affecting how crawlers index pages. The crawlers have difficulty picking the best version of the content to display. This means a page that should rank higher on a certain keyword may not be prioritized.
Duplicate content also significantly dilutes your link-building efforts. This is not to mention the impact on user experience. The bounce rate is likely to skyrocket since users feel like they’re interacting with the same content on different pages. This further dips your search ranking.
Giving technical SEO more attention can turn your efforts around. The good news is that numerous online tools like Google Analytics can help improve your process. This is from duplicate content and broken link checkers to site speed and responsiveness test tools.
A comprehensive technical error and SEO issues report makes catching and fixing them more manageable. This boosts your SEO strategy’s effectiveness, ensuring your efforts deliver desirable results.
Invest in High-quality Content
Have you ever wondered, “What are the 3 C’s of SEO?” The answer is content, code, and credibility. Content is the most important part of SEO. The code focuses on the technical SEO.
Content is king: While this sounds like a cliché, the phrase has stood the test of time. High-quality original content is SEO’s backbone, especially considering its role in establishing experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (EEAT).
Consistent use of relevant, comprehensive, and accurate content tells search engines that your website is a valuable resource. This means you’ll establish authority and trust and rank higher.
Search engines strive to always only show relevant and high-quality results on SERPs. As such, investing in high-quality content takes you a step closer to appearing on the first search results page. Search engines aren’t the only ones that appreciate top-class content.
Your target audience can only stay hooked on your website if you consistently provide useful content. For instance, when potential patients search for information on topics like health tips or particular symptoms, they want to find comprehensive and accurate content.
When you upload helpful content, users will keep returning to consume it. The more they keep coming back and spending time on your page, the higher you’ll rank since such actions send positive signals to crawlers.
The bottom line is that the audience and search engines favor high-quality content. Such content makes your website authoritative and builds trust. This is a critical check for medical professionals, considering the intricate nature of their services.
Content creation and distribution process
Naturally, everyone wants to use high-quality content. However, the content creation and distribution process can be overwhelming.
Content writing
Content writing is the most time and resource-intensive aspect of content marketing. Many organizations outsource content writing to professionals like ContentGo.
Outsourcing ensures that you consistently use relevant content across the board. The professionals have the resources to create high-quality content aligned with your target audience’s needs and optimized for search engines.
The common types of content that should be in your healthcare SEO strategy for doctors include:
- Videos
- Podcasts
- Blog posts
- Infographics
- Case studies
- FAQs
A notable bit of content creation is keyword research. Keyword research ensures that you use relevant keywords in your niche. The keywords help search engines learn what your site is about, index, and rank higher on relevant search results.
Thorough keyword research lets you incorporate relevant keywords commonly used by the target audience when looking for medical practice and services. This means you won’t simply use keywords commonly used in the healthcare industry.
You’ll employ specific keywords relevant to your practice and specific services. These keywords have the potential to rank higher and generate more organic search traffic.
Besides helping you craft content that ranks better, keyword research helps you discover more content creation opportunities. You also gain more insights about your target audience. This helps you to craft more target content and keep churning fresh and relevant materials.
Keyword research is only one bit of the content creation, though. A lot more goes into the process. You’ve to research and brainstorm relevant topics. You then outline, write a draft, edit, and optimize.
Content distribution
Before publishing, you must craft a practical strategy. This includes establishing:
- Reasonable publishing frequency
- Where to post
- Which type of content to upload
The plan is a crucial part of the SEO strategy for doctors. This is because effective distribution is equally important as high-quality content.
You want your content to reach a wider audience base. This means you won’t simply be publishing content on your website. You need to consider additional channels to maximize your content’s reach.
Exploring diverse content distribution options is recommended. It ensures you upload the content where your target audience is and capture their interest. Among the ways to expand your reach is content syndication. This entails re-publishing your content on high-quality content syndication sites like Medium. Content syndication makes reaching a wider audience base easier.
High-quality content and effective distribution set your SEO strategy for doctors on the right track. This even opens up more SEO opportunities, including link-building and influencer collaborations.
Develop a Rich Backlinks Portfolio
Backlinks are a must-consider as you develop an SEO strategy for doctors. Quality backlinks signal to search engines that you are an authoritative and trustworthy website.
Each quality backlink is a vote of confidence in search engines’ eyes. They signal that your website is so reliable that they use it as a reference in your niche. Backlinks also expand your content’s reach. This helps improve brand awareness and generate organic traffic.
You can explore various backlinking strategies. Among the most effective backlinking SEO strategies for doctors is PR backlinks. This is especially from local media. Securing interviews from local media services offers notable link juice. It also lets you provide the audience with vital health information.
The interview is also a chance to secure mentions and high-authority backlinks. This is a win-win for everyone. The audience accesses valuable information, and the media service gains more content. The backlink helps by thrusting your SEO efforts to the next level.
Another smart strategy to build quality backlinks is leveraging broken links. This entails scouting authority websites in the medical niche and looking for broken links. Once you find them, offer to fix the backlinks with a relevant one from your pages.
The strategy is effective since quality content easily appeals to the high-authority site. You also fix their broken link problem, which helps their search ranking. This makes securing collaboration opportunities easier with sites offering notable link juice.
Other ways to gain more backlinks include:
- Guest blogging
- Participating in roundups
- Engaging in community forums
- Volunteering to be interviewed by influencers, such as for their podcasts
- Directory listings
- Writing testimonials, for example, on a medical supplier’s site
Backlinks don’t just help improve your site score and authority. Quality backlinks also improve user experience. The links provide more information about a topic. This equips the audience with more details, an experience that can keep them on your website longer.
Leverage the Power of Social Media
Social media platforms are an integral part of online presence. Social media platforms help brands reach an extensive user base, connect, and develop meaningful relationships. SEO strategy for doctors can only be complete with at least a form of social media presence.
Social media activities like shares may not directly help improve your backlinking efforts. The platforms’ activity may also not feel directly linked to SEO. Still, they offer a lot that can supercharge your search ranking, including extending your content reach.
Influencer collaboration is the top aspect you must try as you leverage social media marketing for SEO. Influencers boast a considerable following. Partnering with an influencer in your area can help drive traffic to your healthcare facility. For instance, you can work with a popular athlete if you offer sports medicine.
The athlete can influence their follower to check out your medical services. Their recommendation is enough to drive considerable traffic to your website. You can collaborate and do more, such as reels or videos about what they like about your services.
Influencer collaboration can help create a buzz around healthcare providers’ services, boosting brand awareness. This extends beyond social media. The awareness is the first step. As the followers check out your website, they’ll learn more about your practice. They can also be easily converted since they trust the influencers.
Besides influencer partnerships, social media provides a great platform to showcase social proof. Online reviews and ratings offer much, which you can boost with user-generated content. For instance, patients can make a video, taking their audience through the process as they engage your medical services.
You can ask the patient to allow you to repost such content on your social media channels. Such content offers notable value since it is practically a word-of-mouth recommendation.
The growing social media activities can significantly improve your search engine rankings. The more followers you accumulate, the more credible and reputable your medical practice feels. This inspires confidence, and the interactions send social signals crawlers can consider when ranking your site.
Healthcare SEO Strategy for Profitable Practice
Practical SEO for doctors can significantly improve medical practices’ reach and drive in more patients. Local SEO lays a solid foundation since medical practices usually rely on clients who physically visit the facilities.
After considering all the SEO bits, content remains the most important piece of the puzzle. Without high-quality content, nothing else can work. It is the reason more organizations turn to professional content creation services.
ContentGo offers a seamless content creation service in diverse languages. We’ve got you covered with cutting-edge content creation technologies and professional writers. This is for all your content needs, including:
- Blog content
- Meta description
- Category description
- Product Description
- Service description
Register today and let ContentGo deliver high-quality and comprehensive content to take your SEO strategy to the next level.
