SEO Fundamentals for Your Medical Practice

Steps You Can Take to Maximize Your Visibility Online

You’ve built and launched a website for your medical practice, but it doesn’t seem to be generating new patients. Chances are you haven’t effectively optimized your online presence to maximize your website traffic. As a general rule, the more people who visit your site, the more people who will actually call for an appointment. So how do you make your website an effective marketing tool? Through a process known as search engine optimization (SEO).

What is SEO?

SEO focuses on maximizing your ranking on a search engine results page (SERP), emphasizing free, organic, and natural search results.

Tips for Getting the Most Out of Your Healthcare Website SEO

Here are the most important things you can do to boost SEO:

• Use the best keywords and phrases—Though the search engine algorithms take many other factors into consideration, they still give considerable weight to the actual words that people use during a search. If your website content uses those words and phrases, your search ranking can get a boost. Make certain, though, that your use of those words is natural. Your ranking may be negatively affected by overuse.
• More content is better—Longer pages tend to perform better in search engines. Optimally, your pages should be 700-1200 words each. Because a web visitor may arrive at your site on any page, it’s critical that you answer three basic questions on every page:
  • What do you do?
  • Where are you located?
  • How are you different from your competitors?

  The sooner you answer those questions on every page, the greater the likelihood that a web visitor will stay and ultimately contact you.

• Update your content on a regular basis—Static content falls in the search engine rankings pretty quickly. At a minimum, you want to add or update content on a monthly basis. That can include news articles about your practice, informative blogs, or even articles from medical journals or magazines (with permission).
• Use images—Search engines give significant weight to websites with videos or other dynamic images. Web visitors are typically more engaged by video than text. Video customarily keeps them on your website longer, and statistics show a direct correlation between the amount of time a visitor spends on your site and whether or not they reach out to you.
• Optimize for functional issues—More than half of all searches are now conducted on mobile devices. If your website doesn’t load well on a mobile device, it won’t matter how many visitors you get. Web visitors also need to know that your website is secure and will want to see your pages load quickly.
• Use valid inbound and outbound links—Inbound links bring people directly to your site, but outbound links can accomplish the same objective indirectly. If you send visitors to relevant and trusted sites, it will boost your online credibility and improve your position in search results.
• Use your social media presence to enhance your website—Though your social media pages won’t directly affect your SERP ranking, they can be a powerful tool for directing people to your website.
• Target local patients—One of the best ways to reach local patients is to complete and implement your Google My Business page. Make sure it’s up to date and as informative as possible.

Contact InjuredCarePracticeBuilder.com to Promote Online Visibility Through Search Engine Optimization

At InjuredCarePracticeBuilder.com, we have decades of experience providing digital marketing services to professionals nationwide. We offer website development, search engine marketing and optimization, social media consulting and implementation, full video production, reputation management, and directory listings. To learn more about how we can improve the digital marketing for your medical practice, contact us online or call our offices today at 866-952-7045.