A solid doctor SEO strategy can help you gain visibility, increase organic traffic to your site and attract new patients. But it requires a lot of expertise, time and consistency to get the results you need.
Look for an agency that understands the unique language of medical practices and can provide a customized strategy for your practice. JetRank is one such firm with a history of success working with medical clients.
1. Optimize Your Website for Local Searches
Doctors need to optimize their websites for local searches because patients move around more often now. They are searching for services and providers online when they relocate, their insurance changes or their doctor retires. These shifts have made local SEO for doctors a necessity for most healthcare practices.
Optimizing a medical website for local search starts with keyword research. Knowing what terms people are using to find your practice enables you to target those keywords in your content. You should also incorporate those keywords into page titles and meta descriptions.
Local citations and backlinks are another important ranking factor. They tell search engines that your business is legitimate and relevant. Acquiring local citations is an easy way to increase your visibility in the search engine results pages (SERPs). You can also create specific landing pages for different types of queries.
2. Optimize Your Content for Search Engines
Creating quality, relevant content is essential for every website. But it’s especially important for medical and healthcare websites. After all, patients are more likely to trust a provider that ranks high in SERPs than one that does not.
To improve your search engine ranking, optimize your content by using the keywords that patients use to find your services. Make sure these keywords are in your page URL, title tag, and meta description. Also, include them throughout your website and blog posts.
Additionally, make sure you’re claiming all of your listings, including vital directories such as Healthgrades and Vitals. Finally, be sure your website loads quickly. Google considers slow sites a negative factor in SEO rankings. If you don’t want to do this yourself, JetRank’s SEO packages are designed to deliver results for your website.
3. Optimize Your Social Media Presence
Developing a social media presence is essential to build rapport with patients and engage in two-way communications. It’s also a valuable tool for building your online reputation and helping patients find your practice.
While you can’t always control what other people write about you online, you can optimize your own content to improve your chances of ranking highly in search engine results. You can do this by using SEO-optimized service pages and web page content, creating social media posts that promote your content, and getting backlinks from high-quality websites.
Claiming physician Google My Business listings and establishing a practice Facebook page will help you get started with this process. Additionally, issuing press releases can generate media attention and earn you backlinks. Finally, utilizing a tool like HARO to respond to journalists’ queries may lead to your medical business being cited in articles, which can further boost your SEO.
4. Optimize Your Email Marketing
Search engine optimization is a complex process that involves ensuring your website content is optimized for relevant keywords, improving the speed of your website, and ensuring all technical aspects are working as they should. It also requires ongoing optimization efforts to keep up with changes to search engine algorithms.
When choosing an SEO agency, look for one that has experience working with medical practices and a track record of success. Ask for testimonials and examples of how they have helped other medical practices achieve their goals, such as increased website traffic and higher search engine rankings.
Ultimately, SEO for doctors is the best way to attract new patients and establish your practice as an authority in your field. It is also an affordable and long-term marketing strategy.
5. Optimize Your Video Content
Incorporating video into your marketing efforts is a great way to drive traffic to your website and build your brand’s know, like, and trust factor. However, it’s important to understand how to optimize your video content for SEO in order to maximize its potential.
To start, make sure your videos have unique headlines that catch users’ attention and are descriptive of the video content. You should also include keywords in the video description, but be careful not to overdo it.
Another tip is to add a transcript to your videos so that search engines can better index them. Finally, remember to include a link to your website in the video description so that people can easily find more information about your practice.