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As 77% of patients use search engines before booking an appointment with a healthcare provider, you need to focus on implementing SEO best practices for your medical service. With the evolution of digital marketing, search engine optimization (SEO) has emerged as a crucial strategy for improving online visibility and increasing organic traffic to your practice’s website.
But Medical SEO, unlike other industries, requires a lot of expertise, research, and authentic information to avoid misleading information that can lead you to serious lawsuits. So creating a solid SEO content strategy is essential for healthcare SEO. For enhancing your SEO strategy, we’ve compiled a list of SEO strategies and SEO tips that can improve your SEO rankings.
SEO involves optimizing your website and online content to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs) when relevant keywords are searched. SEO is among the vitals for building an online presence as users now rely on third-party websites for making healthcare decisions. Currently, 82.8% of patients use Google search engine and Bing search engine for finding a healthcare provider.
Medical practices benefit greatly from a comprehensive SEO strategy for several reasons:
With the majority of people searching for medical services online, having a strong online presence is crucial. By optimizing your website and online content for relevant keywords, you can improve your search engine rankings and increase your visibility to potential patients.
By ranking higher in search engine results pages, you’re more likely to attract clicks from potential patients who are actively seeking medical assistance for their health and wellness needs. This can lead to an increase in website traffic and ultimately, an increase in patient acquisition.
By attracting more website visitors who are interested in what you have to offer, you’re more likely to convert them into patients or clients. This can lead to an increase in revenue and profitability for your medical practice or service.
By allocating your time and resources more efficiently, you can improve your bottom line. Additionally, having a plan can help you stay focused and avoid distractions, which is particularly important in a highly competitive industry like healthcare.
An SEO content strategy is essential for medical practices and services as it can significantly impact their online presence, patient acquisition, and overall business success. By optimizing your online content for relevant keywords, you can increase your visibility, attract more trends on YouTube, attract more views, and ultimately grow your subscriber base. Therefore, it’s crucial for medical professionals to invest in SEO as part of their digital marketing strategy to stay competitive and achieve their business goals.
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This guide walks you through each step of building a successful SEO campaign for your medical practices’ website. By following these practices, your medical website can rank higher and reach more potential clients than ever before.
The first step to implementing better SEO for your medical practice is understanding the business core areas. Before diving into keyword research, it’s important to decide what areas connect most with your practice’s core offering or specialty. Identifying your core areas means website architecture navigation and keyword research planning become easier.
To break down your website’s architecture, identify the key services you provide. For example, a medical practice may offer services such as primary care, pediatrics, and geriatrics. These services can be considered as the core offerings of the practice.
Here’s a detailed example of possible medical practice core service areas and an extended list of sub-areas:
| Core Service Areas | Extended List of Sub Areas |
| Primary Care | 1. Annual physicals 2. Chronic disease management 3. Immunizations 4. Preventive care 5. Urgent care |
| Pediatrics | 1. Newborn care 2. Well-child visits 3. Immunizations 4. Sick visits 5. Developmental screenings |
| Geriatrics | 1. Memory care 2. Chronic disease management 3. Fall prevention 4. End-of-life care 5. Hospice care |
You can easily identify the relevant keywords by defining your medical practice’s core service areas. This information can help you develop a content plan that focuses on the core offerings of your practice, which can help improve the healthcare site’s SEO and attract more patients.
Keep these three easy steps in mind when performing keyword research:
To perform keyword research for a medical practice website, we can use Semrush or Outranking.
2. Exclude keywords with outdated or clearly irrelevant phrases to focus on analyzing the most important ones more efficiently.
3. Download the CSV file of the selected keywords. Each core offering area has its own CSV file with associated keywords to stay organized with one combined file.
4. Repeat the above steps for each core service area and sub-area of focus.
Once keywords for each subgroup in a core service area are collected, the next step is to move to keyword analysis. This involves analyzing the search volume, competition, and relevance of each keyword with your medical practice to determine which ones to target in the content strategy.
By following these steps, a medical practice website can effectively perform keyword research and develop a targeted content strategy to improve its online presence.
Keyword clustering is a process of grouping similar keywords into clusters. This process is essential for any medical practice website as it helps to identify the most relevant and high-traffic keywords for the website. By using keyword clustering, medical practices can optimize their website content for search engines, improve their search engine rankings, and attract more traffic to their site.
For example, a medical practice specializing in dermatology may have a keyword list that includes terms such as “baby acne”, “baby eczema”, and “diaper rash”. By clustering these keywords, the practice can identify which terms are most relevant to their target audience and optimize their website content accordingly.
To pick the primary keyword for each group of clusters, consider several factors such as the competitiveness of the keyword, the number of quality backlinks your medical competitors have, the knowledge gap or underserved area in the intent, and your topical authority. By assessing these factors, practices can determine which keywords will be the most beneficial for your practice’s SEO content strategy.
Tools like Outranking can take the stress out of keyword clustering for your medical practice. Specifically, Outranking’s keyword clustering tool can analyze a large number of keywords and group them into semantic terms and similar intent groups. This saves time and effort and ensures that you’re using the most effective keywords for your website.
To prioritize keywords for creating and optimizing content for a medical practice’s website, it’s important to consider the relevance and importance of each keyword to your practice’s services and target audience. Outranking can help with this process by providing a keyword strategy tool that allows your users to group and prioritize your keywords based on their potential impact on your website’s traffic and search engine rankings.
Struggling to prioritize your practice’s keywords? Try this guide:
| Priority | Keywords Containing | Why |
| High | Medical Procedures, Health Conditions, Treatment Options | These keywords are directly related to the medical services provided by the practice and are likely to attract highly targeted traffic to the website. |
| Medium | Healthcare Providers, Medical Specialties, Patient Care | These keywords are relevant to the practice’s services but may not be as specific or targeted as high-priority keywords. |
| Low | Health Tips, Wellness Advice, General Health Information | These keywords are more general in nature and may not be directly related to the practice’s services, but can still be useful for attracting a wider audience and establishing the practice as a thought leader in the healthcare industry. |
By prioritizing keywords from high to low, your medical practice can focus your content creation efforts on the most important and relevant topics for your target audience, while still providing valuable information on a wider range of healthcare topics. Outranking’s keyword strategy tool can help with this process by providing a clear and organized way to group and prioritize keywords, making it easier to plan and schedule content that will drive traffic and improve search engine rankings.
As a healthcare professional looking to implement SEO on your website, having a well-defined content creation and optimization process in place can set you on the right path. This will help you stay organized, focused, and ensure the successful execution of your strategy.
Here are three expert tips to ensure you note down a thorough content creation and optimization process:
A content brief is a document that outlines the most important details of a piece of content, including the topic, target audience, keywords, and tone. Creating a solid SEO content brief will help you stay on track and ensure that your content is aligned with your SEO strategy.
A workflow is a set of steps that need to be completed to achieve a specific goal. Establishing an optimal workflow for your medical website’s SEO tasks will help you stay on track and ensure that everything is completed in a timely manner.
Using Outranking’s content planner can help you achieve all of these expert tips. Outranking has predefined workflow status that you can customize to quickly fit your needs and a Kanban view that allows you to see what stage your documents are in at a glance.
If you don’t have an in-house team to handle your SEO strategy, it may be beneficial to hire an expert agency or Outranking to help you make this plan come to fruition for your medical services. This will allow you to focus on providing your expertise while leaving the SEO implementation to the experts.
Creating SEO-optimized content for each service page, web page, and blog is crucial for ensuring your medical practice is investing in content that will yield results, which can be effectively monitored using an SEO content checker. By doing so, you can attract more organic traffic to your website, increase your search engine rankings, and ultimately, generate more leads and conversions.
Outranking’s SEO content optimization and writing platform can help busy medical professionals write and optimize these pages to ensure the highest possible organic exposure. With its real-time optimization benchmarks and optimization features, Outranking can help you create content that ranks each and every time.
Optimizing existing pages with better internal linking can significantly improve the overall traffic for your medical services website. The key is to look for pages that are already ranking between 1 and 10, with keywords in the top 4-14 positions. By getting more internal links from these pages, you can borrow their authority and transfer it to the page you want to rank for more keywords.
Outranking can connect to Google Search Console and identify the medical practice’s web pages that are already ranking well for specific keywords. It can then show internal linking opportunities by analyzing the positions of existing pages and suggesting ways to enhance website performance. This can help you identify the pages of your medical practice’s website that are most likely to drive traffic and improve your overall ranking.
Search algorithms favor websites with local citations and backlinks and so they’re crucial for the local SEO of a medical practice website. Local citations are mentions of your business’s name, address, and phone number (NAP) on other websites. Backlinks are links from other websites to your medical practice’s website. Both of these factors are important ranking signals for search engines.
Acquiring local citations can help with local SEO for medical services in several ways. If the same NAP details appear across many relevant and trusted websites, search engines are more likely to have increased confidence that your medical practice exists, is operational, and that what is said about it’s true.
Research suggests that nearly half of the patients decide not to book an appointment with a provider who has incomplete listings information online. So providing your complete medical service information is vital for acquiring success for your medical service’s website. Second, business directories often dominate search results for local queries. Therefore, being cited in these directories is essential for searchers to find the medical practice.
There are two types of citations: structured and unstructured. Structured citations are listings of NAP information, while unstructured citations are contextual mentions of a business. Both types of citations are important for local SEO.
To build citations, your medical practice should follow these five steps:
According to a survey by Moz, citations are the fifth most important ranking signal for local queries. Therefore, medical practices need to acquire local citations in order to improve their local SEO.
Here’s a table with a list of data aggregators and websites you can consider receiving citations from:
| Data Aggregator | Websites to Get Citations From |
| Acxiom | Yellow Pages, Citysearch, Superpages |
| Data Axel | Local.com, Express Update, Factual |
| Localeze | Yahoo Local, Bing Local, Yelp |
It’s crucial to optimize page speed and website experience for better rankings in 2024 for your medical practice website as it not only improves user experience but also affects search engine rankings. A faster website can lead to higher traffic, lower bounce rates, and better conversion rates. Additionally, improve the readability of your content and ensure that your website is mobile-friendly so that the people searching from a mobile device have great UX.
To quickly optimize page speed and website experience for a medical practice website, you can use lighter themes from Codecanyon and Nitropack-like WordPress plugins. These tools can help to reduce the size of images, optimize code, and improve website performance for your medical practice.
For a medical practice, connecting to Google Search Console and tracking their website ranking is crucial as it can help them attract more organic traffic and reach a wider audience. By analyzing the ranking data, healthcare professionals can identify which pages need improvement, find new content opportunities, and redirect underperforming pages to improve their online presence. Medical practices should also use Google Analytics as it tracks and provides insights on the website and mobile app traffic.
To interpret the website ranking data and take appropriate actions, refer to the following table:
| Goal | Action | Ranking Data |
| Optimize internal linking | Improve internal linking structure for pages with low Pagerank | Medical web pages with keywords in the top 4-14 positions |
| Find new content opportunities | Medical web pages with no ranking keywords in the top 20 positions that don’t align with the user’s search intent | Improve or redirect your practice’s web pages with no ranking keywords in the top 20 positions that don’t align with the user’s search intent |
| Improve underperforming pages | Medical web pages with no ranking keywords in the top 20 positions that don’t align with the user’s search intent | Medical web pages with no ranking keywords in the top 20 positions that don’t align with user’s search intent |
Google Business Profile is a free service that allows businesses to provide more information about their business when it appears in search to attract more customers for their website.
To optimize a medical practice’s Google Business listing for local search, follow these practical steps:
The first step is to claim and verify your practice’s Google Business listing. This involves creating a Google account, searching for the practice on Google, and clicking “Own this business?” to claim the listing. Verification can be done through a postcard, phone call, or email.
Once the listing is claimed and verified, the practice should complete its profile with accurate and up-to-date information, including its name, address, phone number, website, business hours, and a description of its services. For a medical practice, they can include information about the types of medical services they offer, their physicians, and any specialties.
Adding photos and videos can help potential patients get a better sense of the practice and what to expect. For a medical practice, they can include photos of their office, waiting room, exam rooms, and equipment.
Encouraging patients to leave reviews on the practice’s Google Business listing can help improve their local search ranking and attract new patients. The practice can ask patients to leave a review after their appointment or send a follow-up email with a link to their listing.
Including relevant keywords in the practice’s description and category can help improve their local search ranking. For example, a family medicine practice can include keywords like “primary care” and “preventive medicine” in their description.
It’s important for the practice to monitor their Google Business listing for new reviews and respond to them promptly. This shows potential patients that the practice values their feedback and is committed to providing excellent patient care.
While these steps can help optimize your medical practice’s Google Business listing, it can be time-consuming and overwhelming for healthcare professionals. Hiring a digital marketing agency that specializes in local search optimization can ensure that everything is done correctly and efficiently.
If you’re a pediatrician’s office, for instance, you can include photos of your colorful waiting room and exam rooms, as well as your friendly staff interacting with children. Encourage parents to leave reviews about their child’s positive experience and include keywords like “pediatric care” and “child-friendly environment” in your practice’s description. It’s also important to monitor and respond to any reviews, addressing any concerns or feedback from parents. By hiring a digital marketing agency, your pediatrician’s office can focus on providing excellent patient care while ensuring your Google Business listing is optimized for local search.
Most websites focus on organic traffic because it’s a cost-effective way to attract potential clients and build brand awareness. However, focusing solely on traffic without considering leads and conversions can be detrimental to your medical business’s success. For example, a short-tailed keyword like “medical services” may bring in a lot of unrelated traffic, but a more specific keyword like “pediatric neurologist in New York” may only bring in a few visitors, but those visitors are more likely to be interested in the services offered and potentially convert into a lead or customer.
It’s important to focus on leads and conversions because ultimately, the goal of your medical business is to generate revenue and grow. Simply having high traffic numbers does not guarantee success if those visitors are not converting into paying customers.
When evaluating an agency to help with SEO for your medical practice’s website, it’s important to consider their expertise, reviews, and results:
Choose an agency with at least 5-10 years of experience in SEO, preferably working with medical websites. They should have a good understanding of the competitive landscape, and the uniqueness of your services, and be able to develop a customized strategy for your medical practice.
Look for reviews and testimonials from other medical practices that have worked with the agency. Ask for references and follow up with them to get their feedback on the agency’s performance.
Ask for examples and case studies that showcase how the agency has helped other medical professionals improve their SEO and online visibility. Look for statistics such as increased website traffic, higher search engine rankings, and improved conversion rates.
For example, XYZ Agency has worked with several medical practices in the past and has helped them increase their website traffic by an average of 50% within the first six months of working together. They also have a 4.5-star rating on Google reviews and have received positive feedback from their clients on their expertise and customized approach to SEO.
When evaluating an agency to help with SEO for your medical practice website, remember these key factors:
Look for an agency that has a proven process and principles for performing website audits and SEO, but also takes a customized approach tailored to the unique competitive position of your medical practice.
The best SEO agencies are highly creative and innovative. Ask the agency what creative strategies they’ve implemented to help their medical practice clients stand out from the pack.
For example, at our agency, we have a proven five-step process that includes industry analysis, competitive research, strategy design, implementation, and follow-up. We also customize our approach for each medical practice client to ensure a sustainable competitive advantage within their niche. Additionally, we have experience working with medical practice websites and have implemented creative strategies to help them stand out from the competition.
Look for an agency that offers flexible contract durations, so you’re not locked into a long-term commitment. This is especially important for medical practices, as your needs may change over time. Additionally, make sure the agency is willing to work with you to customize their approach to fit your specific needs.
According to a study, 70,000 healthcare searches are performed every minute. Therefore, having a strong SEO strategy is crucial for the success of your medical practice website. By choosing an agency with a proven process, creativity, innovation, and real-world SEO experience, you can ensure that your medical practice website will rank higher in search engine results, attract more patients, and ultimately grow your practice.
If you’re looking to improve your medical practice’s online visibility, hiring an SEO provider can be a great step. However, before jumping into the process, it’s important to ensure that you have a solid SEO plan in place. This is where an SEO consultant and strategist can come in handy. Outranking’s SEO consultant and strategist can help you with strategy, planning, and execution to ensure everything goes smoothly and you get the right results for your medical services website. With their expertise, you can rest assured that your SEO plan is tailored to your specific needs and goals.
By working with an SEO consultant, you can gain a better understanding of the SEO process and ensure that you’re making the most of your investment in an SEO agency. So, if you’re looking to take your medical practice’s online presence to the next level, consider hiring an SEO consultant to help guide you through the process. So, contact Outranking now and start your journey to a successful online presence!
