SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Learn the latest SEO tips for healthcare providers and healthcare professionals. It basically refers to increasing the quality and quantity of traffic in the website with the help of various search engine results. In other words, SEO also refers to the process of optimization of the organization’s website – so that it appears on the first page of the search engine results when a user searches with similar keywords.
For example, if an individual wants to search about a neurologist in a certain area, and suppose there are 5 neurologists in that area, then SEO helps to make sure that a certain healthcare center or hospital that has a neurologist in that area, to show their website on top of the search results.
According to the Search-Engine-Journal, the leads in an SEO website have a 14.4% rate of closure. It means that 14.4% of the total users visiting the optimized website are converted to customers- whereas leads from other sources (Print Advertising etc) have a closure rate of 1.7%.
Today around 56% of adults in America use smartphones. It shows how important it is to optimize the website and make it rank higher in the search engine results for the prospective patients who use search engines for relevant healthcare-related searches.
Following are 7 actionable SEO Tips for Healthcare Providers which can make their websites rank higher in the competition of the healthcare-related industry:
1. Choosing the Right Keywords- The goal of optimizing the keywords of a website is to ensure that keywords that are chosen prove to be effective- that would help in driving the right kind of traffic to the website. It also proves effective in driving maximum traffic to find the website rank high in the search results – to ensure finding the right kind of traffic easily.
Choosing the right kind of keywords is very necessary when it comes to managing the website by the healthcare industry. First of all, making a list of the most searched keywords that are relevant to the website or the service provider is the primary task.
The chosen keyword should be able to make it clear to the algorithms of search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc) what the website is all about, what it contains, what type of services or products are featured on the website, etc. It also ensures in helping the search engines to understand for which type of search queries, the website should yield in top search results.
After making or compiling the list of keywords or search items- those have to be tested by searching each of the keywords in the Google keyword planner to find out which of these have a decent amount of local traffic monthly- also need to find out which of those phrases or keywords have less amount of competition from various advertisers.
At the time of analyzing the keywords – it is good to shoot for keyword phrases of 200 to 10,000 monthly searches locally. After completing the preparation of the final filtered list, it’s now turning for incorporating the keywords organically in the website through relevant web pages by way of various blog posts/articles and other types of content.
As per Google, “77% of the people prefer to search before booking an appointment with google”. So, it’s very necessary to incorporate the right keywords in the website development or management of a healthcare organization.
The goal behind metadata management is to make it easier for an individual or a program to locate specific data. It also helps an organization in the establishment of policies and procedures in order to ensure that the information can be integrated, accessed, linked, and analyzed to provide the best benefits to the organization.
The Meta-data consists of the HTML meta tags which lie in between the open and closing tags in an HTML code. These tags help the search engine to know what is there on the page with the help of metadata description, title tag, and headers.
The title tag reflects at the top of the browser and acts as the title of the page and in blue text in the search engine results. They should be edited in a way that it is no longer than
65 characters and also make sure that it naturally incorporates the keywords while naming the page.
A meta description must not be more than 150 characters as it describes the content of the page.
Benefits of Metadata management include:
- Helps inconsistency of the definitions of the metadata so that the terminology of variables doesn’t create any issues in data retrieval.
- Lessen down redundancy of the efforts and greater consistency across multiple instances of data.
- Maintaining the information across the organization so that it doesn’t need to be dependable on a particular employee’s knowledge.
2. Defining Meta- Data: Title Tags and Meta Description- Metadata management refers to the administration of those data that describes other data. As per Digital-Commons reports, Meta-data helps in addressing the problem of documenting multiple information systems and exchanging data between them.
3. Creation of original content-
The creation of original content for the healthcare service provider website is very important to stand out in the competition. There should be a professional representation of those contents so as to make sure that their completeness and accuracy get increased.
By providing the right kind of knowledge and educating the audience – the value of the website and the institution gets increased. This also helps in gaining a high ranking in the search engines.
By publishing various types of content such as blog posts, videos, interviews, patient testimonials or videos, and other conversations and information about the healthcare industry, the website would be able to drive more traffic- which has great possibility for conversion into customers.
A healthcare organization should try to answer the questions and queries of the audience- which would lead to driving more potential customers to the website.
4. Including a Site Map for the Website- A well-executed technical SEO helps to make the website crawlable. An HTML site map is one of the key factors that help in achieving the goal. This helps the search engines to crawl the website- It means they send a boot to the webpage to read it. Google boot is then able to determine what’s there on the website. It leads to search engines showing the website in the search results.
Site maps are helpful for users to better access the website. There are basically two types of sitemaps- HTML( HyperText Markup Tools) and XML(Extensive markup language). HTML is highly recommended as it helps to make the website more user-friendly.
5. Own Different Search Verticals- Often it’s seen that the website fails to rank itself in other search verticals such as in videos, slideshow, images, mobile, etc.
For a healthcare service provider website, it’s important for and a good option to leverage the above-mentioned search engine verticals to get more and targeted audience/traffic to the website.
For example, the presentations shared on slide-share can also be optimized- can help for driving more traffic using relevant keywords or phrases for long-term benefits.
6. Local Search Marketing-
Optimization of the website for Local Search Marketing is one of the most important things for a Healthcare Service Provider.
It’s estimated by Yext that about 50% of the searches are being performed on mobile devices. So it’s highly recommendable for using a local mobile-friendly experience for the users for standing out in the competition.
Healthcare providers can benefit tremendously from local high rankings. Local search is considered to be one of the important search verticals – as the patients have to visit the local healthcare professionals for availing the healthcare services.
It’s necessary to ensure that the organization’s or the institution’s name, address, contact details are correctly updated on Google+ local page, Foursquare page, and on the organization’s website footer in the entire website.
It’s also very important to continuously review the reviews posted on the Google+ Local Page to ensure there isn’t any negative review posted- which can adversely affect the website ranking.
7. Using Social Media to Improve Rankings-
Various search engines such as Google, Yahoo, etc consider a number of factors in order to determine the quality of a website- Social Media is one of those factors. For example, if a website is shared across social media networks effectively, Google or other search engines take this into account.
Social media platforms help in facilitating two-way conversations between a healthcare organization and an individual.
The impact of social media on SEO is basically link building. This also helps in driving more traffic to the website. Using Google+, Linked In, etc are good social media platforms to connect with users and build an audience. Focusing more on Quality than one Quantity is one of the important factors to be emphasized when it comes to Social Media Platforms. Health Marketing Tips is providing a guest blogging platform build by health marketing enthusiasts, so share your article and write for us.
