The Blueprint for Content-Centered SEO for Healthcare Organizations
According to research, around 80% of people turn to search engines to look for solutions to their healthcare queries. From the best practitioner in town to symptoms of diseases and the effectiveness of medicines, everything is searched online. Therefore, regardless of the type of healthcare organization you run, you cannot ignore the significance of having a strong online presence.
Unfortunately, the healthcare industry and digital marketing don’t overlap in many ways. In other words, people from the healthcare industry find it hard to keep up with the ever-evolving advancements and practices of digital marketing, especially SEO and content marketing. In today’s age of the internet, this can hamper their success and progress. If you don’t practice content-centered SEO for your healthcare organization, you are missing out on a number of potential patients.
Digital marketing and content-centered SEO is equally important for success in every industry. Whether you run a retail store or a multinational tech company, there’s no way around digital marketing and good SEO practices if you want to make a name for your business in the industry. This is especially true for healthcare organizations because, like end-consumers of almost all other industries, people with medical problems or general questions also turn to the internet to find the best solutions.
Why You Need Content-Centered SEO for Healthcare Organizations
Let’s try to understand this with an example. Imagine you are a dentist who runs a small dental clinic in your city. You have a simple website, but tech-tricks are not your forte and therefore, you haven’t invested in content-centered SEO. The chances are you probably get a lot fewer patients as compared to other dentists in the same region.
The reason why this may happen is that when a potential patient goes online to search for the best dentists in town, they never come across your name because your website isn’t properly optimized for the search engines. Your website is probably somewhere on the 10th page of the search engine results, where no one is ever going to find it. As a result, you miss out on patients and hundreds of dollars of business. It is important to understand that most people tend to check out only the first few links of the search engine results page. So if your website is not on the first page, it’s almost as good as nonexistent.
Now the only question remaining is how can you ensure good search engine ranking for your healthcare website? Well, you need to do is implement onsite/content SEO!
Keep in mind that content SEO doesn’t seem too daunting once you get a hang of it. However, if you are new to this and would rather avoid spending hours after hours learning about SEO tips and tricks, you can always seek out professional help. For instance, Nao Media’s SEO consulting and content writing products can help you keep your website in top shape with great SEO. Hiring professional experts to finesse your website is the best thing you can do for your business.
They offer cost-effective solutions that are best for your business in the long run. This is mainly because investing in SEO and content marketing is much less expensive than going for conventional marketing strategies like printing advertisements in the newspaper or running radio or television ads. Furthermore, the cost of content-centered SEO will recover itself in the long run by getting you hoards of patients so it’s really a win-win situation.
Some doctors and healthcare experts also believe that taking out Pay per Click (PPC) ads is enough to promote their business. While PPC ads are a great option, they offer a rather short-term solution to our marketing needs. However, in the long run, relying solely on PPC ads is like putting a band-aid over a deep wound. In other words, if you are not investing in content-centered SEO, the chances are PPC ads won’t do you much good in the long run.
SEO 101 — Tips for onsite/content SEO
Did you know that there are more than 200 actual ranking factors that the Google algorithm works with to rank your website? No frets — you don’t need to worry about all of them. It is best to let the SEO experts handle the job for you.
However, there are a few things that you can also look into yourself if you want to improve your SEO ranking. Here are a few simple tips for onsite/content SEO that you can implement for your healthcare website to improve its search engine ranking and attract more patients than ever.
1. Add Plenty of Pages loaded with Quality Content
The first thing that you need to do is make sure that your website is loaded with pages filled with quality content. However, it is essential to understand that simply bombarding your website with content won’t be of much help. The real goal is to add quality content that genuinely helps the patients find solutions to their queries or problems.
Keep in mind that the search engine wants to show its users the most relevant websites that will offer solutions in the least number of clicks. So, if your website is loaded with information but it is not relevant to the searcher, it’s useless for your SEO.
Therefore, make sure you add plenty of pages to your website and that every page has relevant and high-quality content. In other words, the content that you upload on your website must be driven by the needs and wants of your patients. You will need a content distribution plan, which requires you to choose your target audience, identify their needs, and figure out how you can assist them before you can upload any content for them on your website.
It is important to understand that your content needs to be optimized for the users and not for the search. The algorithms used by search engines are smart and complex enough to pick when the information on a website fails to provide value to the users even if it is optimized for search engines. Therefore, your aim should be to optimize your medical website for the users. The more value you can provide to the users, the higher you will rank on the search engine listings.
Another important thing to keep in mind is that Google categorizes medical pages “Your Money Your Life (YMYL) pages”. These are the pages that can potentially affect the health, finances or even the happiness of the users. Since these pages can potentially have life-altering effects on the life of users, the standards for “good content” are significantly high for them. Most medical pages are considered to be YMYL. This is why you must be extra careful about the quality and relevance of the content you upload if you wish to see your website in the first few search results.
Here’s a list of some strategies that you should avoid at all cost:
- Deceiving your customers to click on certain pages on a website
- Uploading automatically generated content on your website to increase the volume of content available
- Creating pages just for the sake of having more pages on the website
- Including redirects, hidden texts or links that add little value for the user
- Send automated queries to Google in an effort to increase your ranking
2. Develop a Fast, Secure, and Responsive Website
Speed, security, and responsiveness are three ranking factors that you must consider to ensure a good ranking. Let’s take a look at them in detail.
- Speed
It is easy to understand why the speed would be a ranking factor. There is nothing more annoying than using a website that takes ages to load. In fact, most users will leave the website in the first few seconds if it takes too long to process or display relevant information. As a result, despite having optimal content, the website fails to provide value to the users. This is why Google wouldn’t rank high a website that is slow. So, make sure you follow good SEO practices and bring the response time of your website under half a second.
- Security
The importance of having a secure website cannot be emphasized enough. Security is even more crucial for medical websites, especially if you are dealing with patient records, drug prescription details or any other such information. If your healthcare organization still doesn’t have a secure (HTTPS) website, you are in the deep. It is better to seek expert help immediately to iron-clad your security measures before you can move to SEO.
- Responsive Website
Content-centered SEO is all about facilitating the users and you can’t expect to do that with having a highly responsive website. The responsiveness of a website refers to its ability to work well and display information properly on all devices. You can think of it as being mobile-friendly. If your users can’t use the website on their mobile phones or the information is displayed in a weird, distorted manner, you can forget about ranking high on Google searches.
3. Choose the Right Medical Keywords for Your Website
This is perhaps one of the most parts of content-centered SEO. You have to pick just the right healthcare industry keywords for your website and develop your content around it. You can seek professional help from SEO experts to make sure you choose the right keywords. Another option is to use keyword generators that can help you come up with the right keywords. You can also consider using Google Keyword Planner.
Keep in mind that keywords can also help you with location-based SEO. This will allow you to find patients based on your geographical location. All you have to do is find the right keywords. For instance, here are a few ways to come up with the right healthcare keywords for your medical website
- Doctor + city name
- Specialists + city name
- Treatment offered + city name
- Organization name + treatment offered + city name
Remember, these are just a few ways to pick a keyword. You will probably have to pick a number of keywords and they will vary based on the specialties of your healthcare organization. If you are new to this, it is advisable to get help to make sure your SEO is always on point!
Optimize Tags, Meta Details
Tags and meta descriptions hold significant value when it comes to content-centered SEO. One of the most prominent ranking signals of a page is its title tag. So, make sure you give it enough thought. You can also check out various plugins to edit and optimize your tags and meta description if you have a WordPress medical website. SEO Ultimate is a popular plugin that can tackle this problem for you.
Also, don’t forget to add your basket keyword in your title tag as well as meta description. Adding a medical schema will also help you rank higher.
Add Optimized the Videos and Images on the Your Website
Images and videos should be a big part of your website. The more information you can display with less content, the better will be the experience for your users. Most users would rather watch a video or consume information through images than read through hoards of information. This is why video marketing and infographics are readily becoming one of the most preferred ways to consume content. However, bombarding your website with images and videos won’t be much help if you don’t optimize them properly.
These are some basic tips for SEO for healthcare organizations. Keep in mind that while these SEO tips will surely help you improve your ranking, it’s not best to rely on these completely. So, in order to ensure your website is always available for your patients on the first page and help you attract a maximum number of patients, it is best to hire Nao Media’s SEO consulting and content writing experts. IT is the best solution in the long run for every healthcare organization. Do what’s right for your healthcare organization!
This article was originally published by Nao Media and Consulting as, “The Blueprint for Content-Centered SEO for Healthcare Organizations”
