Today, many people extensively research their options for medical providers online, from plastic and cosmetic surgeons to dentists. Accordingly, an essential component of any online marketing strategy is optimizing your practice’s website to appear in as many search engine results as possible.
However, while the basic elements of search engine optimization (SEO) may seem straightforward, implementing this kind of strategy effectively can be deceptively difficult.
Online medical content optimization is crucial to supporting your brand and strengthening your practice’s position in a competitive market. As such, you should consider seeking professional guidance before trying to tackle it all on your own. Working with a seasoned digital marketing agency could make a huge difference in your ability to reach new audiences online and dependably convert them into paying customers.
Google is designed to provide the most accurate and relevant search results, using algorithms built to “crawl” and index trillions of webpages, pdfs, images, and videos. It also utilizes artificial intelligence (AI) and learning to understand the intent and meaning of content.
One of the key elements of a successful SEO strategy is to incorporate “keywords” into web content so that search engine algorithms are more likely to rank that page for relevant search results. An optimized medical website should have separate pages dedicated to any specific procedure or practice area they want to rank for, as well as separate pages for specific geographic areas where they have offices or want to pull customers from. For example, a plastic surgery site should have separate pages for breast augmentation and facelifts in each of their office locations. A dentist might target porcelain veneers patients with a dedicated page and sleep apnea patients with another – each associated to a specific office location.
At the same time, Google doesn’t want spammy, over-optimized content. For years, Google has placed more emphasis on original, higher-quality content, and they continue to do so.
A comprehensive medical content optimization strategy should include more than just embedding keywords into text-based webpages. Including photos and videos of procedures and positive results for past patients—along with metadata that search engines can crawl for keywords—can dramatically improve both user experience for site visitors and rankings in search results.
It is also crucial for page content to be relevant beyond the presence of keywords, which means providing information that a search engine user might find helpful. For instance, it can be helpful to a potential cosmetic surgery client to explain how a particular procedure works and what results they can expect. Search engines prioritize sites that are actively updated and maintained over sites that do not have a consistent flow of new content, so posting new pages and other text-based content like blogs is important as well.
Finally, it is essential when optimizing content on dental, surgical, and other medical websites to ensure that search engine algorithms and human visitors alike can easily navigate the site. Even if a website has lots of relevant and appropriately keyworded content, it will not rank highly if search engines cannot access that content easily by following hyperlinks incorporated into the page text or menus around it. It can also be beneficial to sparingly include links to other websites when relevant, although linking between pages within the same web domain should still be the priority.
Search engine optimization is a still a fairly new type of marketing, and there is a degree of subjectivity when it comes to effectively designing and implementing an SEO strategy. Even adhering to the basic principles mentioned above can be challenging if you are unfamiliar with web design strategies—which many hardworking and qualified dentists, plastic surgeons, and medical professionals understandably are.
Fortunately, help is available from a digital marketing agency with a track record of achieving positive SEO results for medical practices like yours. Call today for a consultation about your medical content optimization.