Key Medical SEO Tips Healthcare Businesses Must Know In 2020

1. Key Medical SEO Tips Healthcare Businesses Must Know In 2020 Associating with an experienced medical digital marketing service helps to have a strong SEO strategy and keep up with the latest trends also. With rising competition in the healthcare industry, healthcare marketers are gearing up to invent new digital marketing strategies. Medical SEO involves implementing effective digital marketing solutions to help medical practices, hospitals and healthcare businesses overall to improve search engine ranking, drive relevant traffic, and grow their online presence. Studies have shown that 77 percent of patients use search engines prior to booking an appointment with a healthcare provider. Pew Research showed that: •One in three American adults go online to figure out a medical condition. •47 percent of Internet users search for information about doctors or other health professionals before engaging with a health business.

2. •72 percent of Internet users say they looked online for health information within the past year. •38 percent of Internet users search for information about hospitals and other medical facilities. •Commonly researched online topics are specific diseases or conditions; treatments or procedures; and doctors or other health professionals. So, if you implement strong SEO techniques then you could stand frontline in search engine results and be accessible to patients looking for your services. Given the significance of online visibility to drive more traffic to your website and improve revenue, you need to implement the best search engine optimization tactics. Here is a list of effective SEO tips that healthcare businesses can follow for optimal results: ➢Relevant keywords: Have a list of relevant keywords and use them in your content so that potential patients can find your website easily. Use long-tail SEO search terms to create content your customers would resonate with and get qualified local traffic to your digital platforms. You can use Google Keyword planner to find which keywords get the most local monthly traffic. This tool can even let you search for new keywords and develop PPC (pay per click) campaigns. Once you have a list ready, then you can use these keywords in your web pages and content. ➢Local search: If you have a physical location, then using local SEO in your marketing efforts is essential. It is a great way to get targeted users to come to your website. Make sure to post content that is location-specific so that you can drive more traffic from the same locality. Make sure that your business’ name, precise address, phone number and other contact details are updated on your Google My Business page and the same address is shared across all the platforms so that your potential patients can find you easily.

3. ➢Include sitemap: A sitemap is important when it comes to SEO for doctors but is often overlooked. It helps Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines to find your web pages and also rank them. Most people who visit your site will not care about the sitemap. But the sitemap is valuable for search engine optimization. ➢Social media: Today, almost everybody is active on various social media platforms and these are great avenues to engage with potential patients by posting on social media consistently, replying to reviews, getting patient feedback via live Q&A, as well as teaming up with influencers. The impact of social media on SEO is a form of link building, to a certain extent, except on Facebook and Twitter. This emphasizes the need of good quality content, which can be shared across relevant social networks.

4. ➢Quality content: For building your medical brand, it is important to develop valuable content and it is an essential element of SEO. Content is not just any piece of information, it has to be original and informative too. Publishing content like patient testimonials, case studies, blogs, medical breakthroughs, current news in the medical field, interviews, yours or your staff's achievements, infographics and so on helps to educate the patients as well as attract them to your healthcare business or practice. ➢Responsive website: Today, most of the people use smartphones to go online to make searches. So, it is important for you to make your website mobile friendly. As of March 26, 2018, Google has rolled out new algorithms for search results in the form of mobile-first indexing. This allows Google to show search results based on websites’ mobile versions versus the web versions. Any healthcare organization that doesn’t have a mobile-friendly website will effectively be excluded from search results. This provides good user experience to patients also. Just like mobile first indexing, page speed is also essential. Quick site loading is also a priority to achieve higher ranks.

5. ➢Voice search: As technology is advancing, people have switched from desktops to smartphones and the latest addition is voice search. People are switching to voice search as it is quicker, easier and comfortable. Traditional searches and voice searches are different in nature, and so optimization strategies should also be different. For voice search, you will need to think about conversational, natural language and local searches as well as ensure that your website is mobile-friendly. ➢Omni channel marketing: Last year, multi channel marketing and diverse marketing experience with customer journeys was more complicated than ever. Omni-channel marketing involves using various channels but aims to provide consumers with an integrated, seamless experience throughout the channels. There is no doubt that the world of healthcare marketing is highly competitive, and a robust online presence and consistent engagement are of prime importance. Amid the rising competition, healthcare entities are adopting innovative SEO strategies to reach out to potential consumers. Associating with an experienced medical digital marketing service would help to successfully keep up with the latest trends. (800) 941-5527