SEO For Healthcare Websites
Google handles at least 2 trillion searches per year, many of which are for healthcare related topics. Most Americans find healthcare providers using online search, and among those many use a smartphone to access that search. Besides that, 75% of search users don’t even click past the first page of search results. As a result, you need to focus on SEO for healthcare websites to rank high during a search in order for it to be seen. There are over 200 things Google looks at when ranking a website. Below, we will give you six strategies to help you develop your SEO plan for your healthcare business.
1 – Optimize Your Website’s Responsiveness and Speed
Google frowns at slow-loading websites and unresponsive websites. As a result, its algorithm is designed in favor of the quicker-loading sites. You should optimize your site to load in under three seconds, if you can. For every additional second beyond that, you will lose out on both viewership and Google rankings.
Furthermore, optimizing your website speed and performance will improve your visibility in Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). You can do this with the help of your developer if you are not comfortable with coding or using plugins/apps depending on how you website it built. Making images smaller, deactivating any unused scripts, minimizing the use of things that use a lot of memory on your homepage, are a few ways to get your site faster. We typically go through a thorough process to analyze your site speed and identify a set of changes that need to be made to get the speed as fast as possible without sacrificing quality and experience for the user.
Use Quality Healthcare SEO Content Marketing
According to Google, quality content has a direct relationship with solutions to problems faced by your readers. Consequently, each of your website pages should be valuable to your target audience. That is, your landing page, blog, press release, etc. must contain content to captivate your audience so they stay on the site for longer.
Keywords are important, but avoid pages with just keywords stuffed in and little or no authentic content because it can cause a penalty from Google.
Select Appropriate Medical Keywords
Before you proceed to create your healthcare content, consider specific keywords to use. Since search engines are keyword-based, targeting keywords has a beneficial effect on your website ranking. Moreover, a useful tool in making an SEO for healthcare websites plan is the Google keyword planner. It can suggest valuable keyword variants that you can plug into your content strategically. Also, it shows the volume of searches of those keywords so you don’t waste your time creating content focusing on keywords that are not commonly searched or that are so commonly searched that competition for them will be hard to overcome.
Pay Attention To Your Title Tags And Meta Descriptions
Title tags are clickable headlines that come up in a search result. Also, the meta description is a summary of your web page that comes immediately after your headline in SERPs.
Since they are HTML elements that describe what your page is about to the search engine, you need to pay attention to them. Also, let your keywords be reflected in the title AND meta tags for better ranking.
Make Your Website Mobile-Friendly
Recently, smartphone penetration is at an all-time high, and it will continue to rise. As a result, more searches are taking place on mobile devices every day. Search engines look at many mobile-specific factors when ranking websites in mobile search.
Furthermore, making your website mobile-friendly makes it more appealing to existing customers and helps you attract new ones. Also, you can consider going a step further and building a mobile app for your business, if it makes sense for the way people use your business.
Develop Quality Backlink Strategy
By definition, backlinks redirect people to your website pages when they are reading something on another page. Moreover, search engines see these backlinks as a sign of authority. That is, the more these links, the higher your website ranks during searches.
Some easy ways to get quality backlinks in the healthcare space is to try to list your website on a couple of reputable medical directories or listings, share your linked content on your social media pages regularly (Google likes seeing social media mentions), and publish things like gust posts and press releases often.
In conclusion, remember that these strategies work best with a long-term view and it takes months of dedicated work. If you have not incorporated them into your website plan, you can start today. However, with a well-designed healthcare SEO plan, you will reap tremendous benefits in no time.
At Health Media Experts, we have seen great results doing meticulous SEO work for many healthcare blogs, health centers, medical clinics, and health and wellness websites.