SEO for the Healthcare Industry

Generating leads and converting them to patients or clients depends on targeting the most receptive audience and convincing them that your healthcare organization can help. Although the business structure differs greatly from retail sales, the same online marketing strategies apply in relation to search engine optimization (SEO) and gaining organic traffic to your website.

SEO for the healthcare industry involves both on-site and off-site activities. Together, the long list of individual tasks represents one of the most effective marketing techniques available today. An overwhelming percentage of people who need medical, health, or wellness services search online for nearby practitioners. They look not only for availability but also for reviews from former patients in order to find someone they can trust. When they go to Google or other major search engines, they invariably choose one of the first few results on page one. That is why you need to optimize your website to fit into one of those coveted spaces.

Watch this video to learn more about the Digital Authority Partners approach to Medical SEO!

Link Building Strategies for Healthcare Businesses

On-site optimization, which includes proper keyword placement in relevant content, fast site load times, and effective HTML tags, remains a strong part of overall SEO practices. However, off-site can expand your reach considerably and get more attention from your target audience. The main goal of this type of strategy involves link building or creating backlinks to pages on your website. The more quality links you have on popular sites or platforms, the higher the chance a potential patient will click on your URL.

High Quality Links Impress Search Engines

Posting a link to your website on so-called junk directories or link farms is incredibly easy, but these efforts will backfire in a huge way. In order to benefit from off-site search engine optimization, your backlinks must appear on websites that Google sees as valuable. Search engines judge the quality of the links to determine if your site is worth putting at the top of the results pages. A healthcare SEO agency can help identify these coveted positions and create a linking strategy that works for you.

What benefits do strong backlinks bring to a healthcare website?

• Higher rankings on search engine results pages
• Extra points of visibility scattered across the web
• Improved authority and brand building power
• Boost in traffic from both search engines and other sources

How To Create a Strong Backlink Strategy

There are five main parts of any link-building strategy. Above all else, it is important to focus on relevancy, quality, and organic results. Never use black hat backlink techniques that end up with spam-like results and artificial traffic generation.

• Research Your Target Audience – If you do not know who you want to attract to your website, you will never be able to create content that interests them or position links they are eager to click. Targeted traffic creates qualified leads who are more likely to convert to patients and clients. Random link sprinkling may get you higher click numbers but very few if any of them will need your services.
• Find Effective Keywords – Determine the keyword phrases your target audience uses. For healthcare companies, most of these will include location-specific information. Look for long-tail keywords with high search volume and lower competition.
• Develop Quality Content – You need relevant, engaging content for off-site SEO just as much as you do for webpage text. It is easier to earn clicks on your links when you capture the attention of your audience with an informative guest blog article or social media post.
• Connections With Quality Sites – In order to create high-quality links, you need to connect with the people who control top web pages. These can include website owners, bloggers, social media influencers, news publishers, and more.
• Data Collection and Optimization – Creating a strong web of backlinks to your healthcare industry website requires ongoing effort. Always collect traffic data, analyze it to see what content and link format is most effective, and optimize your efforts to improve in the future.

When you use all five of these strategies to fuel your SEO linking efforts, you will earn higher rankings on Google and other search engines, more company recognition and reputation, and higher levels of ultra-targeted traffic to your website. All this leads to the most important things for ongoing success: more patients or clients and increased revenue.

Help With SEO for the Healthcare Industry

Most healthcare providers do not handle all their marketing or search engine optimization tasks on their own. After all, your specialty focuses on the health and wellness services you provide to patients. Both on-site SEO and link-building strategies take a lot of time and energy. It makes sense to engage the help of an experienced and professional agency to take care of this service for you. There are two main methods organizations use.

• Hire a full-time SEO service employee as part of your marketing department
• Outsource optimization services to a professional agency or freelancer

Of these two options, the latter is generally more affordable and efficient. After all, most healthcare businesses do not need an on-site marketer working eight hours every day. While search engine optimization does take ongoing effort to get the type of results you need to succeed, it makes more sense to engage outside talent who is paid based on tasks rather than hours. This leads to a much higher return on your investment and less risk upfront.

How do you find the right type of expert to work with? In most cases, it makes sense to hire an agency that has access to multiple experienced professionals who can handle every aspect of healthcare SEO. Look for a team with proven experience, up-to-date practices, connections in the industry, excellent communication, and full transparency.

They should be able to inform you of their actions and the results in a way that makes sense even if you are not a marketing expert yourself. This is how you get the best results and the most organic traffic to your medical, health, or wellness company website now and in the future.