With the world combatting the Covid-19 pandemic, the importance and demand for healthcare services have increased multifold. Today, the healthcare industry and its members are working endlessly to fight the virus. When searching for hospital beds, medication, treatment or otherwise, one wants to look for the best hospital and doctors for treatments.
Type a few words related to treatments, and Google will present you with a list of hospitals and doctors. Now how does Google present this list? What are the parameters that have some doctors and hospitals on the first page of your Google search? This list is the result of Healthcare SEO.
An introduction to healthcare SEO
There is cut-throat competition everywhere and in every industry; the healthcare industry is no exception. Such is the competitive wave that medical or healthcare SEO is a new buzzword. However, very few are aware of its prominence and potential.
To put things in perspective, hardly anybody, today, scrolls beyond the first page of their Google search. The first three results garner up to 75% of clicks. According to Search Engine Journal or SEJ, a community-based SEO content service owned by Alpha Brand Media, about 14.6% of SEO leads convert into patients. More so, outbound leads – direct mail or print ads – have a 1.7% conversion rate.
Why should functional practitioners invest in SEO?
Like how the medical and healthcare industry is the lifeblood for our wellbeing, healthcare SEO is the lifeblood for your healthcare business – be it a clinic, hospital or medical camp, SEO is paramount.
If your healthcare business does not capitalise on SEO marketing, then your competition will bypass you sooner, if not later. Any company with a website needs SEO today. There are several benefits that your business can attain with SEO.
Putting forth some statistics,
- Over 90% of online experiences occur out of online searches
- 80% of prospects rely on search engine results for finding information
- The healthcare sector accounts for 5% of all Google searches
- Over 3 in 5 people run online searches before booking appointments with nursing homes, therapists or optometrists
Healthcare providers that have admitted to been contacted via call by consumers after an online search (the statistics cater to the type of healthcare service)
- Nursing homes and therapists – 100%
- Clinics – 70%
- Hospitals – 92%
- Physicians and Surgery – 91%
Advantages that SEO has in store for your practice
Higher Return of Investment than other approaches
SEO or search engine optimisation is an unpaid advertising strategy that relies on organic search results. This aspect adds credibility to your healthcare business, rendering reputation and goodwill. This strategy helps augment your inbound sales strategy. With SEO, your online search ranking is likely to last longer, making it sustainable.
The sustainability and reliability of SEO additionally benefit your business by garnering a higher rank in the search results, leading to greater exposure through clicks and website traffic, and increased sales.
Patient acquisition is made cheaper
The traditional route of designing hoardings or distributing pamphlets is both costly and time-consuming. More so, businesses have to endure the additional costs of hiring adequate staff. Furthermore, personnel require motivation and morale to deliver.
On the other side, the online SEO game is automated and driven by organic searches. With that said, online marketing costs are cheaper and will save both time and money.
Factors that help augment your rank in the Google searches
High-quality content
In today’s day and age, content is everything. Content is king only if it is fresh, unique and updated, and more so, informative. Quality content achieves a higher rank in the search engine rankings page (SERPS) of Google. If your specific writeup is informative, reliable and credible, then it is the king of information and should appear on the first page of your Google search.
Creating quality content requires work and insights into the length and structure, and keyword frequency. Also, what most people are likely to overlook is that quality content should reflect in off-page SEO too. For instance, in blogs, press releases, citations, link-building and others.
Creating a Google My Business page
Another aspect that garners tremendous credibility for healthcare businesses is the Google My Business page. It enables corporations to have their business location listed on Google maps. Doing so renders convenience and accessibility for prospects when making physical visits to your healthcare establishment.
More so, to garner more eyeballs, your Google page should include contact information, business hours, address and reviews. Think of the Google page as a summary of your business operations and reputation (through reviews).
Google Analytics
Google Analytics records and analyses the web traffic of businesses. The information is insightful and tracks information such as visitor behaviour, search intent, demographics and others. More so, the tool reveals which pages are most visited by users and the path taken to arrive at your site. In terms of analytical metrics, it displays the impressions and click-through rates of your pages.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) page
Most visitors go online to search for something, more often than not, to look for solutions for a problem they face. For instance, Google search page results offer reliable and quality doctors and hospitals in the healthcare space.
With that said, an FAQ page is paramount for boosting your online SEO. It is a collection of commonly searched doubts by online visitors and surfers. Think of FAQ as a quick-and-easy guide into availing solutions, which are also written in simple language for laypersons to understand.
Website Speed
3 seconds or nothing. Not an ironclad rule, but a statistical insight. To attract clicks and increase web traffic, your posts and pages should load in three seconds. Slow loading times are a deterrent as visitors will click away and go elsewhere. This will hamper your site position and rankings in the search engine.
The following can come in handy
- Refrain from using a drag-and-drop box editor for building sites and pages
- Uninstall plugins that are no longer in use
- Have only limited plugins on your website; keep in mind the magic number 20. The number of plugins should be less than this.
- Turn off trackbacks and pingbacks functions
What You Need to Know
With the world at loggerheads with the coronavirus pandemic, the demand for healthcare services has gone up multifold. Like any other field, healthcare is supremely competitive. Getting your business up there on the first page of the Google search is an objective and necessity for keeping your practice profitable and going.
This is where SEO comes to the rescue. It is organic and cheap. SEO adds credibility, reliability and sustainability to your healthcare business. With over 90% of experiences stemming out of online searches and over 3 in 5 people conducting online inquiries before booking appointments, an SEO healthcare strategy is paramount.
At WebProfitMaximizer, we are intensely focused on accentuating the results, especially for the healthcare sector. With a 20-year experience of handling health-related businesses, we give something no one else can – a guarantee. Our services are backed by a promise for guaranteed results, no matter the effort it takes.
Plus, you can get started with a $1,000 social media marketing strategy for free today. So, rise up and take the first step towards recognition, recall and everything in between.
Sources: