SEO and the Healthcare Business: Preparing for Digital Healthcare

There are 1.1 million medical doctors in the United States and 195,722 practicing dentists.

If you own a healthcare business like Day Webster, think about how much competition you’re getting with other practices. For example, if you own a dental practice, how many dental websites are you competing with?

The key to getting more business and standing out is optimizing your healthcare business for SEO.

Want to learn more? Keep reading to learn the best medical search engine practices for healthcare advertising.

Why Focus on SEO?

The healthcare business is changing thanks to the digital revolution. Nearly 62% of people go online to look up health information. People are also looking for doctors online. They are looking at search results, checking out websites, and reading reviews.

What does this mean for your practice? If you’re not implementing best SEO practices, you’re missing out on potential patients.

Best Search Engine Practices

How do you improve your SEO for healthcare advertising? Let’s take a look at some of the best search engine practices.

Use the Right Keywords

To get your practice listed in the top search engine results, you need to optimize your website and content with the right keywords.

First, make a list of keywords that you think will appeal to your audience. It will help to think about your audience. How old are they? Do they have kids?

If you’re a pediatric doctor, you would target parents of younger children. If you’re a cosmetic dentist, your key audience would look different.

You want your keywords to be specific. For example, instead of podiatrist, you would target podiatrist in Sacramento or wherever you’re located.

Once you make a list, you can use Google’s Keyword Planner to see how many monthly searches each keyword gets. When you create a final list, you can optimize your website, content, and metadata with the keywords.

Create Content to Stand Out

To make your website and practice stand out, you want engaging, relevant content. This can be in the form of blogs, infographics, newsletters, or other informative content.

Consider what your target audience wants to learn about. For example, if you specialize in cosmetic dentistry, you can create a blog article about how to whiten your teeth. When people search for how to whiten teeth, they might come across your blog and website.

If you’re a doctor, you can create an infographic about flu season and urge your patients to take their flu shot.

Don’t Underestimate the Power of Video

When we listen to information, we can recall 10% of it after 3 days. However, when a picture is included, the number goes up to 65%.

Videos are a great way to grab your audience’s attention and give your practice a personal touch. It’s not necessary to make your video go viral. You just need to provide interesting information that your audience can use.

One example is to create a how-to video. If you’re an orthodontist, you can post videos for how to properly use rubber bands.

You can also use videos to explain complex medical conditions and answer common questions. Videos are a great way to build trust with your patients.

Engage Audience on Social Media

Another way to engage your audience is to use social media. With social media, you can create a community with your patients. You can also give your patients a way to instantly contact you and ask questions.

One example of a business that does this is Ultimate Medical Academy. When you look at their social media pages such as their Facebook page, you can see that they have relevant, frequent posts to engage their audience.

Use Local Search

Local search engine optimization–or local SEO–is when you optimize your business to appear in local search results. For a healthcare practice, local search is important for getting people to find your practice and visiting your website.

There are a few ways you can implement local search.

Title and Meta Description

To get the attention of local customers, you should include the city that your practice is located in your title tag and meta description. You should also include your city name in your website content and in headers.

Google My Business

Google My Business is an online directory where you can list your business. You can list your business at no charge. All you have to go is enter your website information and verify it.

Other Online Directories

There are plenty of other online directories where you can list your medical practice. Yelp is one example.

When you list on Google and other online directories, make sure you enter a consistent business name, address, and phone on all of them. If you list different versions of the name, Google may not list the correct version.

Reviews

Data shows that 89% of people trust online reviews for products and services. What’s more, nearly 80% of people have changed their minds about a potential purchase decision because of negative reviews.

Reviews have the power to make or break your medical business. When people find your practice through Google My Business, they can see Google reviews. If you have positive reviews, potential customers are more likely to click on your website and contact you.