The reasons why marketers of healthcare organizations include digital marketing and SEO services in their budget can vary. In our previous blog, we highlighted the five clues that indicate you need digital marketing.
These clues show that you have issues with your search engine optimization (SEO). It could be that your:
- Website doesn’t appear on search results pages.
- Website’s metrics show poor traffic, meaning no one’s looking at it.
- Knowledge of digital marketing is limited to sending email newsletters.
- Knowledge of search engine optimization (SEO) and its impact on your practice is close to none.
- Content marketing is unbalance and skewed.
Not addressing these will hurt your healthcare practice in the end because potential qualified patients won’t be able to find you.
Targeting these clues will help you resuscitate your digital marketing strategy and straighten up your SEO campaign.
Five Reasons Your Healthcare Site Isn’t Getting Proper SEO
According to Google, these are the top five reasons your healthcare website is missing in action:
1. Your site is floating in limbo
There’s a reason why they call it the world wide web. Connecting and linking to other sites gets you found in this strange world of bots and crawlers. Think of Googlebot as spiders that crawl into the internet. So, if you don’t link your content to your social media accounts or create linking pages to other websites, the crawlers won’t reach you. And this leads us to the next reason, which is usually the cause why your site is floating and doesn’t have the connectivity to other websites.
2. Your website is new
A brand new site often remains undetected until it starts to make connections. Remember the time you first established your primary care practice? Nobody in the building knew you had set up your clinic on the third floor until the building manager notified the front desk about your practice, and you were put in the directory listings. Making virtual connections is just as crucial as creating physical connections for your practice. More so, with a new site. You need to make your online presence known. Read our blog on how to make your practice website work for you to overcome the gap and address the missing link.
3. Your website design is not optimal for Googlebot crawling.
Your website may only contain photos that do not have descriptions nor links. You should provide texts to your videos and pictures so Google can understand it. Otherwise, this will make it hard for the Googlebot to crawl into the site. Google also discovers a page when you link it to your homepage or your social media posts. In addition, creating meaningful page titles will help.
4. When Googlebot crawls your site, it results in error messages
This can be due to formatting issues with your page titles or website name. Update your pages and make sure your URL links work.
5. Your site has policies that prevent Google from crawling
Sometimes this was done in error. Often, you’ll receive a top-level report that would show Google tried to crawl your space in vain.
Three Steps for Healthcare SEO to Get Your Site Discovered
Target the three basic steps that Google follows in its algorithm with your digital marketing and healthcare SEO strategy:
1. Crawling
As mentioned above, Google discovers a page by crawling from a known page to a new linked page. The easiest way to get your website crawled is to make sure each of your new web pages has links to existing ones on the web. It can be an internal link within your website or to external links to your social media accounts and even reference sources. However, be wary of using link schemes that add no value to your reader experience. Such link schemes may include buying or selling links, using links in excess or exclusively with partner pages, using hidden links, or automated linking practices, which Google will penalize you for.
You can use sitemaps that include metadata. Google sees the content and files of your site using the sitemap. This makes indexing easy. Or you can ask Google to crawl your pages by submitting your webpage addresses or URL to Google. Additionally, you can register your business on Google My Business and get listed in the Google directory. This will improve your presence and optimize your website for local searches.
2. Indexing
Google indexes a page by analyzing its content. To make your website shine before Google’s eyes, capture it with catchy but relevant headlines. Don’t trick Google though with headlines that do not capture the content, or you’ll get dinged for it. Headings on your content, title tags, and meta descriptions help with indexing. But don’t overdo it to mislead your readers.
Remember, you are writing content for your patients, not for Google. You only want to attract Google so it can put your website in front of your patients’ attention. When you post videos and images, add texts that describe it so Google can index it. Using relevant keywords in your content means you’re answering questions that your patients typically ask. When you Google-search the disease condition you specialize in, the related keywords appear.
Should you get stuck with these keywords? Not necessarily. These give you clues on how to write quality content that addresses your patients’ needs. And finally, don’t forget to add your location and put a map on your website for local SEO.
3. Serving and ranking
How does Google rank the pages, say, when a potential patient searches for a local concierge medicine provider?
The way Google works is based on a program that’s built into its system. It will give the best answer that it deems appropriate to the patient based on the patient’s location, the type of device he uses, the language he speaks. Based on these ranking factors, your website may or may not appear on the top of the search list.
To improve your SEO ranking in the healthcare industry:
- Make your website load fast
- Use a dynamic platform that adapts to the patient’s device
- Create relevant and informative content that adds value to your patients
- Think of your patients first and how you’d like your website to help them
- Read these blogs on content marketing to optimize your website for valuable content:
Components of successful medical websites
The importance of long-form specialized content
Why It’s Important
Digital marketing and healthcare search engine optimization work hand in hand. If you employ effective digital marketing strategies and stick to best practices, you effectively optimize your website for search engines like Google. As long as your goal is to provide a great user experience for your patients, the other tenets of SEO should flow naturally in your content and web pages.
We Can Help
If you’re having a hard time navigating SEO practices and digital marketing strategies, we can help. We can help you maximize your return on investment with your digital campaigns. Schedule your practice review here!
References:
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Starter Guide. https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7451184?hl=en
Webmaster Guidelines. https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35769