The healthcare industry is quite competitive today and it’s essential that doctors and medical bodies are available on the internet to attract potential clients to their practice. Creating your own site is quite okay but it’s the first of many tasks on the way to achieving online presence. Search Engine Optimization or SEO is the best way to have web users find and follow your practice on the internet.
What does SEO mean?
SEO refers to ways of boosting the quality and quantity of traffic while enhancing exposure via search engine results. The Pew Research center says a huge amount of internet users begin with general search engine on their way to getting information on health and medical topics online. A typical example is a person looking for answers regarding a symptom, they are likely to type ‘ear infection symptoms’ or ‘back pain’ in the Google search bar. When they use these specific keywords, they get results in form of pages that have similar information to their enquiries.
SEO involves comprehension of people’s enquiries online alongside the type of answers they desire, the specific words people use and the type of content they prefer. Having a great understanding of these questions goes a long way in helping you reach people who need solutions that your practice can provide.
Search engines aim to give users the best services. What this means is that results on search pages are top quality and bears relevance to what the inquirer needs.
How does SEO aid your practice?
SEO isn’t just about search engine ranking, even though it’s essential for any professional that desires to attract new clients to their practice. SEO also involves gaining trust amongst potential clients who might want to patronize your healthcare practice. SEO is beneficial to your practice as it helps potential clients easily pinpoint the location of your practice. When a potential client enters ‘doctor near me’ on the Google search bar, chances are high that your website would rank amongst the first three listings if your keywords are correctly placed in your content. It’s safe to say that every practice cannot rank amongst the top three in Google search results. This is why you should prioritize investments in SEO practices to aid your website’s visibility. It will boost the possibility potential clients fixing appointments with you and subsequently becoming long term clients. Asides excellent ranking on search engines, here are other benefits of excellent SEO strategies in healthcare practice;
Targeted Leads
Millions of results come up when a patient makes a search for doctors on the internet. The numbers become reduced when the patient filters the search by adding specific keywords, location and specialty. A proper SEO setup gives you an edge by putting you ahead of the crowd when a patient makes a search related to your field.
Cheaper Costs
SEO remains one of the cheapest means of advertisements and its Return on investment (ROI) is on the high side. SEO also offers long-term results by frequently directing traffic to your site and boosting the awareness of your brand. With the aid of SEO tools, you are able to advertise your practices to those patients who have the most desire for it.
Build Authority
Trust is one of the most critical factors in the healthcare industry, practitioners need it to enhance relationship with patients along their journey. The number of site visitors, their reaction, time spent on the website and time taken for them to return to the search engine results determine the search engine rankings of that website. Generally, websites that have higher rankings on search engines are seen as being more reliable than those on the lower ends on search results.
