Why Healthcare SEO Matters For Patients & How It Works

Search engine optimization is the art of refining a website to enhance its visibility in search engine results capturing the attention of both potential and existing customers. SEO for hospitals and clinics does the same for a healthcare service. People are relying on the internet to find out the best healthcare near them; besides the use of AI in healthcare examples is surging in number.  Healthcare SEO optimizes medical websites for search engines to boost organic traffic, and improve online visibility in SERP results. In this blog, you will learn about healthcare SEO and medical search engine optimization. 

What is healthcare SEO?

Healthcare SEO is similar to normal search engine optimization that helps hospitals and healthcare institutions stand out in a competitive market, improve ranking, gain more patients, and provide great online visibility. SEO specifically designed for healthcare also known as medical SEO or search engine optimization for doctors. 

The benefits of medical search engine optimization

• Greater online visibility – Patients search online when they have an illness or need an appointment with doctors. With the help of medical search engine optimization, you can reach out to more people and you will receive a sudden spike in online bookings, appointments, and inquiries. Quality content on your website helps you be more visible online.

• Gain a competitive advantage – Gaining a competitive advantage over your competitors can be achieved with SEO for medical services. The use of specialized SEO tactics, paid campaigns and digital PR helps your brand to gain a superior authority in a niche market compared to your competitors.

• Increased credibility – When you provide high-quality healthcare service for patients as well as provide relevant content considering their pain points on the website, they will draw close to your business like never before. Effective SEO for medical services helps you bag a place on top SERP pages thus boosting your credibility and authenticity as a healthcare brand.

• Organic traffic and leads – SEO for medical services not only helps you achieve greater SERP ranks but also gets organic traffic and potential leads along the way. This website traffic contains potential leads who have already an interest in your healthcare services. Whether you are a large hospital or small clinic, you can benefit from organic traffic and increased conversions.

Fundamentals of medical website optimization

The following are the fundamentals of medical website optimization for any successful healthcare online presence. 

Keyword research

Your business has a targeted audience searching for healthcare services of similar services. To drive this traffic to your business, you need to know their pain points, search terms they use, and important keywords. A basic idea of search terms and generic keywords do not offer the desired result so it is good to opt for a known SEO tool like Semrush to drive the right traffic to your website.

On-page SEO

On-page optimization is crucial to hook your readers like healthcare content marketing. Meta title, meta description, title of the page, header tags, schema markup, and others are important elements of an on-page SEO that you need to accurately provide to boost traffic and engagement. Besides, you need to ensure the content you display on the site is relevant and 

Technical SEO

Technical SEO deals with user experience on a website. Lack of technical SEO optimization hinders user experience drastically as well as search engines’ ability to crawl and index a website. Security mobile friendliness, page speed, URL structure, and backlink profile need to be incorporated in a standard manner. Such an approach ensures your website is robust and healthy. You can use tools like EdgeSEO to check your technical SEO score.

Strategies for Medical Website Optimization

Effective schema markup

Effective schema markup elucidates search engines and target audiences what to expect from a website. Healthcare providers can use structured data to lure attention and tell about their unique services incorporating additional information like virtual reality in healthcare. 

If the structured data is worth it, Google values it by displaying it in snippets before the reader. Besides, it increases clickthrough rates and online visibility. Various types of schema markup exist and you can refer to schema.org to create structured data for your website. 

Local SEO

Being a healthcare provider the value of retaining local customers and reaching out to new ones cannot be accentuated anymore. Employing local SEO helps you with that. Your business name gets listed on Google My Business Listing and web pages get optimised for local search results. For instance, Google Maps.

Keyword research and content marketing

After conducting thorough keyword research with a prominent tool, the next step will be the careful inclusion of different types of keywords into well-crafted content. You can insert keywords into meta tags, meta descriptions, schema markup, titles, and headers in a flowing manner to reap SEO benefits. Blogs, articles, and video content need to be of high quality to drive traffic and actual leads.

Apart from relevant keywords, you need to contemplate search intent and give prominence to E-E-A-T in content marketing. Search intent considers the intent behind each search and E-E-A-T ensures the content stays evergreen for the target persona. A top company of SEO for hospitals and clinics can lead you to the best practices of content marketing. 

Link building

SEO for hospitals and clinics is an ongoing process and link building is an essential part of it. You are in a healthcare business and it is advisable to get backlinks of quantity from reputable websites, journals, and industry experts to increase credibility. Another way to get quality backlinks is by providing value through sharing content of quality as well as guest blog posts. Your collaboration with like-minded businesses also gives you a chance to earn more backlinks.

With the help of a search engine optimization company in UAE, your hospital and healthcare facilities can reach out to more people, gain the trust of people, and improve online visibility. You can clearly state your business goals with them before devising an SEO Strategy for your specific business.