How Getting Back to Basics Can Help You Get More Website Visitors

The Ultimate SEO Checklist for Medical Practices

SEO for medical practices is a little different than a normal business.

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We all know that the goal of establishing a website for your practice is to attract new potential patients and make yourself known in the virtual space. With a whole digital marketing industry set up to help you succeed, it can be easy to get lost in the latest tips, tricks, and methods for driving website traffic. After a while, you might begin to think that it’s all a matter of luck, but it isn’t – there are some tried and true methods that lead to more visitors and higher conversion rate, even if they aren’t the most flashy or glamorous. Let’s review the basics of website marketing and how you can use this checklist to solidify your digital marketing strategy.

Optimize for users, not search engines

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is one of the key terms to know when it comes to digital marketing. However, it’s easy to misinterpret this term and end up building your website and content incorrectly. Since search engines are the things crawling your website to categorize and deliver your content to users, it’s logical to think that you should optimize your website according to what search engines want to see.

It’s important to know this isn’t the case – in fact, search engines are just the middlemen. You should ultimately optimize your website for users, or the people using search engines. That’s because search engines have the goal of delivering the most relevant content to users, so search engines look for things that users are looking for. By optimizing for your buyer persona, you’re optimizing for search engines as well.

Make sure to take a step back and think about what would be most useful to people searching for a practice in your field and ensure your website reflects it. This means creating quality, genuinely helpful content that provides answers that users won’t find elsewhere.

Use the right keywords when creating content

Keywords are what help users find your site – without them, there’s no way that users or even search engines can find your relevant content. The best way to know what keywords are best to target is by partnering with your marketing specialist and developing buyer personas that fit your practice’s most common demographics. From there, you can use keyword tools to narrow down the most relevant keywords that users are searching for within the demographics of your buyer personas. Remember: people search for things in order to solve problems, so it’s integral to know what problems your potential customers might be searching for (and provide the right information they need to solve them!)

Make sure your site fits expectations

When you Google something like “plastic surgery Grand Rapids MI”, you probably have an image in your head of what a plastic surgery website will look like. You can largely expect dark, classy colors and neat, clean fonts. It will probably have images of idealized models and a before-and-after gallery of patient images. If the website you find is cluttered, outdated, or sore on the eyes, you’ll probably look elsewhere for a plastic surgeon. After all, a website is a reflection of your practice, so a plastic surgeon who cuts corners on their website might do the same elsewhere.

This concept is called “cognitive fluency,” or where a website fits the expectations of what users imagine a practice’s website looks like. These kinds of websites tend to drive more traffic. If you don’t already have a professional designer on your marketing team, then take a hard look at your site and others in your field to determine where it does and does not fit expectations. Consider a re-design so patients feel more confident in your skills and services.

Write relevant and useful blog content regularly

As we’ve discussed, people search things to find answers, and blogs are usually the most useful pieces of content for users. Your blog topics should never be generic – instead, take some time to consider what specific questions your patients usually ask and how you can thoroughly answer these questions in written form. If your potential customers can find these answers online from your website, it can be a powerful deciding factor in whether they continue to look for services with you. After all, it makes you look knowledgeable on top of being most relevant to their goals.

Additionally, you should be publishing blog content regularly (at least once per month). That’s because making regular updates to your site in the form of publishing blog posts signals search engines that they need to crawl your site more often, upping your chances of showing up on SERPs. So, regularly publishing relevant, useful content is a powerful and effective combination.

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It’s more important than ever to have a solid digital marketing plan for your practice. The best way to elevate your website and drive traffic is by partnering with an experienced marketing team and developing an effective strategy for your goals. Give us a call or fill out our online contact form to get started.