SEO for Medical Practices

1. Think like your best clients.

You already know you need to find the right keywords to attract traffic to your site, but how? The answer is to consider who your ideal clients are and how they think. If you were looking for your services, what keywords would you use?

For most practices, the most effective approach is to concentrate on optimizing for local search. Be sure to include location-based words, along with your practice type, specialties and demographic-based terms. And, include both official terms and terms a layman would use. For example: “Janesville Lasik surgery”, “eye correction surgeon in Janesville”, or “Wisconsin eye clinic for kids”.

Keyword selection is critical, and the best ones aren’t always obvious. A good medical practice SEO firm can help you find the ones that will bring the best ROI to your practice.

2. Leverage your keywords correctly.

Once you have a good list of keywords, use them to your advantage. Create an optimized page for each group of related keywords. Your content should be written around the keywords. Be sure to include your primary target keywords in the following places:

• Page name
• Page URL
• Title tag
• Meta description tag
• Page headings, and subheads (use H1 and H2 header tags)
• Page body copy
• Internal link anchor text
• Anchor text from other sites linking back to your page

3. Blog, blog, blog.

On average, websites that maintain a blog enjoy 55 percent more traffic. That number rises the more frequently you blog.

Blogging is especially good for medical practices because people are information-hungry about health topics: 80 percent of Internet users have searched online for health information. Giving them the information they crave sets you up as a trusted medical authority and can help bring clients to your door.

Also, blogging adds fresh content to your site, which search engines love. Plus, it grows your website. Since sites with 400 or more pages get six times the traffic of those with 100 or less, this is a good thing!

4. Get relevant backlinks.

When other sites link to yours, it boosts your authority with Google and your prospects. If those sites have a following, it can also send new patients right to your door.

There are many ways to get backlinks, but one of the best is to write and contribute articles to health-related websites and blogs. Be selective, though — the sites you appear on affect your reputation.

Maximize Your Medical Practice SEO Potential

There you have it — four of the best ways to start attracting more patients to your practice through SEO. These tips are just the tip of the iceberg, though. A medical practice SEO agency will have many more ways to fine-tune and optimize your site for maximum lead generation. It’s also a great resource if you just don’t have the time to do it in-house.