Medical practices invest in supplying a quality website that serves patients, but to extract the most value from this digital asset it needs plenty of visitor traffic. Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the primary strategies to bring potential patients to your website. This article includes top SEO best practices curated from digital marketing experts.
What is SEO and What Does It Have to Do with Website Traffic?
SEO, or “organic search,” is a website optimization strategy with the goal of increasing its visibility in search engine results, ultimately boosting the quantity and quality of traffic the site receives. SEO is also called “organic search,” because getting better placement in search is the natural consequence of a quality website versus gaining paid placement with through search engine marketing (such as Google Ads).
4 Technical and Website Design SEO Best Practices to Consider
What are SEO best practices? A website is like an open house–you prepare it for visitors, both human and machine alike. Potential patients will appreciate the user-friendly format, and Google will grade the quality of user experience your website provides. Here are four core SEO best practices for website management that will help your “organic” traffic.
1. Embracing Mobile-First Design
Google knew that eventually consumers would become more reliant on mobile devices to access search engines on demand. Many devices–Android especially–come preinstalled with Google as the default search engine. Because Google has made mobile experiences a priority, this search engine will prioritize websites that align with mobile-first conventions.
In other words, when users access your website, they should have the same ease of use that they would on a computer. One of the core considerations of “mobile-friendly” design is responsive design. This means that your website can automatically fit a mobile interface for any given mobile device. Thanks to advances in medical website design, such features have become standard in website development.
2. Structuring Websites for Enhanced Usability and SEO
As mentioned before, your website should be ready to meet non-human visitors in addition to potential patients. Google’s “web crawlers” are constantly scanning every single live website, including those of medical practices, gathering all the data needed to “grade” the website for quality. In short, it does matter how your website pages are organized.
To ensure that your website gets “credit” for all the optimizations performed on your website, the website must be structured according to Google’s conventions for website structure. This includes standard configurations for elements such as menu design, breadcrumb trails, and clear category pages.
3. Page Speed Optimization Essentials
With blazing fast internet speed comes the expectation that websites will load quickly. While some users will be patient enough to reload, check their internet connections, and other quick troubleshooting tricks, most users will close the “tab” and go back to Google to try the next option in their search results list.
Not only can slow-loading website pages unintentionally send potential patients to competing healthcare providers, this can also affect Google’s quality grading for you. There are several tricks to optimal loading of websites including compressed image files, streamlining CSS or JavaScript coding, and settings for browser caching.
4. Optimizing Images and Content for Diverse Devices
As mentioned earlier, image configurations can impact the quality of your website usability. While high resolution images are impressive, files that are not compatibly sized for websites can negatively impact the user experience. Because Google prioritizes a quality user experience, it takes factors into account such as image uploads.
Website design experts handle images by sticking with JPG or WEBP formatting and ensuring that images load quickly while maintaining aesthetic quality. Filling in “alt tags” (the text description attached to an image file) is also an SEO best practice so that Google can “read” what the image contains.
4 Content and Strategy Focused SEO Best Practices to Consider
On the flipside of the SEO best practice coin is the quality of your website’s content. Once your website is optimized for technical factors, it’s time to address the contents of your website pages.
1. Keyword Strategy and Tailoring Content to Match User Intent
Behind every Google search is a specific goal. Though Google processes billions of searches per day, it still manages to create a user experience customized for each search where users are provided several resources to choose from. The goal of SEO strategists is to determine what keywords they should use to bring Google users to the website.
Sometimes keywords need a little more context to match user intent. For example, “orthopedic” could mean devices like shoes, or services like physical therapy. Including “long tail” keywords in your content strategy helps Google distinguish your medical practice website from a retailer selling medical products.
2. Effective Keyword Implementation
The typical content strategy will include many keywords to aim for in terms of search rank. SEO strategists will come up with a list of core keywords to prioritize. Whenever possible, they will incorporate these keywords into various pages of the website, including a blog’s URL, meta title, H1, and body of the article.
One trap to avoid is “keyword stuffing.” Google can tell when a website is “trying too hard” to rank for certain keywords. The more moderately and “naturally” these keywords fit in to your website content, the better you align with SEO keywords best practices.
3. Strengthening Internal Linking and Site Architecture
To enhance a website’s SEO, it’s important to focus on your internal linking and site architecture. This process includes creating a clear, intuitive hierarchy of pages, which helps search engines and users navigate the site more efficiently. By establishing a logical structure, you can guide users to your most important pages, thus improving the overall user engagement and retention.
Additionally, implementing a comprehensive internal linking strategy is vital. This involves linking related content within your website, which can significantly enhance user experience by providing additional valuable information. Furthermore, using relevant, keyword-rich anchor text for these links can improve your site’s relevance for specific search queries.
Equally important is the maintenance of this internal structure. Regularly checking for and fixing broken links is essential. Broken links can harm user experience and affect your site’s credibility with search engines. A robust internal linking approach not only improves navigability but also distributes page authority throughout the site, strengthening the SEO performance of individual pages.
4. Maximizing Internal Linking to Define Site Hierarchy and Facilitate Content Discovery
Having an organized and efficient internal linking strategy involves connecting various pages of your website, making navigation easier for users, and helping search engines understand how content is related to other content on the website. Linking to top-level pages with valuable content, using descriptive anchor text, and ensuring all links work is important. By these actions, you improve user experience and SEO simultaneously.
SEO experts also advise content auditing. Sometimes website pages or blogs will be deleted. When other pages link to deleted content, that creates a “broken link.” Google favors “good hygiene” when it comes to how a website is organized, so broken links can work against your SEO efforts.
4. Building Authoritative Backlinks
Domain authority is like your website’s “credit score.” It takes time to build up Google’s confidence in your website as a credible and trustworthy source of healthcare information and services. Backlink, or “link building” is a subset of content strategy that has a goal of building authority for websites.
Google is not just looking for indicators of quality within the website, it is also looking at external endorsements. When other “quality” websites link to yours, Google takes this as a sign that your website is a valuable resource. These are called “backlinks.”
Bonus SEO Tips: Common SEO Challenges and Future-Proofing Strategies
While certain parts of your medical practice digital marketing strategy may not change, SEO is one of those areas that calls for monitoring and adjusting to external factors. In this section are some general guidelines for staying on track with SEO best practices.
Tackling SEO Issues Effectively
Sometimes content strategy can become disorganized and counterproductive. SEO strategists practice good “hygiene” when they avoid duplicate content and “keyword cannibalizations.” “Keyword cannibalization” is when your pages compete against each other for the same target keyword so it weakens the potency of your content efforts. By establishing core SEO best practices in keyword strategy and content publishing, as well as regular site audits, you can avoid common mistakes that work against your efforts.
Adapting to Search Algorithm Evolution
While your medical practice is always looking for ways to maintain patient loyalty, Google is always looking to improve its user experience. For this reason, digital marketers are constantly anticipating changes to Google’s algorithms. In addition to keeping up with digital marketing news, SEO strategists adhere to the overarching theme of Google search ranking–maintain an exceptional user experience for website visitors.
Many of Google’s periodic changes will relate to user experience enhancements. When you consistently uphold a great patient experience on your website, you are–to an extent–protected from any negative effects of Google’s algorithm updates.
Bear in mind that after a major update, your page rankings may see a dip. Many websites will experience the same impact. Those experienced in best practices for SEO know that when they hold firm to website quality protocols and make any necessary adjustments to any significant rule changes that emerge, the performance metrics will bounce back.
Summary: What Are SEO Best Practices?
SEO is a complex digital marketing strategy that helps businesses of all kinds–including medical practices–get the most value for an investment in a high-quality website. By staying on top of best practices for SEO and significant changes in Google’s quality standards, medical practices can reap the long-term rewards of organic search.
SEO best practices create a blueprint for a well-optimized website that attracts traffic and potential patients to your medical practice. These efforts are divided into a few core categories: managing the technical aspects of a website and implementing a content strategy. Technical SEO focuses on ensuring easy navigation for patients and Google’s website crawlers, while content strategy sends strong signals about which visitors will benefit most from the website.
Maximize the Value of Your Medical Practice Website with the Traffic-Driving Power of SEO
SEO is not a subject that most people can learn in a day. That’s why most businesses–including medical practices–prefer to hand off organic search digital marketing to someone with experience who will put together a game plan to drive more traffic to the website. As part of a cohesive digital marketing solution, our healthcare marketing experts help practices improve ranking for keywords that bring more potential patients to the website. Reach out today to learn more about how to make your website a new patient magnet.
