Your website is your digital front door, allowing you to connect to your patients online. However, with so many other medical practices appearing online, how do you stand out in the crowd? In this article, we’ll explore the three primary areas to focus on when it comes to website optimization: SEO, User Experience, and Technical Optimization.
SEO and Page Content Strategy: The Backbone of Website Optimization
Search engine optimization (SEO) involves optimizing content on a website strategically to attract more organic traffic from search engines. This is achieved by including relevant keywords and phrases in your content, tags, and metadata to propel search engine ranking. Focusing on long-tail keywords related to your medical practice can better attract your target audience. Providing informative content like practice-related blog posts also enhances content relevance and increases user engagement while reducing bounce rates.
How to Optimize a Website for Search Engines
To optimize websites effectively, experts suggest using relevant keywords that match user intent. Incorporate these primary keywords in your URL, H1, meta title, and body to help search engines understand your website. Choose a primary keyword that medical professionals and patients search for when they need a service your practice offers. Be careful not to overuse keywords, as Google can detect “keyword stuffing,” hurting your search rankings.
For more tips on content strategy best practices, read our comprehensive on-page SEO guide for more details on keyword optimization.
Quality Backlinks to Optimize Websites
A backlink is simply a link from another website to your website. When other reputable medical websites link to your content, search engines associate your site with high quality content, improving your website’s “authority.” Quality backlinks also increase the chances of your website appearing on the first page of search engine results pages (SERPs), ultimately driving more traffic to your website. You can gain valuable backlinks by reaching out to other medical professionals and websites.
Schema Markup
Using schema markup can make it easier for search engines to understand the content on your medical website. Schema markup is a type of code that you can add to your website to provide additional context for search engine algorithms. These can appear as “snippets” of information alongside your links, making it easier for users to determine if a page matches what they’re looking for. When using schema markup effectively, your website can increase its chances of appearing in rich snippets and answer boxes that appear at the top of SERPs.
Perform SEO Audits and Analyze Your Performance
If you’re new to SEO, start by performing a comprehensive audit of your website. This will help you identify any technical issues that may hinder your ranking, such as broken links, slow page speed, or missing meta descriptions. Some great tools for conducting an SEO audit are SEMrush, and Ahrefs. Additional items to add to your SEO audit checklist include:
- Site speed check: Online tools, such as Google’s PageSpeed Insights, can help you analyze your website’s speed and suggest improvements.
- Optimize website content: Conduct keyword research and use those keywords in your content to help your website rank higher in search results.
- Refine site structure: A well-structured website helps search engines crawl and index your content, making it easier for them to understand what your website is about.
- Build quality backlinks: In SEO, having quality backlinks from reputable websites can significantly improve your search engine ranking.
User Experience Optimization: Crafting a User-Centric Website
Creating an optimized website user experience is the cornerstone of any successful digital marketing endeavor, especially for medical professionals seeking to attract and retain patients. A website that is designed to meet users’ needs, desires, and expectations, encourages patient engagement, and helps drive patient volumes.
Patients expect user-friendly navigation, and easy-to-find information like location, appointment booking, and online bill payment options. Additionally, personalizing your web design for your target audience by using appealing and authentic images, creating branding that reflects your services, and adding high-quality video content helps improve the user experience.
How To Optimize Your User Experience
An optimized website that is not only visually appealing but also user-friendly has the best chance of attracting more potential patients. User experience optimization involves designing and improving your website to satisfy the needs of your target audience. The following strategies will help enhance the user experience.
Ease of Use Across All Devices
A study found that nearly 65% of participants used the internet to search for health information. That’s why your website’s architecture and layout should be organized in a clean and straightforward way, with optimized text pointers and button sizes, easy-to-read typography, and a clear call to action (CTA) button.
Another study, published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, found that 63% of participants had used a mobile device to find health information within the past year. More importantly, Google search places a strong preference on ranking those websites that are optimized for the mobile experience. To keep up, your website should be mobile responsive with large, legible fonts, short but concise forms, and eye-catching videos and images.
By adopting a mobile-first design approach, you prioritize your design elements for the mobile layout before designing for the desktop version. This ensures that the website is optimized for mobile users and made more user-friendly in terms of scrolling, navigation, and readability.
A/B and Multivariate Testing for UX Enhancements
A/B and multivariate testing are ways to see which design of a web page is better for users. You try different versions of the page to see which version site visitors prefer. Multivariate testing is when you modify different aspects of the page–such as colors, headlines and images–to see which attributes encourage the best engagement.
Google Core Web Vitals
Google’s Core Web Vitals looks at specific technical aspects of your website’s loading speed, interactivity, and visual stability. It provides you with metrics to optimize the user experience on your site. Not that site’s loading speed plays a vital role in providing a good user experience. The faster your site loads, the less likely visitors will leave the website, or “bounce.” Keeping your “bounce rate” low encourages higher rankings by Google.
Technical Aspects: Under the Hood of Website Performance
When it comes to website performance, there are many technical aspects at play that determine a website’s speed, user experience, and search engine ranking factors. The following underlying technical aspects of website performance stand to enhance both the user experience and SEO ranking simultaneously.
Optimize Website Speed
Websites that load faster tend to retain more traffic than slower ones. Web developers tackle website speed by optimizing the website’s code, fixing broken links, reducing redirects and the size of static files, and using caching techniques. However, there are other factors like server performance and hosting services that can impact a website’s speed.
Image Optimization
High-resolution images and videos, however, tend to slow down a website’s load time. Image optimization is the process of compressing, resizing, or cropping images to reduce their file size without reducing their quality. Image optimization is a balance between image quality and file size.
Server Management
Optimizing server management is crucial for maintaining efficient server operations and addressing issues promptly. The server’s geographical location and response time significantly impact website performance. For example, hosting the website on a server geographically close to where users are accessing it can minimize latency and enhance page load speed.
File and Request Optimization
When users visit a website, their browser sends multiple requests to the server for each file or resource (HTML, CSS, JS, Images, Ico, etc.), making up the website’s content. Reducing the number of requests sent to the server can help decrease website load time. Techniques like minification, which involves removing unnecessary characters from code files, can decrease the size of code files.
How To Optimize a Website Technical Elements
A website’s sleek design and compelling content will impress potential customers, but functionality is just as important. Your website’s technical elements play a critical role in its success.
The speed of your website is critical to user experience. Slow loading times can lead to impatient website visitors, higher bounce rates and lower search engine ranking. Some general tips for enhancing website speed include:
- Reducing image size
- Minimizing HTTP requests
- Enabling browser caching
- Reducing server response time
A Content Delivery Network (CDN) can also help to reduce loading times. A CDN stores your website’s data on multiple servers, serving visitors from the server that is closest to them, leading to faster loading times.
Optimize Website Images
Images are necessary to convey core messaging and make a website look professional, but they can also slow down your site significantly if not optimized properly. The following steps can be taken to optimize your images and reduce their file size:
- Choose appropriate file types such as JPG, PNG, or SVG.
- Compress images using third-party tools like TinyPNG or Compressor.io.
- Reduce image dimensions to the required size.
- Use appropriate alt tags to describe images.
Choosing Hosting Providers and Managing Server-Side Issues
An inadequate hosting plan can lead to slow loading times and even website crashes at traffic peaks. Factors to consider while selecting a hosting provider include uptime guarantee, server location, CDN inclusion, and pricing. While managing server-side issues, consider cleaning up your server’s database and removing unnecessary plugins.
Minimizing HTTP Requests
HTTP requests are made every time a visitor loads a webpage. Minimizing these requests can lead to quicker website loading times. Some ways to minimize HTTP requests include:
- Use CSS Sprites for small images.
- Use inline CSS and JavaScript.
- Minimize redirects.
- Combine scripts into one file.
- Use browser caching.
Optimize Website File Sizes
Large files can take up more bandwidth and take longer to load on your website. By compressing files, optimizing code, and reducing unnecessary scripts you can reduce your website’s file size.
Note: Ensure patient information is never stored on your website or the hosting servers. To keep your website aligned with HIPAA rules, it is best to route any patient information captured directly to a secure in-house storage system such as your electronic health records EHR.
Summary: How to Optimize Websites for SEO
Optimizing a website has evolved to include a combination of SEO practices, user experience best practices, and technical optimization to ensure a cohesive, smooth user interaction and improved website ranking on search engine results pages. Improving a website’s long-term performance requires continuous improvements on various fronts, not just SEO. Medical professionals must pay close attention to these areas if they want their website to stand out in the crowded digital space. By achieving an optimized website, your patients can seamlessly access information, book appointments, and find useful information, driving patient volumes for a more profitable practice.
Boost Your SEO and Your Bottom Line with iHealthSpot
With SEO, website can be more than just a digital brochure for your medical practice. Conversion rate optimization transforms your website into a machine for new patient lead generation. But with all the minutiae that goes into improving a website inside and out, many medical practices outsource digital marketing. The healthcare digital marketing team at iHealthSpot is here to help you to improve website performance and make the most of your online marketing investment so you can gain a competitive edge. Reach out to learn more.
