Crafting a Digital Healthcare Marketing Strategy Through SEO and Content Alignment

A successful digital healthcare marketing strategy relies on integrating search engine optimization (SEO) tactics with quality content. With proper SEO, search engines connect consumers with healthcare businesses that meet their needs. Without it, content risks never reaching its target audience.

Busy content marketing managers can benefit from hiring a content strategist or digital healthcare marketing agency to integrate SEO with their content. SEO is a crucial marketing tool, and expert healthcare writers understand the steps to create an effective healthcare marketing strategy through SEO alignment.

Why SEO Is Crucial for Digital Healthcare Marketing

Consumers gain access to a wealth of relevant healthcare content online. Search engines recognize properly integrated SEO within a webpage and form a SERP (search engine results page) to connect consumers with the most relevant content to their search inquiry. This process saves consumers from weeding through countless articles and web pages to get the information they need.

Consumers must have access to trustworthy and credible healthcare content, as misleading or false health information could prove detrimental. Google places high-quality content at the top of its SERP based on how well the content exhibits four qualities: experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E-E-A-T). This type of recognition will build your online reputation and consumer counts.

SEO is crucial in healthcare marketing strategy to keep relevant, credible, and trustworthy healthcare content accessible to your target audience. Use these steps to create a digital healthcare marketing plan that aligns SEO with your content.

Step 1: Understanding Your Audience

When content producers identify and understand their target audience, they can anticipate their needs and write content to satisfy them. You’ll gain valuable insight into your audience’s needs and search behaviors by taking the time to analyze SEO data.

Here are some tips to guide you through a basic analysis:

• Align the demographics of your current and target audiences by using a tool like Google Analytics. Then, look at your audience’s search intent to determine if your content is achieving their goals.
• Gather information on your website’s readability, organization, and functionality. Readers don’t stay on confusing or poorly structured pages.
• Research your competitors’ websites to find their successful data-driven marketing strategies (e.g., tone of voice and type of content).

Consider a digital healthcare marketing agency to regularly pull analytics to ensure you’re reaching your target audience and meeting their needs.

Step 2: Keyword Research for Healthcare Content

To select effective SEO keywords, list relevant keywords within your own content and on your competitors’ websites.

Broad keywords are short and generalized and apply to most healthcare facilities or organizations, such as “pediatric cardiologists.” Long-tail keywords, like “top pediatric cardiologists in DFW,” use multi-word phrases to specify a particular organization, location, or service and narrow the search results.

Place the top keyword from your findings into a search engine tool like Google Keyword Planner and pick keywords from these results.

This step may take a few tries before you’re successful. By partnering with healthcare marketing agencies, you can avoid the trial and error of choosing the right keywords, as they stay up-to-date with the top trending keywords and what works across the market.

Step 3: Content Creation and Alignment

Producing quality healthcare content is vital to the health and safety of your consumers, just as having effective SEO is vital to the quality of your content.

• When creating high-quality content, remember the following:
• Keep all content conversational, readable, and concise.
• Use accurate and up-to-date information.
• Improve visibility to the target audience by using SEO strategies.
• Focus the main goal of your content on the intent of your target audience.

Digital healthcare marketing agencies like WriteRN give you an advantage over competitors by using nurse content writers who skillfully combine SEO knowledge and healthcare expertise.

The type of content you use can also affect SEO. Common content types used on healthcare websites include the following:

• Blogs: Blogs are intended to share opinions, advice, or updates on a topic. They often use informal writing, with the writer directly addressing the reader (i.e., you) and leaving an opening for comments to the writer.
• Articles: Articles target a broad audience with formal and objective writing to provide authoritative information or expert insight through evidence-based information. Consumers often view articles as more authoritative than blogs, and search engines categorize them as quality content.
• Whitepapers: Business to Business (B2B) or Businesses to Wholesalers gain factual evidence based on statistics and research from whitepapers. You’ll see backlinks to whitepapers used by other authoritative businesses to support content.

Step 4: On-Site SEO Optimization

On-site optimization uses SEO elements within your webpage for search engines to better understand your content’s relevance to what the searcher is looking for. Commonly used SEO elements include meta tags, headers, and alt text.

Here are some tips for optimizing site structure and content for better search engine visibility:

• Use meta descriptions containing keywords.
• Shorten URLs, making them more memorable.
• Redirect your URLs by using the WordPress plug-in “redirection.”
• Incorporate internal and external links to other credible content.
• Use alt text to make images readable by web scanners.
• Avoid overusing keywords or other SEO elements.

Step 5: Off-Site SEO Strategies

Off-site SEO strategies, such as backlinks and featuring your content in other healthcare publications, connect authoritative healthcare content to yours. You can view these connections as an advertisement for your content, promoting authority, credibility, and online reputation.

Backlinks lead readers to another website through an embedded link in the content. When another business uses a backlink to your content, it implies to the reader that your content meets the qualities of E-E-A-T.

An established partnership with authoritative healthcare publications will prove valuable to your online reputation, especially if they feature your content. To establish a partnership, you first need to determine your potential partner—a healthcare company with similar content that is credible and considered authoritative by readers.

An effective partnership requires the following:

• Effective communication
• Established objectives
• Flexibility to change
• Nurturing of the relationship

To approach a potential partner, start by implementing backlinks to their content to get noticed. Reach out to see if there is any content you can provide for them, even if it’s free. Free content for an authoritative healthcare publication helps build your online reputation.

Measuring Success and Adjusting Strategies

The key metrics used to evaluate SEO performance and content engagement include the following:

• The overall number of viewers (website traffic)
• How long they stay and review your content (time on page)
• The percentage of viewers who leave your website without navigating through your content (bounce rate)
• The percentage of your site visitors who take action after viewing your content (conversion rate).

Use analytic tools to assess the effectiveness of implementing these strategies, keeping in mind there will be around a six-month delay before you can see their effects. A digital healthcare marketing agency can run these analytics and make the content changes for you, ensuring you’re keeping up with the rapidly changing healthcare market.

Your website’s success relies on a well-crafted digital marketing strategy that uses SEO effectively aligned with content to attract the target audience. Digital healthcare marketing agencies are eager to assist you in taking control of your plan through their services. Check out Write RN’s content services today to have your website reviewed by SEO-experienced nurse experts and start making your way to the top of SERPs.

FAQs

1. How do I identify the right SEO keywords for my healthcare content?

Look at the top 5 keywords on your competitor’s website and the words you’re using frequently in your content and plug these into a tool like Google Keyword Planner.

2. What types of content are most effective for digital healthcare marketing?

There is not one most effective content type for all digital healthcare marketing, as the effectiveness of your content depends on your target audience. Aim to produce various content types if you plan to reach diverse audiences.

3. How can I improve my website’s SEO for healthcare marketing?

Follow the 5 steps included in this blog to improve your website’s SEO. Consider hiring a digital healthcare marketing agency experienced in effectively executing these steps.

4. What are the best practices for measuring the success of my healthcare marketing strategy?

Run regular analytics using tools like Google Analytics, looking at key metrics: number of viewers, time on page, bounce rates, and conversion rates.

5. How often should I revise my digital healthcare marketing strategy?

At a minimum, you should run analytics every six months and update your website to improve your results.

References

American Marketing Association. (2022, January 25). What is SEO marketing?
https://www.ama.org/marketing-news/what-is-seo-marketing/#:~:text=SEO%20marketing%20is%20a%20subset,major%20search%20engines%20like%20Google

Byers, K. (2023, January 2). SERPs: Search engine results pages explained. Semrush Blog.
https://www.semrush.com/blog/serp/?kw=&cmp=US_SRCH_DSA_Blog_EN&label=dsa_pagefeed&Network=g&Device=c&utm_content=683861103833&kwid=aud-582315066901:dsa-2263819780519&cmpid=18348486859&agpid=156312208213&BU=Core&extid=97592280148&adpos=&gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjwvKi4BhABEiwAH2gcwzFciKos_YDu_EIKfxD6Fpi5j2Cu7YccORhPxvrMDnLuNw_lyXVTXRoCE-kQAvD_BwE

Jones, S. (2024, March 13). The benefits of a content strategist for digital marketing in the healthcare industry. Write RN.
https://writern.net/content-strategy-for-digital-marketing-in-healthcare/

Roscoe, T. N. (2023, February 3). 5 essential insights to master the google E-E-A-T for powerful SEO success. Write RN.
https://writern.net/understanding-google-e-e-a-t-what-you-need-to-know/

Vora, A. (2023, December 11). The ultimate guide to digital marketing strategies. Semrush Blog.
https://www.semrush.com/blog/digital-marketing-strategies/