6 SEO Basics for Local Health Businesses

Have you heard about SEO a lot of times but you’re not sure how it works and how your health business can benefit from it? Let me share 6 SEO basics for your local health business!

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO,  is a process that has the ability to turn any business successful. People find your business on search engines like Google, Bing, or Yahoo. This technique ranks your pages and distributes them in link farms. If you want to have business conversions and for people to engage in your content, you need to invest time learning SEO or hiring someone to do it for you. 

Every day, patients turn to search engines for their medical needs. Before consulting a medical practitioner, patients seek help from search engines like Google. With this trend in the medical field, numerous health businesses compete to rise above the rankings. So, if your business is not at the top, know that your competitors are.

Not being able to meet the most up-to-date SEO means you may lose your patients to your competition. Remember, before they even experience your services or buy your medical products, your digital presence is the gateway to encourage people to check out what you have for them. It’s the first impression that will give them a source or hint of your business’ credibility.

Today I am going to share with you 6 SEO Basics for your local health business.

Using appropriate health or medical keywords

Your content should contain the right keywords for patients to see your business. You can start with the products and services that you are offering. List out the possible words linked to your business. 

In these SEO basics and tips, we’d like to include these tools that are worth checking out: 

• Ubersuggest
• Ahrefs
• or the much-used Google Keyword Planner. 

You can look up the keywords or seeds that you have listed and see which keywords top the list with a high number of CPC. 

If you only used one word as a keyword, search engines, like Google, tend to flag this tactic and would consider it spam. This is one of the SEO basics that many businesses violate but to avoid this, use long-tail keywords in your content, which is a string of words that rank for your business.

Adding relevant content pages

For a medical business, your content should display high-quality information. Your goal is to help your patients get better and make their lives easier. Google ranks a higher standard on medical webpages. Low-quality content may result in dangerous or unintended medical consequences. 

Knowing what your audience is searching for gives you an idea of how to create your content. Search engines like Google will recognize long-form educational content as an authoritative figure, which in turn, increases your ranking.

Optimize your visual elements

It is worth including in these SEO basics that including high-quality videos will increase your user’s time on your page. Adding videos such as an informative medical video or a virtual facility tour will increase the number of visitors you get on your site. Include alt text to your images and infographics to make your site engaging for your target audience.

Always optimize for security, website speed, and mobile use

Security, website speed, and mobile use are all a part of the ranking. If your site is a bit slow, then users tend to back out of your website. Optimizing your speed improves your user experience. The ideal time to load is for two seconds. A great tool like Google PageSpeed Insights can help you improve your site’s speed score.

Having a secured site helps you improve your rankings and also protects your users’ information from possible hackers. This is probably one of the most important SEO basics you should consider implementing. Always get an SSL, so you won’t be penalized for your rankings. The certificate ensures that your patient’s confidential information is highly protected. 

Ensure that your site is mobile-friendly since most searches are done on a mobile device. To make sure that your site is optimized for mobile, have a responsive site design. Doing this would avoid bad or poor user experience from a device to another.

Having off-site factors

Having off-site indicators like links to your website or your social media platforms can influence your rankings. Although social media is not a direct ranking factor, it, however, influences the patient’s choice. Before a patient books an appointment, they would usually look at reviews on your social media sites. 

Always make sure that your social media profile is up-to-date and interactive. Make sure that your links are not spammy going to maintain your SEO performance. Disavow any unwanted links to clean up your profile.

Local SEO Basics

Your patients want local services that are easily accessible for them. To do that, you need to show up on Google’s local pack. They are 4-5 businesses that appear above the organic search results. All of the information from these listings are from your GMB page, ensuring that it is accurate and available. 

An important factor for a local SEO is the local citations. These can be from social profiles, business directories, newspaper websites, and other resources.

There are two concepts to keep in mind in healthcare; it’s called E-A-T and YMYL. E-A-T means expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. Although it’s not a direct ranking factor, it reveals the type of websites Google rewards with search visibility. The information that you place on medicine and health impacts your readers. 

Every medical business strives to get on top of search rankings and receive traffic to their sites. Growing your website takes a long time, and the right approach will get you the results you have been aiming for. Following the SEO basics above ensures your digital presence.

Having a great SEO strategy ensures that patients will schedule an appointment. Always keep in mind EAT and YMYL qualities to rise above your competitors. If you want to see how SEO can contribute to your goals’ success and company’s ROI, schedule a consultation only with the experts today!