So you’re a private medical professional and you’ve put blood, sweat and tears into a new website to showcase your services and shining client testimonials. Maybe you’ve even posted it on your social media in the hope that it will reach a wider audience. But you’re met with radio silence…
Rings a bell? Well, in reading this guide to healthcare SEO, you’re going to change that. Below, we’ll run through what medical SEO marketing actually means, diagnose the most common problems that beginners run into, and then offer actionable solutions you can get started on right now.
Sounds good? Perfect, let’s begin with a working definition of healthcare SEO for those new to the concept.
Skip to:
- What is healthcare SEO?
- Your Money or Your Life (YMYL)
- Common medical SEO marketing mistakes
- Myth 1: Underestimating the value of content
- Myth 2: Neglecting website speed and accessibility
- Myth 3: Failing to optimise your site for mobile devices
- Myth 4: Writing about what you think your clients want
- Myth 5: Believing metadata doesn’t matter
- Myth 6: Glossing over links
- Myth 7: Thinking SEO is a one-time trick with instant results
- Additional strategies to employ
- Key learnings
What is healthcare SEO?
In our experience, clients who approach us tend to only have a surface-level understanding of what SEO is. After all, the phrase “search engine optimisation” is pretty nebulous on its own.
Put simply, though, it’s a way of appearing in search engines for targeted queries like this one: “private dentistry Leeds”. This way you can put your web pages in front of the right people, ideally those already looking for your services or are in the early stages of your sales funnel.
From improving your website’s functionality, accessibility and layout to creating content that converts, there are plenty of tactics that go on in the background of medical websites that see them rise in Google’s search results.
To earn one of the top spots on these results pages, website owners need to get to grips with the various strategies and techniques that get them in Google’s good books. Generally, this involves hitting certain factors on your site – namely, meaning, relevance, quality, usability and context – as well as taking steps to encourage positive online mentions from other domains.
It’s significance to the healthcare sector
In an era where an increasingly pressurised NHS is leading to a rise in Britons using private health services, it’s a good idea to get ahead of the curb with your marketing. Not to mention that, nowadays, the mobile phone is king. Search engines are generally one of the first places people turn to when seeking out information on their health – case and point, the millions of times Brits are consulting ‘Dr Google’ each year.
Unlike NHS practices, which everyone knows, private clinics might go under the radar. Particularly as they don’t have the luxury of a GP consistently referring patients right to their door or the same level of signposting for their niche services, be they cosmetic procedures, dental care, counselling or physio. After all, if prospective clients aren’t aware that there’s a specialist consultant near them, they aren’t likely to make an enquiry.
This is where SEO comes to the rescue. Think of it as a stand-in for the signposting I just mentioned. By optimising your website – pages, techy stuff, content and all – you can show up for specific queries made by users looking for related information and then begin marketing to them once they click on one of your pages.
Key benefits
Besides the fact that SEO can change the trajectory of would-be patients away from your competitors’ websites and towards your own, there are many other benefits that private consultants can exploit. Here’s a quick round-up of the major ones.
- Increased visibility in search = improved brand awareness.
- You can target prospects on both a local and national level.
- An SEO-friendly website can build trust, patient numbers, leads and ROI.
- It allows smaller healthcare providers to compete with the big players
- As a strategy, it’s highly cost-effective and has a compounding effect when paired with complementary tactics like paid ads.
- More patients = more positive reviews, which in turn, also enhance SEO.
The nuances of medical SEO marketing
In such a specialised sector, it’s not surprising that marketers face numerous challenges that are unique to healthcare companies and medical practitioners. For one, targeting can be tricky. Organic search is less of a problem as you can target patients searching for treatments or asking questions about conditions, but remarketing ads are sometimes off-limits due to cautious search engines concerned about privacy rules and regs.
Speaking of regulations, compliance is another hurdle you’re bound to face. The General Medical Council (GMC) has a rigorous set of guidelines by which the marketing of private medical services should abide. These rules stipulate that marketing materials should be transparent, factual and verifiable, as well as compliant with legislation issued by the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA).
Thus, all of your promotional work should be done with the same duty of care, ethics and attention to detail as your services.
Your Money or Your Life (YMYL)
YMYL. Think of this strange little acronym as the lifeblood of your medical marketing strategy. Your Money or Your Life is a concept that relates to any content that has an impact on a reader’s health, well-being, safety or financial stability, and search engines take it extremely seriously.
As the commercial healthcare industry is so tied up with each of these elements, it’s something you should keep top of mind at all times. Web pages that are deemed YMYL will be more heavily scrutinised by Google’s Page Quality ranking, meaning that when discussing topics that may influence a person’s health they should be rigorously put together and contain no unsubstantiated claims, whether a service page, blog post or homepage.
To put this in perspective, here’s a quick case study: Back in 2020, the GMC raised concerns about physicians using scare tactics to propel profits off the back of coronavirus tests. Using the unprecedented circumstances, the medical watchdog sounded the alarm against providers exploiting the vulnerability, lack of knowledge and fear of consumers. At a glance, not only is this unethical, but it completely undermines the advice issued by all the regulatory bodies.
7 common medical SEO marketing mistakes and how to unlearn them
Now that we’ve been through the main principles of SEO for private medical practices and commercial healthcare providers, we can jump straight into the practical stuff.
So whether you’re at your wits end with your website, or it’s simply not performing as well as you imagined, here are some common mistakes that healthcare businesses can make with their SEO.
Some of the following might be popular, they might even feel like common sense, but everything on the list below is backed by data and real-world experience from our hive of marketing professionals.
Myth 1: Underestimating the value of content
If you’ve dabbled in SEO or perhaps just carried out a preliminary search, you may have come across the term “content is king”. It’s hard to avoid! Sounds straightforward enough: content optimised with keyword research and the right keyword placement will rank more highly. But it’s important to remember that it’s not simply a means to an end.
Your content represents your business; it’s your brand values, personality, experience and expertise embodied in text form. Not only this, but it should form the basis for your sales pipeline, with each piece of content neatly slotting into the right place on the customer’s journey from brand awareness to the purchase stage. Use internal links in each piece of content and you can guide the reader naturally through their purchase decision all whilst helping search engines make sense of your website’s structure and content.
Even simple things like rewording a vague service page headline like “Take Control of Your Health” into something more descriptive – for example, “Private Nutrition Consultancy for Athletes” – and clear can make a world of difference. Equally, you can ditch meaningless subheaders for SEO-powered ones and generic navigation labels with more specific ones. See, “Surgical”, “Medical” and “Laser” are much better than “Services”, which we see on thousands of other sites.
Myth 2: Neglecting website speed and accessibility
Four seconds isn’t long for a website to stay loading, right? Wrong. Alt text and colour contrast don’t make a big difference? Well…
Yep, you hear me correctly. A loading speed of over 3 seconds is considered too slow for most users not to click off, and accessibility measures aren’t just a nice add-on. Both should be key aspects of your website that you continually work on since user experience is one of Google’s ranking factors.
Ensuring that your text is always descriptive (even in URLs and call-to-action buttons) will mean that screen readers aren’t locked out of your site and that you’re not losing out on business. Alt text is particularly interesting as it can also contribute to your site’s visibility online – load it with SEO-rich description and you increase your chances of your pictures appearing in image search.
Myth 3: Failing to optimise your site for mobile devices
Here’s another web design tip for you: failing to optimise your site for mobile devices is like closing your practices’ doors to half of your patients. This is because mobile-friendliness is favoured by 75% of users.
Being mobile-friendly involves a bunch of things. When designing for mobile devices, it’s crucial you adhere to the following guidelines for optimal user experience:
1. Avoid using software that isn’t typically installed on mobile devices.
2. Ensure that the text is easily readable on mobile screens.
3. Automatically adjust content to fit smaller screens without requiring users to zoom or rotate their screens.
4. Space links appropriately and make them visible, so they’re easily clickable for users.
Myth 4: Writing about what you think your clients want
An easy pitfall to fall into as a healthcare provider is writing your content from a business perspective rather than a consumer one. Without conducting the right research into the language, search queries and topics your target audience is embroiled in, you might miss out on opportunities to retain their attention as, as a result, their business.
Of course, your writing should adhere to the nuances of YMYL content and be medically accurate, but it’s equally important to communicate in patient-friendly, accessible language. A shortcut here is to do some competitor keyword analysis to pick up on what they’re excelling in and then producing unique content that exceeds theirs.
Myth 5: Believing metadata doesn’t matter
If you’re of the opinion that metadata – the URL, title and description that appear next to each result in search engines – doesn’t matter, think again. These tiny snippets of text play an impactful role when it comes to click-through rate. So if you’re not using them, you’re really missing out; on SEO keyword opportunities; on persuading the reader to visit the page.
You don’t have to spend hours pooling over the wording. A succinct description of the content and a snappy call-to-action is a hundred times better than the automated metadata Google comes up with when you leave the fields empty.
Myth 6: Glossing over links
Many businesses have different ideas around links; some love to use them, some ignore them entirely. But in a thorough healthcare SEO strategy, you’ll see a few different types.
- Internal links: links from one page on your website to another (remember what we said about leading users down your sales funnel?)
- External links: when you link to another site to provide context or additional information.
- Backlinks: these are URLs on other domains that link to your website.
This topic deserves a whole blog post of its own, so to put it briefly, you should try to include at least one external link in your blog posts and internal links wherever possible. These should always be pointing to high-quality content and placed within your text naturally and descriptively.
For insights into backlinks, check out our blog about what they are and why they’re important for gaining authority, credibility and relevance as well as an SEO boost.
Myth 7: Thinking SEO is a one-time trick with instant results
By nature, the internet is always changing. Therefore, it’d be short-sighted to assume that once you’ve optimised your website for the first time and produced some content you’re set for life. Unfortunately, this is not true.
SEO is neither a static nor linear process. It really should be thought of as an investment: you’re not going to see immediate results, but if you take the time to work on your SEO consistently you can maintain an edge over your competitors. By building upon the initial momentum, continually realigning with the shifting consumer expectations and keeping on top of trends within the healthcare sector, you can achieve a sustainable ROI.
Additional healthcare SEO strategies to employ
Using local search to your advantage
Of all the pages in the healthcare SEO playbook you should definitely look into local SEO. This process is all about making sure that your business appears in the Google Map pack and in local search results.
Part of the process involves using keywords used in your locality and creating listings on local business listing directories as well as your Google Business Profile. Don’t forget to keep each description unique for maximum online reach.
Engaging with client reviews
Patient reviews play a crucial role in medical SEO marketing. They act as social proof of the quality of care provided, attracting new patients, encouraging repeat customers and offering valuable feedback for improvement. Both positive and negative reviews contribute to overall credibility, making it essential for healthcare providers to actively encourage and respond to all patient feedback.
Supplementing organic search with PPC
Organic search is only part of the search engine marketing puzzle, and it pairs beautifully with paid ads. From providing a more holistic view of the digital landscape to compounding your clicks, impressions and ROI, they are very powerful when deployed together.
Exploiting SEO trends
Finally, if you want to reflect your business’ cutting-edge attitude to innovation, why not lean into the healthcare SEO trends taking off? Whether that’s taking an interest in AI-driven technology, conducting voice search optimisation or trying out a new software for tracking analytics, there’s much you can do to polish up your strategy.
Key learnings
With the end of this article in sight, some big-picture takeaways are in order.
- When it comes to SEO for medical practices and providers, the details matter.
- Local strategies are invaluable when there are so many competitors in the market.
- Content must not only satisfy Google’s E-E-A-T guidelines, but stringently follow industry regulations and ethical standards.
- Web design and user experience have a knock-on effect on your content and website visibility, so adept functionality and easy navigation is key.
Ready to give your website a checkup?
Wow, that was a lot of information to chew on! If you’re anything like me, you’ll find that coming back to our key tips and takeaways will help you digest all of the knowledge, so don’t forget to bookmark this page.
But, on the off chance that you are ready to take the next step with your healthcare SEO, come and talk to the ‘busy bees’ at beefound.agencyl. If you’re after a helping hand in getting your business’ visibility off the ground, our SEO services are just the ticket – we’ll give your site a check up and support you with your long-term SEO strategy.
