SEO Services For Medical Professionals

Medical SEO For Doctors

Improve your website activity with the help of medical SEO services.

Having a website used to set you apart from your competition. However, with over 1.5 billion websites live online today, you must go above and beyond to stand out. To be noticed by potential clients and be recognized as a valuable website by search engines, you need to invest in proper medical SEO services.

Optimizing your site helps you to stand out from the crowd!

Medical SEO services consist of various search engine optimization (SEO) services that are designed to help get your website noticed by your medical industry and ranking on search engines such as Google and Bing. 

Website ranking is absolutely vital to the success of your site. Appearing in the top search engine result pages (SERPs) not only gets you noticed, but when done by organic practices, such as medical SEO practices, it also increases your overall click-through rates. 

 

Research shows that in Google’s organic search results, the top result garners an average click-through rate of 31.7%. From there, each result’s average click-through rate begins to decline significantly, and by the time you reach the 10th search result, click-through rates average about 3%.

When trying to improve your organic SEO ranking, what type of medical SEO services should you be considering?

Website Design/Maintenance

Medical SEO means nothing if you don’t have a website to optimize. However, when it comes to website design, there are dozens of options to choose from, and that can intimidate your marketing team if they aren’t familiar with each option. 

That’s why many marketing teams decide to outsource website design and maintenance, allowing them to focus their attention elsewhere. 

When it comes to optimizing your website with proper medical SEO practices, you need to pay particular attention to your:

Each of these plays an essential role in your website usability and the overall customer experience, which does play a role in website ranking, especially as we move into 2021 and beyond.  

Once your website design is complete and your site goes live, you want to make sure you are maintaining it as well, and that’s where technical SEO comes into play. 

Technical SEO for Medical Professionals

Technical SEO is crucial because it sets your website up for success from the very beginning. Here at Visual Rankings, we split this category into additional services:

Once you’ve gone through the initial steps to setting up your website, you need to make sure you are properly maintaining it. Technical SEO is a necessary step because it helps you with:

 

  • XML sitemap creation/updates — Your XML sitemap is most easily described as your website’s “floor plan.” It’s an outline of your website that tells search engines how your website works and how everything is connected. This sitemap needs to be uploaded to Google Search Console to increase its effectiveness. 
  • Fixing website coding and crawl issues — Website crawl issues are things such as 404 errors. These errors are frustrating for users because it results in “page not found” messages, which can have a negative impact on your overall site ranking due to poor customer experience. Tangentially, common coding issues can frustrate site visitors, also affecting your ranking.

The right team of experts can optimize your technical SEO to improve your overall medical SEO and help keep your website running at it’s best.  

SEO Content Publishing

Link Building

When people think of link building, many believe it merely refers to creating navigation for the website. While website navigation does play an essential role in your medical SEO, link building refers to using both internal and external links to improve your website crawlability and give you a more authoritative voice in your niche. 

  • Internal linking — This practice is linking to various pieces of content on your own website. This can include linking to previously published blogs in newer blogs, linking to relevant product pages in your blogging content, etc.
  • External linking: This is the practice of linking to authoritative sources that are not your own. They may link to sources such as the FDA, CDC, and various medical research outlets for medical professionals. Doing this shows the website viewers that you go above and beyond to back up any claims you make with viable research. This gives you an authoritative voice and builds a relationship with your audience.

While this may seem like an easy task, link building does require some strategy, which is why many medical marketing teams opt to outsource the task to an SEO expert.  

 

medical links Medical SEO

Here at Visual Rankings, when we are working on your link building strategy, we take the time to research each source’s credibility. We will never suggest linking to a source that could put your credibility at risk. We also keep diversity in mind when choosing both internal and external links and make sure to choose sites that aren’t full of additional external links, allowing your website to continue standing out in the visitor’s mind. 

These credible links help you build trust with your audience because it shows them you can offer valuable and useful information. The more positive endorsements you receive, the higher your website will rank.

Once your website is up and running, it’s time to start populating it with SEO optimized content. This can be done in several ways, including:

Medical websites can be a wealth of information. Whether it’s a doctor’s office sharing helpful information with their clients on how to survive the cold/flu season or hospitals sharing important COVID-19 updates, there are endless opportunities to share properly optimized medical content. 

If you are looking for someone to improve your current content or write more curated content, SEO content publishing is a service that will no doubt benefit your medical brand. 

As a part of our Facebook marketing services for medical professionals, we not only help you create and share relevant and transparent content, but we also assist you with collecting user reviews, properly managing your ads, and targeting the ideal audience. 

It’s not always enough to respond to Facebook comments and reviews, and that’s why having a team of social media experts on your side can help you boost your social media SEO practices.  

How Does SEO Benefit Medical Professionals?

Putting it all into perspective.

You’ve seen how some of the most popular medical SEO services can be beneficial. However, it can be difficult to really put these into perspective, especially if you currently have a website and haven’t been seeing the results you’d like—despite putting in your best efforts. 

So, how exactly can medical SEO benefit your practice?

Increases Website Ranking/Visibility

One of the most significant reasons to invest in professional medical SEO services is to increase your website’s overall ranking, thus guaranteeing your brand’s visibility to a much greater audience. 

SEO practices focus on optimizing your website and other content with keywords guaranteed to bring in visitors. These individuals are looking for an answer to a question or some other type of content, and with approximately 7% of Google’s daily searches being health-related, it can be quite challenging to capture their attention. 

Not only is it essential to use relevant keywords, but it’s also crucial that your information is easy to digest, simple to navigate, and generally user-friendly. Each of these plays a critical role in how Google and other search engines see your site and will affect your SERP ranking. 

When you invest in medical SEO services with Visual Rankings, you are investing in a team of professionals looking out for your best interest. We help your website’s ranking and visibility by implementing a variety of on-page, off-page, and technical SEO practices to ensure that your content is relevant to your brand and accessible to people searching for answers to common medical and healthcare-related questions. 

Establish Authority and Credibility within the Industry

One common misconception in marketing is that website authority and brand credibility are one-in-the-same. The truth is, they are two very different concepts:

  • Website/domain authority — Your website authority, also referred to as your domain authority, is a search engine ranking score that tells users how relevant the website is within a specific industry. For site owners, this score tells you how well you rank compared to your competitors.
  • Brand credibility — While search engines determine your website authority, your brand credibility is determined by those who visit your site. There are countless ways to determine the credibility of a website. However, most users will determine credibility based on factors such as:
    • Website design/usability
    • Website/domain authority
    • Topic relevancy
    • The accuracy of the information they provide along with credible sources

 

Search engines take each of these factors into consideration when they start ranking websites, and medical SEO practices help address each one of these. This is why it’s important to take a multi-service approach when investing in medical SEO best practices because the more of these put into place, the better off your brand’s website will be.   

Attracts New Patients

Once your website starts ranking, and more people start to come across it, these individuals may consider being more than just the casual website visitor. If they are local to your practice and find your content authoritative and trustworthy, they may consider visiting your physical practice—which could lead to you gaining a new patient.

When working on your medical SEO, let’s say you’re a Maybe it’s you that’s trying to contact my clients? How can I trust you again? plastic surgeon and need SEO services, you’ll also want to take into consideration your local SEO. 

These are SEO practices that help you get noticed by your local audience. If you’ve optimized your website properly and included your practice’s physical location and contact information, this makes you “findable” by those in your location. The same can be said when improving your social media profiles by adding in your physical location, relevant hours of operation, and contact information. 

How do these pieces of information help you attract new patients? When consumers start looking for new practices to visit or turn to for advice, they tend to enter search terms such as “near me” into the search box. They also do this when using their smartphone’s voice search feature. When you include your physical location and contact information, such as your phone number, search engines will include you in area-specific search inquires. 

patient Medical SEO

Medical SEO Frequently Asked Questions

Still have some questions about medical SEO? You aren’t alone. Here are some of the most frequently asked questions on medical SEO and its effectiveness:

Is There a Difference Between Medical SEO and Healthcare SEO?

While on the surface, there may not seem like much of a difference between the two, but a few small differences are worth pointing out.

Medical SEO typically is used to optimize the websites of those in the medical profession and usually include:

Healthcare SEO generally affects those in the healthcare industry that provide information rather than medical services. While there are many places where medical SEO and healthcare SEO will overlap, healthcare is often seen as a more general topic than medical and its many niches. 

Do I Really Need Medical SEO?

If you’re a medical professional who owns your own business, the answer is yes!

Simply having a website is no longer enough to remain relevant online in today’s fast-paced society. It’s also no longer relevant to implement only one or two SEO practices. The only way to see real, genuine success on your website and consistently bring in new visitors (and returning ones) is to invest in several SEO plans, covering not only on-page but also off-page SEO, technical SEO, and local SEO.

With each of these areas covered and maintained regularly, your site will remain in favor of the most popular search engines used today. 

How Long Does Medical SEO Take to Work?

When companies invest in SEO, they expect it to work like magic. 

Unfortunately, like anything worth investing in, medical SEO takes time to work correctly. While there is no exact timeframe, most experts in search engine optimization say that when done right, clients can start to see the benefits between two months and a year—especially if you’re a brand-new website. 

For those who already have a website and are going back through it to optimize it properly, that time frame can be a little shorter. Again, there is no guarantee. 

That said, if you are looking to reap the benefits of medical SEO, you want to get started as soon as possible.

Is Regularly Published Content Really That Important for Medical SEO to Work?

Absolutely! Like any other product on the market or source of information, published content gets outdated and stale. 

While you never want to publish duplicate content, you can continue expanding on the information you are providing your website visitors with the right keyword research. This helps you look more relevant in the search engines’ eyes, boosting your ranking. 

While you want to publish new, relevant content on your website regularly, it’s also worth noting that some content can simply be updated and republished. For instance, if you have a piece of evergreen medical content covering known COVID-19 information, then you’ll want to make sure you continuously update it as new information is discovered. 

If you start publishing repeated content on the same subject with the same focus keywords, then that information will end up looking like duplicate content, which doesn’t help your search engine ranking at all. 

Do Client Reviews Impact My Medical SEO?

Yes—client/customer reviews play an important role in your overall medical SEO strategy. 

Client and customer reviews help to legitimize your practice, and positive reviews help to improve your brand’s credibility. Additionally, the more reviews on your site, the more significant effect it will have on your local SEO efforts. 

When people head to Google and as for “doctors near me,” they are more likely to receive results from practices that have higher ranking customer reviews and testimonials. 

What's the Difference Between Paying for Medical SEO Services and Paying for Google Ads?

Paying for medical SEO is paying for a service that will benefit your practice in both the immediate and long run. Google ads, however, have a predetermined lifespan. 

Google ads can also get quite pricey, depending on the reach you are looking for and where you want your ads to appear. 

On the other hand, medical SEO services can often be a one-time paid service that will benefit your brand for some time—at least until the search engines alter their algorithms once again (which is why many brands choose to come back for more)!

Finally, when you pay for medical SEO services, you aren’t paying for a place within the SERPs—you are earning your place. Consumers take this into account. In fact, approximately 80% of search engine users say they ignore paid ads in search results and will skip right to the sources that appear organically.

Medical SEO Done Right with Visual Rankings

Medical marketing professionals already have so many things to take care of on a day-to-day basis, which is why medical SEO often gets put on the back burner. The fact that search engine algorithms are constantly changing doesn’t help either.

Unfortunately, those working in the medical industry simply can’t afford to ignore SEO best practices, especially when they are working so hard to stand out from their competition, and that’s where Visual Rankings comes into play. 

The team at Visual Rankings has more than a decade of experience in search engine optimization and helping websites across multiple industries successfully rank on Google’s first page.

View Our Full List of SEO Services Here