Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a process that can seem overwhelming to new users. From the checklists and rules of each algorithm to the ever-changing content algorithms, there’s a lot of information out there. Fortunately, most of it is useful in one way or another. A lot of people have misconceptions about what you need to know as an SEO specialist when working with medical websites. Even specialists who are familiar with the industry may not understand all the intricacies and nuances from a user experience standpoint.
Physicians spend so much time learning about their patients and their treatments that having your website optimized for search engines makes perfect sense. With that being said, your site has to be optimized for search engines in ways that make sense for you as well as your patients. Let’s look at some ways you can get started with SEO for doctors:
Develop a Plan Before starting with SEO
When deciding if you want to start with SEO, it’s important to know what you’re getting yourself into. If you don’t know what you’re getting into, you won’t know what to expect. With that being said, it’s good to have a plan before you start working on a strategy for your website. Key points to keep in mind when developing a plan:
- Explore your competition – Who is doing well in the search engines? Who is not doing well? How is their content doing? What are their keywords? Why are they succeeding and where are they failing? What are their strengths and weaknesses? What are the keywords that they are missing?
- Understand your site – What are the primary objectives of your website? What are the secondary objectives? What are the additional benefits to your patients? What are some of the metrics you can track to gain insights into your success? What are some of the metrics that you can’t track? What are some of the metrics that are important for your patients?
Find Keywords For Your Site
SEO for medical websites begins with finding keywords for your site. Keywords are words and phrases that potential searchers use to find your content. Ensuring that you have keywords that are relevant to your content is important for a few reasons. The most obvious reason is that if you don’t have keywords in your content, then no one will be able to find your content.
Your keywords should be specific and focus on your site’s content. This means that your keywords should be related to what you are writing about. If you are writing a post on foot and ankle specialists, then your keywords should be focused on foot specialists. If you are writing a post on neutropenia, then your keywords should be related to neutropenia. Your keywords should also be specific. You want your keywords to be specific enough that you are able to create an article focused on your topic and also specific enough that a potential searcher is able to find your content. You don’t want your keywords to be so general that they include a wide range of topics that would include topics that you may not be so interested in.
Create quality content for your site
In the beginning stages of SEO, the most important aspect of your SEO strategy is to create quality content for your site. Writing content is important for a few reasons. Firstly, it helps build a relationship with your audience, which is the number 1 way to increase your leads and sales. Secondly, it allows you to rank better in Google and Bing due to the fact that Google and Bing are now publishing more and more in their SERPs. There are more and more businesses that are publishing on their own sites and more and more on other people’s sites. This means that the content that you are publishing on your site and the content that you are publishing on other people’s sites has a direct correlation to your SEO strategy.
Use Schema Markup For Enhanced SEO
Search Engines are trying to get you to write more content. For example, Google wants you to create more content for your website for their algorithms to recognize as quality content. You can do this by using Schema markup for enhanced SEO. Schema markup is a part of the Search Engine Optimization process that allows you to add additional information to your content when publishing. This information includes things like your publication date so that when a person is searching for content, they will be able to return the most recent content, images so that the images are indexed, and your author and publication information for people to be able to find you and your content.
Use Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality For Enhanced SEO
Now that you have a strategy of creating quality content and using schema markup, you can take it one step further with augmented reality and virtual reality. Augmented Reality is the next step in search engine optimization. With AR, you can put additional information on top of your content. For example, you could have an image on top of your content that shows a graphical representation of your post. This graphical representation could include graphs, charts, and other details that help give your content even more information. Another type of AR is where you can put additional information on top of your images. For example, you could have information like the date of publication, the title of the post, and additional information such as the author and publication. You could even have a graphical representation of your post on the side of the image.
Conclusion
SEO is a long-term strategy for getting your website to rank high in Google and Bing for relevant terms. This can be a challenging task that requires a lot of research, but the payoff is worth it. There are many factors that go into SEO, and it can be quite overwhelming for someone to get started with SEO. However, there are several ways you can get started with SEO for doctors. The first thing you need to do is understand the basics of SEO. Once you understand the context of SEO, you can start working on implementing strategies.