When patients realize that they need to seek a medical provider due to a triggering complication, the first thing they do — 93% of the time — is to go on Google and search for “best (your specialty) in (patient city, state).” You have to be on the first page of the search if you wish to get found by the patient and drive organic growth to your medical practice. This is more important now than ever before since hospital systems, insurance companies, ACOs, etc. are directing patient care delivery to maximally occur within the scope of these organization’s fiscal benefit.
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Answers to some of your most pressing questions about Advanced SEO and Blog Creation.
In performing a Google search, 96%-97% of time, people will only click upon the websites that appear on the first page. In our digital-first era — dominantly ‘powered’ by Google searches — medical practices can only hope to get found by patients if they are populating on the first page of these Google searches when patients enter in relevant keywords to find their practice. Some examples of critical keywords a cardiologist located in Washington, DC would want to rank for on the first page of a Google search performed by patients located in Washington, DC would be “cardiologist in Washington, DC,” “best cardiology near me,” and “heart disease treatment Washington, DC” etc. These are examples of popular keyword searches and the “best” and “near me” tags are respectively algorithmically associated with ratings and geographic location by Google, as well as other search engines like Bing, Yahoo, etc.
So how do medical practices actually rank for these keywords? By harnessing Search Engine Optimization (SEO) services from Medical SEO experts such as the team at Curato Health. SEO is foundational, ongoing, long-term marketing process that is essential for successful patient acquisition. SEO is also an extremely technical process that involves a multitude of factors which can be sub-divided into four operative categories — technical SEO, on-page SEO, off-page SEO, and local SEO.
A sharp medical practice website is critical to convert patient traffic into actual booked appointments and is no doubt foundational for any and every medical practice. While certainly exciting, after the new site’s construction is complete, some folks wonder why tons of patient visitors aren’t flocking to their new website to book appointments. This is because your new site, while brilliantly designed to help convert website visitors into booked patient appointments, does not have the magical power to enhance its own ‘domain authority,’ which drives increased traffic to your website from search engines. Generating increased traffic from search engines requires search engine optimization (SEO) in order to enhance your Domain Authority, get ranked higher on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), and thereby pull-in more traffic to your medical practice’s website. In sum, the meticulous labor involved in SEO services is what helps you drive increased web traffic from keywords typed into search engines.
SEO’s ability to drive booked patients appointments depends entirely on your SEO strategy. Simply sprinkling in general keywords into your existing medical content, tags, and headers will likely not get you too far in terms of new patient acquisition. However, a robust strategy involving thoroughly-researched competitive analysis, high-yield long-tail keywords, continuously-generated natural language-based beneficial content, ‘white hat’ tactics for high-DA backlink generation, large-scope high-quality NAP syndication — and a masterful execution of a multitude of the other elements of technical, on-page, off-page, and local SEO — will result in solid, steady growth of new patient appointment bookings over time.
Results from SEO for medical practices can generally start to be seen after 6 to 10 months. Firstly, Google and other search engines have to ‘trust and verify’ that your site is secure, useful, truthful, and drives value to its potential visitors. Secondly, your keyword ranking capabilities are partially contingent on what your competitors are doing to optimize their own medical websites, whether it be other medical practices, ACOs, hospital systems, healthcare payers, etc. Engaging in the SEO ‘warfare’ of attempting to capture a top-spot on the first page of Google for a local service entity such as a medical practice is, without a doubt, one of the most important mid-to-long term marketing investments your medical practice can make to establish digital ‘equity,’ which continues to churn booked appointments for your medical practice.
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