Search Engine Optimization for Doctors

When a patient Googles the name of your practice, you’d expect to rank at the top of the results. It’s possible you already do, but if a patient isn’t looking for a specific practice’s name, (rather any “cardiologist near me”, for example) SEO becomes necessary if you want to boost traffic via improved Google rankings.

Why might a practice not show up on Google?

The simple answer is that other specialists you compete with are likely investing more heavily in SEO. Google prioritizes and ranks medical practice’s websites that are most relevant to the patient’s search terms. This requires your medical website to have quality content about your services, frequent use of your keywords, and an overall optimized website experience (quick load time, no broken links, etc).

What exactly is SEO? Why is it important?

SEO is a variety of different tasks that improve your site’s ranking, making it more visible by Search Engines. By ranking higher on relevant search terms (keywords) associated with your speciality, you’ll experience more quality traffic to your web site, generating new patients.

web

Online visibility is increased by building profiles on platforms like WebMD, Healthgrades, Google, Yelp, etc. by desseminating your brand throughout the web

keywords

And effective SEO campaign requires frequent use of your keywords in web materials

analysis

Analysis is required to identify keywords, and the channels that best integrate with those keywords.

content

Keywords are then promoted in your content. Quality content is a crucial aspect of SEO

traffic

Once SEO campaigns are underway, resulting traffic analytics will determine what aspects are working

backlinks

Backlinks consists of promoting your content on platforms that are not your own, through the use of hyperlinks

rankings

SEO's ultimate goal is to improve your ranking, and online visibility, generating more traffic, and new patients

PPC for Doctors vs. SEO

Most search engine related medical marketing campaigns involve both SEO and PPC (Pay-per-click) Ads. Google Ads are the most popular form of PPC, but other platforms do exist. PPC campaigns require constant maintenance to ensure they are maximizing their budget. In fact, hiring New Wave to optimize your ads will actually cost you less in ad spend, and usually pays for itself.

Read our blog about SEO vs. PPC >

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