SEO stands for search engine optimisation and is a common digital marketing strategy that many brands use to grow their business. It’s the process of optimising your website with particular keywords relative to your service or industry to make your business more visible online.
For example, if a patient is looking to have a breast reduction in Manchester, they may type a query such as ‘breast reduction manchester’ in the search engine. This will bring up local cosmetic service websites within their local area for them to browse and select one.
The most attractive aspect of SEO is that businesses have to spend little in order to receive a return on their investment. The majority of the optimisations that you make will be completely free and can be done directly through your website. This means less spend for the potential of more conversions.
If you’re relatively new to SEO and own a healthcare business, here are some actionable SEO steps to follow to ensure you at least have the basics right with your digital marketing strategy.
Make sure your keywords are relevant
Keyword research is an essential practice in SEO. It’s these keywords that you collate which you’ll be targeting when optimising your site and measuring performance. Used keyword research tools to identify keywords or phrases that users search for when looking for your type of service or product.
They can come in different variations, which means you have to analyse which keyword is most relevant, whether it gains valuable search volumes and if they’ll be keywords that will help you convert visitors into customers. Once you’ve filtered the list and identified keywords you want to target, implement these into different pages and blog posts that you’ll have on your website.
If optimised correctly, it should attract these users to your website.
Optimise metadata
Metadata is also another important aspect of SEO. These are the HTML tags that you can find in the page source of a page. You might recognise in the search engines as the main blue links that you click on to enter the page and the grey writing underneath the main link.
These are used to help the search engine identify what your page is about. The title tag acts as the main heading for the page and should have no more than around 65 characters. This is to ensure no keywords are cut off on the screen and the full title can be displayed correctly in the results page.
The description is where the content of the page can be described in more detail. Again, this should be optimised with your keywords in mind.
Produce original and engaging content
The best way for users to understand the services you provide and for you to showcase your knowledge and expertise is for you to produce original and engaging content on your website. It helps your healthcare organisation to stand out and get the upper hand over your business.
Educating your audience through content marketing is key to increasing rankings and helping you to become a leader in your industry. Do this by providing informative knowledge in your product and service pages as well as blog posts, interviews, case studies, videos and testimonials from patients.
One way to help you think of topics to write about for your content is to brainstorm common questions that are asked in your industry. For example, if you worked in pharmaceutical services, common questions around your industry may be to do with “what digestive supplements are safe for me?” or “what are the risks of purchasing health tablets online?”. These can be valuable topics to discuss on your website.
Create a sitemap
Creating a sitemap for your website tends to be an overlooked practice within SEO. However, it can make a big difference to how visible your website can be through search engines and how crawlers can better interpret the structure of your website. It can also help users navigate through your website to provide a better user experience.
There are many third party tools that you can use to create a sitemap. Just bare in mind that it can be a little tedious if you have a large website, but it will be worth your time in the long run.
Utilise SEO where you can
Even if you’re not an expert with digital marketing and SEO, there are basic processes that you can follow that can be extremely beneficial for your digital presence. There are many other practices that are involved with SEO that can be more technical, but implementing these basics can be the start you need to give your site a little exposure and lead to an increase in traffic and exposure in the long run.