Local SEO Tips for Doctors & Healthcare Professionals

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1. Create an Informative Healthcare Website

After Google’s YMYL medic update, the sites with more authority gain a better ranking than others. The YMYL site’s authority depends on whether blog writers have real-time experience, have accurate knowledge, etc. Healthcare organizations should make it a point to include author bios to let Google know that every content you produce is trustworthy.
We all love websites with great content and design. It helps us locate answers to our questions. Medical websites are no exception. Curating great medical content on your website draws visitors, and it helps boost SEO.
There are several things to keep in mind during medical content design. Some of these are:

• Add articles relevant to your speciality. For example, if you are a child specialist, add articles about kids illnesses.
• Mention your clinic location and contact details on landing pages. It will help people contact you without difficulty.
• Ensure the accuracy of your content—author from your own experience in the field.
• Write in a style that is understandable to the layman.
• Provide as many simple analogies as you can.
• Finally, the website layout and navigation itself must be easy to understand. Visitors should find relevant information and contact details easily.

2. Claim your Medical Practice on GMB

Having a verified GMB account gives chances of appearing in local 3-pack results. Studies show that CTR for local 3-pack is high.
You ever wondered how Google ranks top doctors and polyclinics in an area? They do it by identifying practices who have claimed their business on Google.
Google My Business (GMB) is a free tool to manage your online presence. It is easy to configure and enhances your site visibility. List your practice on GMB to let Google identify you as a physician. It will then rank your practice based on several other factors among other doctors. These factors could range from patient reviews to consultation cost.
Make sure you update your practice location, timings, and phone numbers. Follow the verification process, and you're all set! Sometimes, your practice may be there in the listing. Verifying it on GMB will unlock extra features, such as analytics.
Don't forget to update your profile if you change your practice location or phone numbers!

3. Create a Medical Practice Business Page on Social Media

Medical practices need social media presence more than ever to stay in touch with the people. Social media has become a hotspot for healthcare organizations to attract patients towards them. They are present on almost every social media platform and run paid ads to overpower the competition.
Social media has emerged as a powerful platform to promote a business. Did you know that many practices have a strong Facebook presence? As a physician, it helps your practice gain visibility.
You will be surprised at the number of Facebook pages that show up in online search results for clinics. Try looking up a dental practice in your area to see how many Facebook pages show up in the results. It proves that business pages on social media are effective.
Creating a business page for your practice helps people nearby find you. It's a great tactic to boost local SEO.
Ensure that your social media page addresses the following:

• List your website address, map location, and contact details.
• Actively responds to visitor enquiries.
• Lists your practice speciality with timings

Ignoring the power of social media can set you back in your quest for top rankings in your area.

4. Create Healthcare Videos and Infographics

People in the digital age prefer visual content over lots of text. Would you rather look at a short video explaining how to treat a fever, or read lengthy paragraphs? Written content is great for SEO, but so are infographics and videos.
Videos are a powerful medium to engage audiences. Invest time and effort in creating short and informative videos. You can post these on your website and social media business pages. It is guaranteed to increase traction and site visibility.
Creative, powerful, and perfect healthcare videos help pull patients and doctors worldwide to learn from them. Also, search engines like to give more useful and attractive content to their users. Currently, not every healthcare organization is leveraging the videos. So, it’s high time to start deploying it and increase your ranking on SERP.
Creating video content increases visitor trust and builds credibility.
Here are some SEO tips when creating medical or healthcare videos:

• Keep them short and simple. Nobody wants to spend more than 5 minutes on an informational video.
• Focus on a single topic per video. If you offer multiple healthcare services, break them down into smaller videos.
• Finally, tag your videos with metadata. Search engines love metadata and tags!

5. Author Healthcare Blogs/Articles

Visitors to a website come back often when they find the content they can connect with. A healthcare practice website feels hollow when it lacks good content. Create articles and blogs often. These should be informative and provide details about your services.
Healthcare organizations grow more with trust. Blogs act as a bridge between the audience and doctors. This is because more than 80% of the patients do online research about their symptoms or related health queries. So, producing content from certified doctors adds an edge to the healthcare business.
Investing in content marketing is key for doctors and healthcare providers. Do not restrict yourself to just articles and blogs. You can also include Guest blogging, link outreach, and press releases. There is no single type of content to boost SEO rankings. A mix and match of several often hold the key.
Aim the articles and blogs at laymen and make it concise. Tag your articles and blogs with relevant keywords, and link to reputed medical websites. Be sure to check your competitors' site to analyze the content on their site. It helps you focus on key content areas that make your offerings unique to visitors.

6. Boost Your Local SEO by Featuring Reviews

Deciding on a doctor is often tricky for most people. Positive customer reviews on your site build patient trust. It is also a strong ranking signal for Google. As a doctor or clinic, focus on featuring as many 5-star patient reviews as possible.
Add a review section to your website, which is prominently visible to visitors. Positive reviews have a marked impact on Local SEO, as it focuses on people in your neighbourhood. Positive reviews make up a large chunk of your SEO rating.
Patients don't always leave reviews. Make it a habit to request reviews from your patients. Doing this builds your reputation with Google and other search engines.
Customers may also leave positive reviews on other sites and forums. Track them down and link them from your website.

7. Make Use of Location-specific (Local) Keywords

Keyword difficulty for local searches will be lesser than that of generic keywords as you have little competition. So, using location-based keywords increases ranking for local searches.
Using local keywords on your website has a positive impact on SEO. Local keywords contain location-specific information. They can be phrases or headings in your content.

• It helps generate results connected to the same geographic area.
• It drives customers to your business and is a key aspect of Local SEO.

For example, if you are a Doctor in Los Angeles, search with those words. You can use popular local keyword tools to search and derive a list of local keywords for your area. Narrow your searches to the specific area of your practice for better rankings.
As a doctor or healthcare provider, don't forget to add your speciality in the local keywords. Your practice will appear in local searches often with these strategies. Revise the list of local keywords if you change the location.

8. Provide Consistent NAP Information for Local SEO

Name, address, and phone number (NAP) is a key component for local SEO. Your patients won't find you if either of these listings is incorrect. Make sure that these details are consistent across your practice pages online.
Google loves consistency and rewards you with better rankings. Incorrect NAP listings can lower rankings. Remember to update this information on the most visited pages of your medical website.
Apart from providing the right NAP on the GMB page, ensuring the same information in all local citations provides consistent business details to search engine crawlers.
Here are some tips for using NAP for better SEO:

• Avoid listing this information in an image as Google does not scan images properly.
• Update this information in your Google my business profile.
• Google your practice to locate any incorrect listings.
• Contact the site owner to correct the listings.

Research shows that correct NAP details have a major impact on local SEO. Google cross-references your site NAP information with a variety of sources. This validation helps boost local SEO.

9. Optimize Your On-page with Metadata

Don't worry if you don't know what metadata means. Its information that you add to your website content. And, it works behind the scenes to boost SEO. Search engines understand it and gather more information about your website.
There is a plethora of free tools and websites that give accurate details about metadata. For example, you can visit Metatags and freely check Title, Description, characters, and preview of it in Google.
Use meta tags to improve the ranking of your medical practice or healthcare website. Several tags carry more weight than others. Ask your web developer to include them if you are unfamiliar with it.
Some of the Meta tags that add great value for SEO are:

• Title tag : This must be clear and short. It must provide an accurate description of your practice.
• Description tag : This tag allows more characters than the title tag. Add concise details about what visitors can find on your site.

Besides the above, heading tags, Robot tags, and Alt-text tags help search engines index your site better.

10. Research Trending Healthcare Keywords

Keywords form an integral part of any SEO effort. If you want people to find your medical practice easily, focus on specific keywords. You should use the keywords strategically within your content for the best results. Avoid overdoing it.
There are plenty of free and paid keyword search tools to get you started. Just enter the word you wish to focus on for your practice or healthcare service for a list of words you can use.
Typically, local healthcare searches keep changing based on the season, location, and new wave of diseases. However, Covid-19 caused a major change in the healthcare niche. So, it’s vital to keep looking for newer trending keywords. Based on your budget and size of the hospital, and competition, choose a keyword research tool wisely.
If your practice revolves around dental implants, use that word as the focus keyword. It will show you a list of words related to it that people generally search for.
A good approach would be to use the resulting keywords in section titles and other headings.
Search for trending medical keywords related to your practice every few weeks. It ensures that your site rankings are always ahead of the curve.

11. Get Backlinks from Authoritative Healthcare Portals

When a popular and reputed site links to a page on your website, it will improve your site reputation. Google loves backlinks. Any quality backlinks to your website or practice page is a 'thumbs up' from search engines. It carries more clout in ranking your site higher than positive reviews.
For example, a backlink from a site such as WebMD for a medical site adds to its credibility. It generates organic traffic to your website.
Building quality backlinks takes research and effort. There are several best practices, such as:

• Reporting broken links on a popular page in exchange for a backlink.
• Sharing insightful infographics on popular healthcare topics, so other sites link to it.
• Posting quality guest articles that link back to your site.

Build and maintain backlinks regularly. Use popular tools like Ahrefs to check on your backlinks.

12. Map Location/Hours of Operation for Local SEO

People increasingly use the internet to find the location of a clinic or its timings. It saves them time and effort, compared to calling the clinic.
Accurately listing this on your website is great for local SEO. An embedded Google map makes it easier for your customers to locate you. It also validates your location with Google. Use local landmarks in your address to guide visitors as it helps with local SEO.
Your clinic timings are important. Visitors rely on this information to plan. Ensure that the timings are consistent across all your clinic's online pages. Inconsistent location and timings lower your search rankings.
You may have branches in multiple locations. Ensure that each location has its webpage for better SEO.

Related : 11 Steps to do Local SEO for Multiple locations

13. Do a Research on Competitor Healthcare Websites

There are a lot of benefits in analyzing how your close competitors implement SEO. It does not mean that you 'copy' their keywords or content. Competitor analysis involves more of understanding their strategy at a high level.

Ask yourself these questions:

• Which clinics are my top competitors?
• Is their content and site design better than mine?
• What keywords and backlinks make them rank higher in search results?

Once you have answered these questions, you are in a better position to focus your SEO efforts. There are plenty of tools out there that can provide great insights into the following:

• Keyword gap analysis
  Hoth free keyword analysis tool offers a free keyword gap analysis survey by comparing with your top most competitors.
  
• Visitors by country/region
• Content gaps, and
• Most linked content

Use these to your advantage by creating a campaign to excel in each area with large gaps. Aim for organic growth rather than black hat techniques to outdo your competition.

14. Optimize Your Healthcare Website for Mobile and Speed

Every digital marketer is aware that almost every niche has more mobile searches. Hence, it’s important to design a mobile-friendly business web page along with desktops. Mobile views on various phones can be checked on the desktop by the ‘Inspect’ option and selecting the mobile device.
Google’s free page speed insights tool provides detailed reports on mobile and desktop speed. It provides insightful data about various aspects to be implemented to increase the mobile speed of your website.
Your investment in great healthcare service and SEO is futile if your website is not optimized. Visitors stay longer on websites that load quickly and display well on mobile devices. It is an often-overlooked aspect of most doctor's SEO campaigns.
Ensure that your website displays great on mobile phones. It should deliver a consistent feel, regardless of the phone size. Invest in the mobile-first approach to gain a larger audience.
What should you do to optimize your site?

• Design it with mobile users in mind.
• Test its appearance and features on many phones.
• Use small size but good quality images. These load quicker than high-definition images.
• Host your video content on video platforms like YouTube and embed the link on your site.

Aim for a consistent look and feel across platforms. Use Google's PageSpeed Insights tool to test the site speed on Desktop and Mobile.

15. Register on Healthcare Directories

Listing your medical practice on local business directories is a great way to boost your rankings. Visitors often end up at these sites when searching for a medical service on Google. These sites act as "Yellow pages" providing a local listing of services. They are great to boost your Local SEO scores.
Your SEO score is affected by your ranking within your local directory. Links from the directory to your site act as local citations and are valuable for local SEO.
Start by listing your clinic on the most popular online directories. It includes sites such as Yelp and Yellowpages.com. These sites provide visibility to your website locally and worldwide. Ensure that your business name, address, and phone numbers are accurate. Add other information customers may find useful.
Are you a Doctor? or Do you own a Healthcare Website? If yes, drop your details to get a free experts consultation on Local SEO for Healthcare websites.