Local SEO Tips for Hospitals

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The healthcare industry has been establishing new peaks in recent times. Meanwhile, local healthcare centers are giving each other a daunting run for leads. 

Today, a majority of consumers would start their hospital research online. These could be simple queries like “best cardiac-care hospital near me,” “top neurosurgeons in [location],” etc. 

So, if your healthcare site makes it to the top of result pages for such queries, you can win relevant patients.

However, you might not make it to the top unless you plan a rewarding local SEO strategy. 

So, below are some local SEO tactics to grow the online visibility of your healthcare center. 

12 Local SEO Tips for Hospitals

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1. Claim Your Hospital’s Presence with a GMB Listing

Unless you claim a verified profile of your hospital on Google My Business, you cannot win at local SEO. 

Your GMB signals significantly shape your brand visibility and prominence on Google.

So, use these steps to list or claim your hospital’s profile on GMB: 

• Go to Google My Business gateway and choose “Manage Now.”

• Link this GMB account to your Google Account (If you establish your Google Account here.)

• Next, you need to add your official business name to the search box. If you do not find an existing business profile, start creating one. 

Meanwhile, claim it using the “request access" button if you find a relevant listing. 

• Choose the ‘Create a profile’ option for creating a new listing. 

• Start with adding the registered name of your healthcare facility or hospital. And choose your primary category ‘healthcare services’ or ‘hospital’ etc. 

• Next, add the physical location of your hospital. If it is a hospital chain with multiple locations, you can add these locations to GMB.

• Add other business info like your healthcare services, phone number, images, clinic hours, etc. 

• The next step is to opt for Postcard Verification. You might be lucky to see Email and Phone Call Verification options too. 

2. Build Prominent GMB Signals

Your GMB signals have a strong say in your local SEO value. So, you must optimize these signals by enriching the information on your GMB profile. 

Optimize these crucial elements: 

• Consistent NAP: Google will appreciate a consistent business name, address details, and contact number on your profile. And then use Google Structured Data Markup Helper to help Google crawl your addresses.

• Category: Opt for the most relevant primary category (Healthcare, Hospital, Medical Centre, etc.). Also, specify the type of hospital using secondary categories like Children’s Hospital, Emergency Care, Eyecare Clinic, etc. 

• Services: Specify your main services like Cardiac Care, Neurosurgery, Emergency Care services, etc. 

• Description: Leverage your 100-200 words description to showcase your healthcare services and specialties. Highlight the experience of your healthcare professionals and other USPs. Also, mention your location-specific keywords in this description. 

• Hours: Your healthcare facility is likely to serve 24x7, but you must mention your clinic hours, visiting hours, etc. Take a look at the below screenshot that shows hospital timings to help patients know the visiting hours. 

• GMB Reviews: GMB reviews of your hospital showcase your credibility and trust. You must ask happy patients to rate your services on your GMB page. 

The below shows a better rating and one of the positive reviews that influence other audiences to trust the hospital.

• Images: Your GMB profile must display abundant images of your healthcare facility to exude transparency. Images of your facility, machines, staff, patients (with their consent), etc., develop trust. 

• Posts: You must use the ‘Posts’ feature to promote your healthcare events. These can be events like Flu shot Events, Wellness Fairs, Blood Donation Camps, etc. This approach grows engagement on your profile.

• FAQs: Also, consider answering the most popular queries in the FAQs section. Here you can grow relevancy for the popular local queries and include the service-specific keywords. 

3. Establish Relevancy with Healthcare Service-specific and Local Keywords

You must grow the relevancy of your marketing materials, website, and listings for your crucial keywords. 

Start with sorting your website pages for the main services and research keywords for these pages. 

Use Google Keyword Planner, KWFinder, or Keywordtool.io to sort keywords for your healthcare services. 

For example, you might finalize service-specific keywords like:

Physicians; cardiac care services; neurosurgery services; children’s hospital; etc. 

The below screenshot shows the keywords provided on the keyword planner and the search volume for a particular location.

You must also build their location-specific and long-tail combinations to grow content relevancy. 

For example, if your hospital is in Austin, some combinations can include: 

• Best physicians in Austin
• Top cardiac care centers in Austin
• Trusted children’s hospital in Austin
• Top-rated neurosurgeons in Austin
• Emergency care services [location/area] 

Ensure to map these keywords on relevant service pages and your marketing content.

A good way to enrich your keyword set is through competitor analysis. Switch to tools like Ubersuggest or SEMRush and check which keyword combinations draw them high traffic. You can optimize your SEO efforts for these keywords. 

4. List Across Popular Healthcare Directories and Listing Platforms

You need local citations and listings to establish good visibility for your hospital business. 

Moreover, many consumers directly search for healthcare services or practitioners through these directories, which give complete details, as shown in the screenshot.

Here are some popular platforms to list your healthcare center across the US:

• Healthgrades
• Wellness.com
• Ratemds.com
• Yelp
• Facebook
• Bing Places
• Apple Maps

You can find more hospital and healthcare business directories here.

Also, leverage data aggregators like Express Update and Neustar Localeze for claiming your presence on relevant listings. 

You must also scan for the missed listing opportunities using Yext’s Business Scan tool. 

5. Showcase Credibility with Positive GMB Reviews 

Online reviews hold prominent importance for the healthcare industry. Consumers actively search for patient reviews before they visit a hospital or clinic. 

Moreover, 80% of consumers consider online user reviews equivalent to recommendations from friends or family.

Here are some ways to gain reviews for your healthcare services: 

• Personally request your patients to post about their experience with your healthcare services. You can make it a part of your manual feedback procedure. 
• A good practice is to tell your patients how these reviews help other consumers get a transparent look at your healthcare practices.
• Ensure to keep GMB reviews at the center of your review request emails. 
• You must develop a practice of responding to GMB reviews. Appreciating the positive reviewers strengthen customer relationships. 

The below screenshot shows an owner replying to the review that will delight the customer. 

Meanwhile, your response to negative reviews expresses your concern, and it goes a long way in the healthcare industry. Your response will encourage more consumers to write about their experiences. 

• Smartly incentivize the review generation process to encourage more positive reviews. E.g., “Tell us about your experience at our clinic and get a 10% discount on your next paid appointment.”
   
• GetFeedback and SurveyMonkey are good tools to automate review reminders and requests.

Read: How to Respond to Positive & Negative Reviews in Google My Business

6. Win a Spot in the Local 3-pack Results for Your Main Keywords

Many consumers do not scroll past the top 3 organic or local 3-pack results. 

These local 3-pack results capture the top spots for 93% of the local queries. 

What makes the local 3-pack results more intriguing is that they steal 100% higher CTR than other organic results.

Here is how the local 3-pack for “best children’s hospital in Austin” looks: 

These results win high CTR and inquiries due to their comprehensive business info. They display the business name, website link, location, ratings, reviews, phone number, etc. 

So, how do you optimize for a position in the local 3-pack results? 

Here are the main factors:

• As per Moz, your GMB signals strikingly represent your probability of ranking in the local 3-pack results. Hence, you must enrich your GMB profile with valuable and consistent business info. 

• Google places considerable faith in your GMB reviews. And these reviews also define your chances in the local 3-pack results. So, request surplus reviews from your patients. 

• Also, build the local prominence of your business by listing it across crucial healthcare directories. 

7. Build Strong On-page Signals

You cannot win the search rankings unless you offer impressive on-page experience. Your on-page signals fall just second to the GMB signals when deciding your local search rankings. 

Follow these on-page optimization tips for your hospital website:

• Categories your specific healthcare service pages and location-specific pages smartly. And make these pages more relevant to search queries by mapping the crucial keywords.

• Update your sitemap and re-submit the new sitemap to Google Search Console 

• Make use of location Schema and other site-specific schemas. This allows Google to use your information in the Knowledge Graph for highly relevant queries. 

• Craft keyword-oriented and engaging Meta Titles (Max 55 characters)

• Win high CTR by crafting informative yet intriguing Meta Descriptions (Max 155 characters). 

• Use your Google Search Console and Analytics accounts to scrutinize and optimize your SEO performance. They give vital information about each page and keywords performing, impressions, etc. 

• Use a healthcare-specific color theme and elements to offer a familiar experience. 

• Use local language, dialect, currency, references, etc., to improve personalization.

8. Attract Backlinks and PR Mentions 

SEOs have always been paying too much emphasis on building authoritative backlinks. And they have got all the reasons to support their efforts. 

Backlinks remain the closest counterpart of PageRank for local SEO. And therefore, they make up a crucial ranking factor for your hospital business. 

Implement these tips to win some authoritative backlinks for your healthcare center:
 

• Start curating qualitative blogs around the relevant healthcare queries. And share these blogs through paid advertising or social platforms. Your blogs must work as valuable resources for your competitors or niche businesses. And this allows you to gain relevant backlinks.
   
• HARO is a valuable platform where you can connect with reporters for valuable PR contributions. If you find PR stories relevant to your healthcare niche, you can pitch your contributions and grab mentions. ProfNet is another similar platform for PR outreach. 
• Also, scan through Ubersuggest and SEMRush for the competitors’ referring domains. Next, pitch with relevant link exchange requests and guest post requests to these referring domains. 

9. Boost Relevancy with Content around Popular Queries

Grow your site’s relevancy for popular queries by creating valuable content. 

These content assets grow your visibility across the web. They give you enough real estate to include your crucial keywords. And far-reaching content drives you high site traffic and backlinks. 

You must enrich your local SEO efforts with content on topics like: 

• Informative content on the newest healthcare events (flu shot events, free health check-ups, heart health awareness fair, etc.)
• Articles featuring new medical professionals joining your hospital
• Tips on boosting immunity during the pandemic situation
• Precautions to take during the onset of the winter season
• New healthcare services are added to your healthcare facilities.
• Answers to common queries in your healthcare niche (Symptoms, tips to prevent, precautions & cure articles, etc.)

Also, create FAQs to add your site and your GMB profile. Google might use these FAQs in the featured snippets to answer highly relevant queries. Sometimes, these are featured in the PPA section below the featured snippet. 

If you don’t have an FAQ section, you can analyze multiple PPA sections to add crucial ones to your FAQ. 

Moreover, these FAQs grow the engagement on your GMB profile. 

The next step is to gain the right reach for your content. Here are some relevant tips:

• Use social sharing to win engagement
• Create blogs for relevant guest posting submissions and gain backlinks
• Curate high-quality content and define a targeted reach through PPC ads. This can help you win high-authority backlinks.
• Repurpose your content as videos, infographics, social media posts, etc. 

10. Check Your Google Maps Rankings and Optimize Them

Google Maps platform witnessed search inquiries from more than 154.4 million monthly users. Moreover, it delivers search results for over 20 million searches per day. 

Many patients are already using Google Maps to find healthcare facilities. 

So, consider tracking and optimizing your Google Maps rankings. You can use tools like WebCEO, BrightLocal, GeoRanker, etc., to find these ranks and other local SEO metrics.

Here is how you can enhance your hospital’s visibility in Google Maps: 

a) Enrich your Google Maps profile with detailed business info, images, consistent NAP, FAQs, etc.

b) Win qualitative GMB reviews and local citations

c) Prevent possible reasons for GMB account suspension. Some reasons are:

• You haven’t informed Google about a recent hospital rebranding or relocation exercise. It’ll create an uproar among the returning new customers who assume it as two different brands.

• You have over-optimized the GMB profile with keyword stuffing. 
• You have added more than one GMB listing for the same healthcare facility
• Your site URL forwards to a different URL

11. Offer a Delightful Site Performance & Mobile Platform Experience

Google has urged web admins to enhance the site performance for a better page experience. Ideally, your site must not take more than 3 seconds to display a fully-loaded page. Anything slower than that hurts your SEO.

Google’s Page Experience Update has already defined Core Web Vitals (page performance) as a competitive ranking factor. 

So, it is recommended to assess your site speed and possible errors using the PageSpeed Insights tool. 

The screenshot below shows a site's page speed report for mobile and desktop. Next, request your web developer to rectify the displayed errors. 

Other performance enhancement considerations include: 

Minifying the JS, HTML, and CSS files; Optimize media size; Applying asynchronous JS loading, etc.

Mobile Compatibility

Today, over 50% of consumers use their mobile devices for searching a local healthcare facility. 

If you fail to offer a delightful mobile platform experience through your site, you might lose potential customers. 

You cannot win the top spots on Google with a faded mobile platform experience. 

Google wants web admins to respect its mobile-first indexing approach. And so, your hospital website must offer seamless compatibility and readability over mobile devices. 

Check your mobile compatibility score and errors through Google’s Mobile-friendly Test Tool. It provides whether or not your site is user-friendly on mobile. 

And request your web developer to optimize the responsiveness of your healthcare site. 

Read: How Site Speed Impacts Your Local Businesses?

12. Popularize Your Healthcare Services through Social Media 

Your social presence unveils another platform to spread awareness about your healthcare center. 

An established social media following makes promoting your healthcare events, content, and awareness programs easier. 

This grows the referral traffic and inquiries for your healthcare business. Good content reach further wins you natural backlinks. 

Follow these tips to leverage social platforms for your hospital’s SEO:

• Promote your blog links in the Feed Posts and Stories on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc. The image below shows how a hospital uses special days to promote itself. 

• Repurpose your content as social media image posts, videos, and infographics
• Maximize reach through keyword-oriented captions and hashtags
• Collaborate with healthcare-related influencers on social media to raise awareness about relevant events
• Gain referral traffic through micro-blogging (Tumblr and Medium) and forum posting (Quora and Reddit). 
• Google considers high engagement and positive comments on your profiles as strong social signals.

Local SEO for Hospitals - FAQs

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Q1. How can SEO Help Me Win More Local Patients? 

Ans. A significant amount of patients search for local clinics and hospitals online. They may directly search on Google or Google Maps (or Apple Maps). 

So, planned local SEO strategies help you showcase your healthcare facility in top search results for relevant queries. 

Q2. What are the Best Tips to Get My Local Clinic Ranked in the Top Google Search Results?

Ans. Check these local SEO practices for your hospital brand:

• Build verified GMB listing and add your services, consulting hours, images, etc. 
• Win positive reviews from previous patients 
• Optimize your site to offer a good mobile experience and better performance
• Add service and location-specific keywords to blogs, GMB descriptions, FAQs, and site content.
• List across local healthcare directories and grow your backlinks through content & PR outreach.

Q3. How Can I Earn More Citations for My Local Healthcare Business in the US? 

Ans. Use these tips: 

• List on directories like Healthgrades, Doctor.webmd.com, Realself.com, Ratemds.com, Wellness.com, Yelp, etc.
• Express Update and Neustar Localeze help you get listed on more directories in the healthcare niche.
• Get listed on Google Maps, Facebook, Apple Maps, and Bing Places.

Q4. What is the Right Way to Grow Local Reviews for My Hospital/Clinic?

Ans. Request reviews by explaining to your patients the value of their reviews for new patients. Also, set reminders and automation with SurveyMonkey or GetFeedback tool. 

Key Takeaways

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• Establish a detailed and verified GMB profile for your healthcare facility
• Add clinic/visiting hours, consistent NAP, category and sub-categories, description (USPs & experience), images of staff and facility, etc.
• Use Google Keyword Planner and KWFinder to find crucial healthcare keywords and map them on your site.
• Grow your hospital brand’s visibility online by listing on healthcare-specific directories.
• Enrich the GMB profile, win positive reviews, and build abounding citations to win local 3-pack results.
• Enhance on-page SEO with proper site navigation, keyword-oriented meta tags, location schema, and compressed images 
• Use Ahrefs or Ubersuggest to discover link opportunities through competitor analysis. Also, use HARO and ProfNet to pitch PR contributions in your healthcare niche.
• Produce quality articles on healthcare events and popular queries (symptoms, precautions & cure, remedies, etc.)
• Enhance readability and site responsiveness for mobile users.
• Fix site performance errors, minify HTML & JS files, and load JS asynchronously to enhance your site speed.