In today’s competitive healthcare landscape, an effective online presence is vital for practices to connect with new patients and grow their business. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) plays a crucial role in improving your practice’s visibility on search engines. While paid advertising can provide a boost, mastering organic SEO offers a foundation for sustainable success. Growth accumulates over time and importantly, the traffic indicates intent. This means the visitors you attract are actively seeking services you provide, such as treatment for a specific condition. Unlike paid strategies, organic SEO focuses on optimizing your website to naturally appear higher in search engine results.
Take advantage of these 11 organic SEO tips to elevate your practice in search engine rankings and reach new patients.
1. Know Your Keywords
Start by identifying relevant keywords that potential patients might use when searching for healthcare services.
How to do it: Establish a competitor and use a tool like SEMRush or GoogleAdWords to see what keywords they rank for. From there, narrow down the keywords to your particular practice/speciality. For example, a high-value keyword would be “Dermatologists Austin” or “Dermatologists Near Me.” Users on Google use these two types of keywords (often called queries) to narrow their search to doctors in their area since Google will always serve websites near them or in the particular city used in a keyword.
2. Optimize On-Page Elements
Make sure your website’s title tags, headers and meta descriptions naturally incorporate the keywords you identified in step one. You can also use tools like Google Search Console to see what keywords are currently driving traffic to any one page on your website and incorporate those as well.
How to do it: If you are a primary care physician, for example, you want to make sure the Title Tag of your homepage has the city and specialty so that Google understands to serve your website in its search result lists for those particular keywords. This would look like: Practice_name Primary Care Physician located in Austin, TX
3. Introduce Your Team
If you are a practice with more than one doctor, create doctor profile pages within your website for each doctor.
How to do it: The title tag of each page should be the doctor’s name, followed by their speciality and city. This way, these pages will rank for the doctor’s name and give users looking for them the relevant information.
4. Enhance User Experience (UX)
It’s no surprise that people tend to seek out websites that provide a positive user experience and avoid ones that don’t. A good UX not only satisfies users, leading to increased trust and a higher likelihood of booking a visit, but it also contributes to higher search rankings.
How to do it: Ensure your website is easy to navigate, loads quickly and provides valuable information.
5. Optimize for Mobile
People search for providers and book appointments via mobile devices, which is why it’s crucial to optimize your website for mobile devices. A mobile-friendly site enhances the user experience and positively influences search rankings.
How to do it: Develop a responsive, mobile-friendly layout, avoid pop-ups, use a clear, readable font and make sure your site loads quickly.
6. Put Your Practice on the Map
Target patients in your geographical area and make sure you are listed in Google Maps.
How to do it: Create a Google Business Profile (which is how businesses get listed in Google Maps). Optimize your listing by including local keywords, keeping your information (such as hours and addresses) up-to-date, add photos and encourage patients to leave reviews.
7. Score 5-Star Reviews
Get more reviews on your Google Business Profile, since it makes your profile more engaging for users. Google uses this as a strong signal and will rank your profile higher.
How to do it: Ask patients to leave reviews directly on your Google Business Profile or use a platform that asks patients to leave reviews after each visit. With platforms like Zocdoc, only patients who have seen providers can leave a review and give a rating. This generates a higher-volume of trustworthy reviews.
8. Create Quality Content
Create informative, engaging and shareable content (with an emphasis on the human touch).
How to do it: Start (and regularly update) a blog with articles that address common health concerns, highlight your expertise and spotlight patient success stories. Google rewards fresh, relevant content with higher search rankings. Note: While AI tools can be helpful for quick content creation, Google knows when something is AI-generated and often rank it lower to prioritize a human-focused experience.
9. Build Backlinks
Linking to high-quality, reputable sources on your website and in blog articles helps build a strong backlink profile, which Google’s algorithm takes into account.
How to do it: If you are part of any medical associations or partner with larger healthcare providers, it’s helpful to link to these on your site.
10. Share Your Social Handles
Integrate your social media platforms with your website. Social signals impact SEO, and an active social presence can contribute to improved search rankings.
How to do it: Add social media icons to your website, share your blog posts, engage with your audience and encourage social sharing.
11. Continue to Measure and Refine
SEO is an ongoing process and since Google’s algorithm continues to change, you’ll need to regularly monitor your website’s performance and adapt accordingly.
How to do it: Use tools like Google Analytics to track keyword rankings, user engagement and conversion rates. Adapt your strategy based on the insights gathered.
Having a strong organic SEO plan that you can continue to analyze and refine is essential for staying ahead of the competition and reaching new patients. If you’re looking to grow your business but don’t have the bandwidth to dig into SEO strategy, consider joining a platform like Zocdoc that does the work for you. In addition to being optimized for mobile, Zocdoc listings serve as valuable backlinks, verified patient reviews are built in, there’s an emphasis on local search, and best of all, you tap into a platform with a substantial user base actively searching for healthcare services. This increased visibility on a trusted platform contributes to better organic search ratings and healthier business growth.
Reach out to an enterprise sales representative to learn more about how Zocdoc can grow your business.
