Recent years have seen the rise of telemedicine, with more and more patients turning to the internet for health advice. Medical SEO services are becoming increasingly relevant for healthcare lead generation practices.

According to a study by Google, 84% of patients use both online and offline sources to search for information on doctors, clinics, and other healthcare providers. In competitive industries such as healthcare, organisations require advanced lead acquisition strategies to keep on top of their game. 

Whether you run a local clinic, a telemedicine platform, or a mobile health app, medical SEO services are key to attracting inbound leads. Here’s how you can leverage the potential of SEO for medical practices to expand your patient base and boost ROI. 

Establish Authority In Your Field Of Practice To Drive Healthcare Lead Generation

38% of the patients surveyed by Google searched online for symptoms or medical specialties (e.g. pediatrics). An additional 37% turned to search engines for information on conditions or diseases. 

Overall, 80% of internet users have searched online for a health-related topic (Pew). So if you haven’t tapped into content marketing yet, you’re missing out on one huge opportunity.

Being a medical practitioner or organisation puts you at a competitive advantage. You have the subject matter expertise to write compelling content that answers your audience’s most burning questions.

Whether in the form of newsletters, educational blog posts, or videos on health-related topics, digital content is a gold mine for your business. By working together with a marketing specialist for medical SEO services, you can engage with potential clients and drive remarkable business results.

Here are some key ways in which professional search engine optimisation will upgrade your online reputation:

• Well-targeted keyword research. Medical SEO consultants leverage tools and software to understand the searcher’s intent and identify traffic-driving terms. A strategic approach to keyword optimisation can propel your content to the first page of Google. At the same time, it helps establish your practice as the go-to source for health advice.
• Internal linking for page authority. By creating a network of interconnected pages on your website, you’re letting search engines know that your content offer is legit and relevant. You can take advantage of the traffic to your best performing pages to boost fresh content and promote the service pages on your website.
• Website optimisation for search visibility & a seamless user experience. Aside from content optimisation, medical SEO services include technical processes, as well. Technical SEO helps search engines crawl and index your web pages in an efficient and timely manner. Through web optimisation, you can improve not only your search visibility but also your visitors’ experience while browsing your website.

Acquire “Real Estate” in Local Search Results To Outrank Competitors

If you’re a physician or a local clinic looking to take your healthcare lead generation strategy up a notch, local citations are your bread and butter. This includes any mention of your business (e.g. name, address, phone number) in online directories, on social media, websites or apps.

Traditionally, success as a medical practitioner or organization relied heavily on word-of-mouth. The same holds true in the digital era, except that word-of-mouth now travels in the form of online reviews and testimonials.

Let’s break this down into simple steps:

• Your practice gets listed on local directories (e.g. Google My Business) and/or review platforms (e.g. Yelp, Facebook)
• Citations are optimized for local SEO, providing additional information about your practice/organisation, such as your website, opening hours, and/or contact information.
• Reviews start adding up, as more and more patients find you online.
• Google’s ranking algorithm pulls this information (# of reviews, their quality and diversity) and decides how valuable your listing is to searchers.

If implemented correctly, a local search strategy can significantly improve your online visibility and drive exponential traffic growth to both your website and your practice premises.
 

Monitor KPIs & Revenue Attributed to Medical SEO Services

When working with established providers of medical SEO services, conversion rate optimisation (CRO) is an ongoing process. To achieve continuous growth, it’s essential for agencies to measure performance regularly and carry out attribution reporting.

Healthcare lead generation through inbound methods should be evaluated against several criteria:

#1. Ranking In Organic Search Results

The most apparent measure of success when it comes to SEO is keyword ranking. Whether it’s blog posts, service pages, or local citations, medical SEO services boost your online assets to show among the top search engine results.

Ideally, your practice will make it on page #1 of Google for a variety of search terms relevant to your field of expertise and your patients’ pain points. 

This is especially important, considering that 75% of searchers never navigate past the first page of search results on Google, according to HubSpot.

To achieve this objective, web SEO strategies require constant tweaking. A medical SEO professional will systematically audit the keywords your content is ranking for.

If you’re just starting to establish your online presence, results may take longer to show. 

This is where a professional marketer comes into the picture. They will assess both your position and that of your competitors, monitoring the fluctuations in ranking due to Google’s algorithm updates. 

In time, as your website gains traction and you publish more and more valuable content, your domain authority will increase. The main use of this score is for benchmarking purposes. Yet, an increase in its value will also indicate that you’re reaping the results of the medical SEO services you’ve contracted.

#2. Organic Traffic to Your Website & Click-Through Rate (CTR)

So your practice has made it to the top of page #1 on Google. How do you measure success from here on out? There are two variables that will influence your KPIs going forward: # of impressions and # of clicks. 

Impressions are the number of times a certain page on your website showed up in search results for a particular query. Clicks are the number of times searchers clicked through your page in the search results. 

By dividing the two and multiplying the result by 100, you get an insight into one of the two things that matter at this point – the click-through rate (CTR). The second KPI you should keep an eye on is organic traffic, a measure of the visitors who land on your website from unpaid search results. 

Google Analytics is your go-to tool for keeping track of organic visits to your website. A medical SEO consultant will be able to set up relevant filters and leverage advanced tools (e.g. the model comparison tool) to generate insights and attribute revenue to marketing efforts. 
 

#3. Conversion Rate

Here we come to the ultimate goal of any clinic starting a healthcare lead generation strategy, return on its investment.

It’s important that you and your marketing consultant decide right from the outset how you’ll be measuring conversions. Will they be form submissions? Newsletter subscriptions? Appointments booked? Or actual patients that have come to your premises and paid for your medical services?

The main benefit of medical SEO practices is that they enable clinics to target qualified leads. That is, potential patients who are specifically searching for the services that your organization offers. 

Moreover, revenue attribution can be gauged through advanced analytics. In other words, a medical SEO specialist will eventually be able to track your performance to specific initiatives by looking at metrics such as bounce rate, average session time, # of pages per session, to name a few. 

Getting your SEO strategy wrong can be a very costly mistake. A professional SEO agency will aggregate its expertise in complementary fields to get you the best results—from setting up Google Analytics Tags in your website’s code, setting up advanced filters and optimizing your website, to writing compelling content and getting it to page #1 in search results.

Wesrom is proud to announce it has been featured among the top 50+ Digital Marketing Agencies Of 2019 according to DesignRush.

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