When most people have a medical question or need to find a doctor these days, they begin their search by consulting the internet.
Because of this, the health of your website is crucial. If your practice doesn’t show up in search engine results, your patients won’t find you. To ensure this doesn’t happen, you must make Search Engine Optimization (SEO) a top priority.
SEO is a series of strategies that improve the visibility of a webpage or site. If someone enters a search for “rheumatology,” “rheumatologist,” or “rheumatology doctors near me,” SEO ensures that you’re the answer to their question. To put it simply, SEO is the difference between landing on the first page of Google results and falling off the map altogether.
To improve your website’s SEO and help your patients find you, there are several actions you can take. The following three tips are a great place to start. Try them today and watch your search engine ranking rise!
Make sure your website is responsive and mobile-friendly.
Studies reveal that more searches take place on mobile devices than desktop computers. If you have a smartphone, this information isn’t exactly shocking. Chances are your patients are using their phones for everything, including searching for a doctor or looking up information about your medical practice.
Unfortunately, if your website is hard to access via a smartphone or isn’t mobile-friendly, those patients will quickly become frustrated and click away. Not sure your website is up to today’s standards? Grab your smartphone and look up your practice. If you don’t like what you see, it’s time to make some changes.
[Need some tips on improving your online presence and reputation? Click here!]
Be active on social media, especially Facebook.
During the third quarter of 2021, Facebook reported that it has approximately 1.93 daily users has roughly 2.89 billion monthly active users. Facebook accounts for over 71% of monthly social media visits, and the fastest-growing demographic is the 55+ age group. This is excellent news for rheumatology practices that want to reach their target audience and boost their SEO.
While social media is usually viewed as fun at best and frivolous at worst, search engines take your social media activity into account when considering SEO. The more active you are across various platforms, the more a search engine will view you as a good resource, and the better your SEO. Social media is also a fantastic way to integrate backlinks to your website, which is another excellent way to build SEO.
Create original content that your audience wants to read.
A search engine wants to lead users to the very best resources on the internet. The way a search engine decides what is “best” is based on various things, such as how long users stay on a particular website. If they click a link and then immediately abandon it, it’s a sign that the site wasn’t helpful. If a user clicks a link and then sticks around or, better yet, goes deeper into the website, then the search engine can safely assume they found what they wanted and were satisfied. That website becomes more valuable to the search engine, and SEO increases.
So how do you get people to stay on your website? By posting relevant, timely, and in-depth content on a blog that you update as often as you can, without sacrificing the quality of your posts. As for what to post about, think about the questions your patients regularly ask, information that would be helpful for them to have, and rheumatology-related issues that you feel are important.
Some ideas include:
- Sharing critical information for staying healthy.
- Ideas for living with arthritis.
- Resources for setting your patients up for success.
- Thoughts on diet and fitness.
These thoughts written into blog form are good ways to create original content, become a valuable resource for your patients, and help your SEO.
We hope these tips help you dip your toe into the world of SEO. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to let us know.
Tags: Marketing Dos and Donts, medical office management, medical offices, national organization of rheumatology managers, NORM, office management, Search Engine Optimization Posted by
