5 Proven Ways for Medical practices to Improve their Google Search Rankings

 

With patients increasingly choosing their medical provider based on what Google shows them if your business is not of one the few shown at the top of the search results then you are on the way to losing hundreds of potential customers. Through simple search engine optimization practices, you can start showing up at the top of the search results as well.



Introduction

Google is used ubiquitously for everything today. From finding hotels to finding the market prices for various stocks. When users search for something on the internet, they choose from one of the top three results that show up in the search results. If your business, or practice is not one of the top results then you are not making anywhere near the growth that you can. Less than 1 percent of users click on a link on the second page of the search results.

Your position on the search results page depends on which keywords your website/page is being used, in the context of the search terms, and then determined by a secret algorithm that uses a lot of metrics and indicators to determine your place in the search results.

But your position is not necessarily fixed to where it appears in the search results. By using search engine optimization (SEO) techniques, you can improve some of these indicators and metrics to perform better in the search results.

For medical businesses, being in the first few results is critically important. Patients are increasingly choosing their healthcare provider from what they see on the internet. When your medical practice is not one of the first

Improving your ranking on Google is important for any medical practice, but getting started is not always easy. The good news is that there are some proven ways to get yourself off the ground—and keep going!

There are plenty of ways that you can use to surge to the top of the Google search results. Some of these are much more effective than others and others are not useful (or permitted for that matter). Here are five proven ways to improve the search rankings for your healthcare business.

 Create quality content

 Quality content is a key factor in SEO. If you have quality, unique and relevant content on your website, then search engines will rank it higher when users are looking for information. Despite what anyone says, the key to ranking at the top of the search results is that your content needs to be valuable for readers. If Google (or other search engines for that matter) thinks that users are finding the answers they are looking for on your webpage or website, then your results will automatically show up higher in search results.

Content on your website should be high quality and well written. It should also be useful, entertaining, or educational. It should focus on providing value to the reader as well as being original in its topic area so that it isn’t copied from elsewhere online (which can happen). Google severely punishes plagiarism so ensure that your website content has minimal to no plagiarism at all.

Creating content so that your website ranks higher on the Google search engine results is just one part of digital marketing, content marketing, and online brand-building activities. How to create the best content can be a whole topic on its own but focus on writing about topics that you have expertise on, that way you are able to provide more value about the questions that readers may have than just a layman. You should also focus on topics that will bring benefits to your business. Talking about beekeeping, which you may be an expert on, will not do a lot for your medical practice.

Optimize and submit a sitemap to Google.

A sitemap is a list of all the pages on your site, including their URLs, titles, and descriptions. It’s important to submit a sitemap to Google because it helps them understand what content you have available on your website and where it can be found.

Sitemaps also help search engines determine which pages are most relevant for users looking for specific topics or keywords (e.g., “cardiology”). This will result in higher rankings when people search for these terms within your website’s content.

You don’t need to worry about building a sitemap since there are plenty of automatic tools where you can just submit your URL and have a sitemap downloaded automatically. You would then upload the sitemap to Google’s Search Console (GSC) Tools. The GSC is a web service that is offered by Google that shows you all of your website’s highlights and health metrics in one location. It is vital that you have at least set up your GSC account for your website, which itself is very easy to do and some hosting services do it for you. You can also take the help of a medical website design company to have properly optimized sitemaps for your website.

Link to your website internally

A link or a hyperlink is an item (think a word or button) clicking or tapping on which would lead to another website or webpage. By linking your website’s pages to other pages on your own website, you increase the visibility of the various pages that you have. Internal linking, as this practice is known, also helps build the ‘authority’ of your web pages. While the details can be a little complicated, it can be easily surmised to say that linking each of your pages to at least 2-3 other pages is good practice. However, do keep in mind that you don’t want to overdo this as Google can penalize you for excessive linking. Here are the two pages that you should try to link to:

Your homepage: A single-page site can have a link back to your homepage, which is the first page of your site. This will help users who are searching for medical practices in their area find you and bring them back to your main page, where they can learn more about what services you provide and how to get in touch with you if they need more information.

Service pages: If there are specific pages on your website that relate specifically to one service or product, then linking these outbound links internally works well for SEO purposes because it helps increase the authority of those pages within Google’s search results by giving them more links than other sites might have (which increases their importance). These include things like “Services,” “Testimonials,” “Blog,” etc., so make sure those all contain internal links!

Build links from other websites.

Link building is the process of creating links to your website. Links are important because they tell search engines that your site is relevant and trustworthy, which makes it rank higher in search results. Link building can be expensive, but it’s worth it if you want to improve your business’ Google Search Rankings! Link your website internally on other sites, such as blogs and forums. External links can help Google understand that your content is valuable and trustworthy. Think of it like a word-of-mouth recommendation but for websites.

There are many different ways to build links:

Guest Blogging – Write about topics related to the practice or service you offer on other websites (like ours). Build links from other websites that are related to yours (i.e., if you’re an orthopedic surgeon, then create a blog about surgeries).

Article Submissions – Submit articles written by other authors on their blogs (or yours) and get them published on your own blog or website as well! This strategy works best when there is no competition for links around where those people reside within their respective industries – so make sure yours stands out from all others by writing compelling content that interests readership enough so they’ll want to share them across social media platforms.

Use the right keywords

To improve your Google search rankings, you should use the right keywords. Your website content and products or services should be related to those keywords, as well as the location of your business and target audience. You can find out what people are searching for by using free keyword research tools like Google AdWords Keyword Planner or Moz’s Keyword Explorer tool.

Use the right keywords when optimizing your site for search engines so that when people search for them, they’ll see your site as one of their top results! Avoid black hat SEO tactics like keyword stuffing or cloaking because these can hurt your rankings over time if users notice that they aren’t being served relevant content by Google’s algorithm

Conclusion

We hope that this post has helped you understand the basics of SEO for medical practices, and how to improve your search rankings. We’ve given you five proven steps to follow, but there are many more out there if you need them! If you have any questions about our recommendations or want help implementing them into your own practice, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

BraveLabs is helping physicians make the best impression on Google search results. With our comprehensive and custom digital marketing plans, your practice will be on the top of the search results leading to more patients and more revenue.

 

 


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