In a heavily regulated industry with often times constrained paid advertising options, strong SEO provides the best means to shine and stand out from the crowd.
Let's talk about the fundamental principles of effective SEO marketing.
In the healthcare and medical industry, the ability to rank for targeted keywords has become crucial in connecting medical professionals with patients, and HCPs to your product.
As an increasing number of individuals turn to search engines for medical information, symptoms, treatment options, and healthcare providers, medical websites must employ strategies to improve keyword rankings for medical SEO. This ensures that accurate and trustworthy medical content appears prominently in search results.
This blog will showcase exactly what to focus on for a robust SEO strategy that supports healthcare driven KPIs.
By focusing on SEO best practices, healthcare institutions can effectively reach potential patients and disseminate credible health information to the public. In an era where telemedicine and online health resources are growing rapidly, a well-executed SEO strategy serves as an essential tool for healthcare accessibility, fostering patient education, and enhancing engagement.
In the healthcare and medical industry, the ability to rank for targeted keywords has become crucial in connecting medical professionals with patients.
By focusing on SEO best practices healthcare institutions can effectively reach potential patients and disseminate credible health information to the public. In an era where telemedicine and online health resources are growing rapidly, a well-executed SEO strategy serves as an essential tool for healthcare accessibility, fostering patient education, and enhancing engagement.
There are several different types of SEO, each focusing on different aspects of optimization. On-page SEO, off-page SEO, and technical SEO are essential aspects of search engine optimization (SEO) that work together to improve a website's visibility and ranking in search engine results. Let's explore these terms:
On-page SEO refers to optimizing individual web pages to rank higher and earn more relevant traffic in search engines. On-Page SEO is things you can see on your website. More specific examples include:
Off-page SEO involves activities performed outside the boundaries of the individual website, such as building back links from other reputable sites, social media marketing, and influencer outreach, to improve the site's position in search engine rankings. More specific examples include:
Technical SEO refers to the “under the hood” aspects of a website that impacts crawling, indexing, UX, and rankings. Technical SEO lives on the back-end of the website and is like the foundation of a house. Just as a well-built foundation supports a house, technical SEO ensures that a website's underlying structure is optimized. More specific examples.
On-page, off-page, and technical SEO can get mixed up, especially when working on different types of campaigns at once. Here’s an easy way to remember:
To summarize, On-Page SEO is things you can see on your website. Off-Page SEO is everything that is outside of your website. Technical SEO is everything on your website that you can’t see when viewing the page.
All 3 SEO pillars help create a brand that is present in search volumes, social media, and cross referenced by other figures in your community. This helps to build up another important ranking in SEO: your brand’s domain authority.
Domain authority, originally created by software company Moz, refers to a search engine ranking score that predicts the likelihood of your website ranking highly in search engine results. This is based on various factors such as content quality and website age.
Building quality backlinks from reputable websites in your industry is another crucial factor for establishing domain authority. Remember, using SEO to build credibility for your website is a long-term strategy that will play a huge role in how many people see your content.
On a scale of 0 to 100, the ideal domain authority depends on your industry. A domain authority under 15 is considered below the benchmark. However, your domain authority score should be measured against your competitors to create more accurate benchmarks relative to your industry. This is a critical component to understanding if your score is “good” or not.
In healthcare, technical SEO plays a large role in building good domain authority. This includes running regular reports, ensuring there are no broken links on your website, and monitoring all other aspects that encompass “under the hood” website health.
There are two methods that can be used to improve SEO (and ultimately domain authority). These methods are white hat and black hat SEO. Although both of these tactics may improve SEO, one option is better than the other. Here are the differences:
Black hat SEO refers to tactics that attempt to trick or manipulate search engine algorithms. Common black hat tactics include:
White hat SEO on the other hand is leveraging SEO practices that align with search engine guidelines by focusing on providing value to the user. White hat SEO tactics fall under the three main pillars of SEO, and all strategies discussed in this blog. Some specific examples include:
XDS recommends using white hat SEO methods only, which can serve as a long-term solution to achieving domain authority. Using black hat methods can raise red flags from search engines. This often results in penalization from these search engines, which can result in de-prioritization and lower keyword rankings. Content should be made for users first, rather than manipulating rankings.
While a white hat SEO strategy sets your organization up for ranking success, it’s also important to stay on top of new trends. Listed below are some emerging SEO trends in 2023:
In May 2023, Google held an I/O conference which touched on how writing content differently will become more important.
Google is currently holding 85% of the search market share making it the most popular browser in the world.
During the conference they called out:
SEO does not exist in a vacuum, and in the next few sections we will cover how SEO enhances different teams in a digital marketing ecosystem.
If you’re in the healthcare industry and looking to stand out, combining paid search and SEO is a great way to improve ranking. Paid search campaigns can improve:
Interaction metrics such as engagement and bounce rate are important SEO ranking factors. In addition, if a user discovers your website, but has a negative experience while trying to navigate, you are less likely to rank.
Examples of a negative website experience:
The collaboration between design teams and SEO is crucial to ensure that a website’s design elements (user experience and technical implementation) align with SEO best practices. A successful collaboration with design and SEO will result in a visually appealing, user-friendly website that is also properly optimized for search engines.
Design Best Practices for SEO:
Other Important Features:
Proper implementation of SEO recommendations from the development team ensures that your website properly ranks. This is the last piece of the puzzle to create a website that is both search engine-friendly and technically robust.
Best Practices for SEO and Web Development:
Here are some best practices for an SEO and dev team to incorporate:
Properly scoping and managing projects that involve several departments can make or break your strategy. In order to be successful, a project manager will set goals, manage current and upcoming tasks, and organize communication between the different departments working with SEO.
Let’s take a website redesign as an example. How can a project manager ensure all SEO related tasks are executed efficiently? The following is a quick-start guide to scoping a website redesign for SEO:
Overall, project managers bring structure, organization, and leadership to SEO campaigns, making them invaluable for achieving successful outcomes in the competitive world of SEO in healthcare.
Overall, leveraging SEO is a long-term solution we frequently implement for clients. As a Senior SEO Strategist here at XDS, I work alongside Project Managers, Paid Media, Design, Development, and our Social Media Specialist to ensure our clients are gaining the visibility they deserve.
The Experience Design Studio is an award-winning digitally native customer experience agency founded in 2017 by two agency veterans, bringing their collective creative, user experience, marketing, SEO, social media, technology, and healthcare expertise together.
XDS is a full-service digital agency that offers specialized healthcare SEO services. In addition, XDS provides strategy to creation, consulting, design, engineering, marketing, and analytics. Our aim is to provide seamless customer, patient, and HCP experiences across all digital touchpoints, with common sense sprinkled in.