3 SEO Tips to Get Found by New Patients Online

Having a website for your medical practice matters. You simply can't compete today without one. In fact, a Pew Research study showed that 87% of US adults use the Internet and 72% look for health information online. There are many things you need to do to get the most from your website. Maximizing your search engine optimization (SEO) is just one of those things.

According to Google, SEO affects only organic search results, not paid or sponsored results. For most small practices, this is important because you may not have the budget for paid advertising online. Your website vendor can help with most of the SEO strategies recommended by Google to help optimize SEO. Here are some basic guidelines to use:

• Create unique, accurate page titles.

• Use the description meta tag (a short summary of the page contents).

• Have simple-to-understand URLs that use words (not complex numeric structures).

• Make your site easy to navigate.

• Offer quality content and services—the more relevant and interesting, the better your search results.

• Optimize the use of images (help people imagine what being a patient feels like in your office).

For practices seeking to use their website to get new patients, you need to consider designing your website to increase local SEO.
You want to reach and engage your community to grow your practice—not reach people 3,000 miles away! Local optimization can help you get found in local searches (i.e., Pediatrician, Iowa City). Make sure that you and your vendor cover these additional SEO tasks when setting up your site: To learn more ways to engage and retain patients with your website, download 5 Simple Steps to Creating a Website Your Patient Will Love.

1. Include your city name along with top keywords in website content (i.e., We are pediatricians in Iowa City).

2. Include your full address on every page of your website (not just the contact us page) and make sure it is exactly the same everywhere (same words, punctuation, etc.). It needs to be consistent.

3. Link your Google Maps listing to your website.