SEO, or search engine optimization, makes the world go round nowadays. It’s the basis of how everything on the internet works, it allows us to find sites that we’re looking for and find answers to questions that we ask. It also helps to recommend things to us that we might be interested in.
So for businesses or organizations that would like more of an internet presence, knowledge of SEO is absolutely essential. This article is going to be talking you through all of the basics that you need to know to boost the rankings for your healthcare website. And we’ll get more advanced as the strategies go on.
Let’s get started!
5 Fundamental Healthcare SEO Strategies
1. Page title optimization
The first strategy we’ll be discussing here might be the most foundational one of all, and it is to have optimized titles. SEO factors in many variables, but one of the main ones it takes a look at is an article’s title. So having the perfect title could make all the difference in your article being found, and then clicked on.
To optimize your title, you’ll need to think about what your target audience would be searching for. Imagine what words they would use. Try to fit one or more of these keywords in your title. Keywords are vital to healthcare SEO strategy. If the article is about diabetes then make sure the word “diabetes” is in the title.
And remember that your title needs to promise something, readers need to know that if they click on that title they’ll be rewarded by gaining some sort of value. Avoid titles like “Regarding Diabetes” and go for titles like “Top 10 Facts About Diabetes”. Your title should let people know what to expect from the article.
Finally, make sure that your titles are correctly punctuated and grammatically correct. Your title is the first part of the article that people are going to read, if the quality of the title is bad then it leads them to believe that the quality of the article will be bad also.
2. Content is king
The second strategy has more to do with the content under the title. For optimized SEO, you need to make sure that your content is of the utmost quality. Because if it’s not then people will click off your article as fast as they clicked on. The best title in the world will not retain readers if the content within is bad.
And SEO decides whether or not to push your content based on how long people stay on your webpage. So you need to retain those readers for as long as you can.
Your content needs to be high value, and it needs to be on brand. So for people in the healthcare industry, you need to make sure your healthcare website focuses heavily on health and doesn’t stray from that genre. And healthcare blogs need to make sure their content is educational.
People go to healthcare websites in order to gain important health information, so make sure you’re giving that information to them. And remember to make the content easy to understand by keeping things like grammar and punctuation correct. Also, keep adding your keywords throughout the entire article!
3. Use lots of images and videos
The third basic strategy that you need to learn is how to not only optimize your written work but also the visual elements that are present in your article as well. Because these are also important factors in SEO optimization.
And I’m not only talking about pictures or infographics here, but also videos. If any of the information you’re teaching can be shown in a video format then add a video of it!
Videos will catch readers attention and for every minute they spend watching that video, it’s another minute that they’re spending on your article. Which in SEO’s eyes will make your article seem valuable and they’ll push it more into searches and recommendations.
4. Mobile optimization
The fourth strategy is to optimize your content and web pages for mobile users. Just as SEO is the new and modern thing behind suggesting and finding media to consume, mobile phones are the new medium through which people are consuming said media.
If you’re not catering to mobile users then you’ll be turning away most of your potential readership base. So how exactly can you make your web pages accessible to mobile readers? The strategies are pretty easy once you get the hang of them.
Firstly, you should have a responsive design for your webpage. It should be something that automatically transforms to fit screens and formats of all different sizes. Everything should function correctly whether someone is using an apple iphone or a desktop computer.
Secondly, with the formatting of your articles, you can keep in mind that everything is squished together more on mobile devices. For instance, try to keep your paragraphs contained to 2-3 sentences so that on mobile they still look like paragraphs and not large lumps of text.
5. Keep up with the latest Google algorithm changes
The fifth and final basic of SEO that we’ll be discussing is the knowledge that SEO is always changing! The way SEO works is always shifting and to be able to optimize your content, you have to change with it.
This means that you have to keep up to date with all of Google’s major updates, and shift your content accordingly in order to be able to benefit from SEO in the long run. So keep learning all that you can, and remember that SEO isn’t something that can be mastered in a day.
But it is one of the most useful tools to have at your disposal in today’s social environment as more and more things shift to being online.
Hopefully, this article has been helpful to you, and you’ve learned some tips that will help you along your journey of optimizing your healthcare website to be more SEO friendly, and in the process, get a much better ranking.