10 Local SEO Techniques for Doctors and Dentists
Is it your goal to have your medical practice show up higher in search results? This article will go through ten of medical professionals’ most crucial local SEO methods.
Fifty-seven percent of people use search engines to locate a doctor and schedule an appointment. Patients who search online for a medical center usually have serious intentions.
SimilarWeb reports that organic search accounts for 85% of ClevelandClinic.org’s traffic, 83% of HopkinsMedicine.org’s traffic, and 87% of MayoClinic.org’s traffic.
However, getting a high Google page rank takes more work than just having a website. The internet has progressed much beyond those early days.
Present-day patients often look for nearby medical facilities while seeking treatment. Therefore, if you want to see significant foot traffic in your clinic, you must rank for your local audience.
This is why contemporary dentistry and medical businesses cannot afford to ignore local SEO if they want to take advantage of the internet’s revenue-generating potential.
If you want to be discovered by the people who care about your business, then you should read this post since it contains ten local SEO tactics that will help you do that.
What Exactly Is Local Search Engine Optimization?
Local SEO aims to improve a website’s visibility in search engine results for queries that specify a geographic region.
For instance, a dental office in Nashville may score well for queries like “dentists in Nashville.”
Patients may sometimes use words like “dentist near me” while researching online. When this is the case, search engines will use the user’s Internet Protocol (IP) address or geolocation to provide results for relevant and local companies.
Using local healthcare SEO, your medical practice may significantly increase its online presence. If executed properly, it may help you win search results even if your website is not on the first page by placing you in the top three.
Why Should Healthcare Professionals Care About Local SEO?
Most people nowadays use the internet before making an appointment with a doctor.
If you’re in pain and think you need to visit a dentist, you probably wouldn’t look in the “D” section of the phone book. Instead, people will go online and search for something like “dentist near me,” then schedule an appointment with the dentist they like the most.
This is the mentality of the typical contemporary patient. To be one of the results that come up in response to location-specific and relevant searches, practices that want to keep or enhance their foot traffic need to adapt this way.
SEO for the local level facilitates this.
You may diversify your traffic acquisition sources and be where your clients search for you by optimizing your Google Business Profile to rank for relevant local searches.
When people in your area see your practice pop up in search results, they will be more likely to choose you.
Also, if all the other conditions are satisfied, they are more likely to call and schedule a consultation.
Local search engine optimization (SEO) may help medical practices like yours by increasing foot traffic, which raises income.
Save money on expensive web advertising to increase profits in the end.
Local SEO also lets you meet your competitors where they are and compete with them head-on.
If you appear in the same local search results as your rivals, you will have a higher chance of attracting some of their potential customers.
This is infinitely preferable to losing all of your online customers to them because you couldn’t be discovered in the local search results.
More patients scheduling appointments and paying you for those services result from local SEO strategies. First, let’s go through some of the best practices for launching a local SEO campaign.
10 Local SEO Strategies That Work
After reading about all the advantages of local SEO, you may be under the impression that it is just as time-consuming, costly, and tiresome as global SEO.
The reality, however, is somewhat different.
While it’s true that certain aspects of local SEO need time and effort to provide genuinely effective results, getting started is significantly less complicated.
The following are some of the best local SEO tactics that may help you get internet awareness and potential customers:
1. Create a Google My Business profile for your medical practice
To be seen locally online, businesses should claim their free Google Business Profile (previously Google My Business).
Google’s Business Profile is an excellent way for local companies to get their name out there and highlight what they have to offer to potential customers. It gives you everything you need to write a detailed description of your clinic that is both search engine friendly and patient-friendly.
Your medical practice must be listed on Google Business Profile to take advantage of local search engine optimization.
From time to time, Google will generate GBP business listings without human intervention. In such a scenario, you should claim the listing, validate it, and check its correctness to ensure it doesn’t scare away potential customers with incorrect details.
Also, one of LoudGrowth’s customers witnessed a 44 percent boost in appointment reservations after adding the appointment booking link to their Google Business Profile.
2 Make a Second Attempt at Keyword Analysis
Local search engine optimization (SEO) relies heavily on keyword research, which reveals which phrases should be used to improve your listing so that it appears in response to relevant user inquiries and, hopefully, attracts new patients.
Location-specific terms, such as “Dentist near me” or “Pediatrician Nashville,” denote local keywords, setting them apart from broader keyword categories.
Researching local keywords requires you to put yourself in your patient’s shoes and use your intuition.
When trying to find a physician, what goes through their minds? What phrases may people use to look for a physician online?
Make a list of the most important terms you can think of.
After compiling a list, the next step is to use keyword research tools to investigate each term individually.
Get the correct search volume and difficulty when narrowing down your list of potential keyword phrases.
Keep in mind that local keywords often have a limited amount of searches. Don’t be afraid to narrow your search to terms with a lower SV score.
Similarly, keyword tools may be used to research the terms for which your rivals have achieved high page rankings.
These terms effectively link patients looking for services like yours to medical practices like yours. Therefore, they may also assist you in locating the appropriate kind of exposure.
3. Use Google Posts to your advantage.
Google Posts is an excellent way for small companies to connect with and promote themselves to their local communities, and it’s free.
According to some reports, Google Posts keep your most recent ten updates visible for up to seven days. Use this area to share the news with your audience, run promotions, advertise your products and services, and describe their unique benefits.
Google Posts allows you to showcase written and visual information, with the option to include a call-to-action that directs readers to a specific page on your site.
To know how many people are clicking on your Google Posts, you need to use UTM parameters.
Google Posts educate and persuade potential patients to take action quickly.
Various topics, including sales and discounts, new goods and services, upcoming events, company news, etc., may be discussed via these channels.
A survey of 600 UK profiles found that posts about services and discounts convert better than those about other types of ideas.
Since this forum aims to update potential patients on the latest developments, you’ll want to develop a plan for actively using Google Posts, which involves more than just spreading the word.
Use Google Posts to advertise, for instance, free flu vaccinations offered by your clinic in the weeks leading up to flu season.
This post should be replaced with something else when flu season ends since it may be seen as unprofessional if it remains up.
To fully take advantage of them and get tangible results, you must produce direct, focused, and compelling content.
Although Google Posts allow for up to 1500 characters, just the first few will show up before the content is hidden behind the fold. Therefore, cramming as much data as possible into the available area is necessary.
Google Posts are an accessible way to connect with your audience and spread the word about what you’re offering. However, your Google Business Profile must be authenticated to use this service.
4 Qualities That Promote Safety and Health
People are more concerned about the health and safety of the venues they frequent since the outbreak.
Due to this, Google has implemented GBP listing health and safety features.
Beyond these fundamental characteristics, there are more data points you can employ to be more intuitive and provide your potential patients with the information they need.
You may add extra features, such as whether patients need to make an appointment in advance or can have a walk-in appointment, in addition to the health and safety attributes like temperature checks, mask requirements, staff safety measures, etc.
These characteristics provide prospects with reassurance, confidence, and the knowledge they want without any further effort on their part.
You may modify your listing immediately by including the details in your GBP.
5. Regularity of NAP and Business Hours
A poll found that 62% of participants relied on GBP listings when looking for a business’s phone number or location.
This suggests that finding company hours, a phone number, and an address is among the most common reasons consumers use Google to research local companies.
We know what will happen if any of these assumptions turn out to be wrong.
A frustrated and maybe angry prospect will give a poor rating.
Think about how it would feel if the default office hours were Monday through Friday, 9 am to 5 pm. However, your practice sessions are every other day of the week from 1 to 4 pm.
Can you fathom the disappointment of a patient who thought they found your practice’s hours on Google and drove there, only to learn that they were wrong?
Again, try to put yourself in the shoes of someone who has tried calling your office after finding the number on Google but has been on hold for hours with no answer.
The last thing we want is for one of your customers to leave a bad review on your GBP listing because of one of these situations.
Therefore, it is essential that your GBP precisely reflect your business’s NAP (name, address, and phone number).
Because even seemingly little errors might have disastrous consequences, you must also guarantee that this data is consistent across all consumer touchpoints.
6. Landing Pages for Local Businesses
Many individuals who are trying to improve their local search engine rankings aren’t sure whether they should have their CTAs go directly to their homepage or keyword-specific landing pages.
The best course of action is to point the call to action button on your GBP listing to a locally optimized, keyword-rich landing page.
This landing page may serve as a springboard into further conversation with potential patients by providing a deeper dive into the topic at hand via the usage of the targeted keyword.
Consider using “Pediatrician Boston” as an example of a keyword.
To effectively reach Boston parents looking for a pediatrician’s advice, you may tailor a landing page to address their most pressing concerns.
You should consider your users’ issues and strive to provide solutions on the landing page. Create attention-grabbing headlines that go right to the point and strategically place the textual content to keep the reader interested.
Benefits, not features, are what customers care about, so emphasize them when you write copy and choose visuals for your website.
It would help if you also chose keywords specifically related to the service you are promoting.
To persuade site visitors that your business is reliable, it’s a good idea to showcase trust signals like accolades and certifications and social evidence like testimonials and reviews.
Put a call-to-action button in a prominent location. To get them to do something specific, like setting an appointment, use a call-to-action like “Book Your Appointment” or anything similar. Do not use a variety of CTAs; doing so invites the paradox of choice.
Place a clickable map of your location at the bottom of the landing page to help users find you.
One more thing to remember: mobile users account for 50% of all healthcare website traffic, so make sure your landing pages are mobile-friendly.
7. Creating Local Links
Backlinks are references to your website (or specific pages within your site) that appear in the text of other websites. Link building refers to the process of gaining these connections.
Google gives more weight to sites with a lot of backlinks since they consider such sites more reliable and authoritative.
Individuals actively seek out and acquire backlinks from highly authoritative and topical websites as part of their regular search engine optimization strategy.
If you want Google to give your site a higher ranking in local search results, you must get connections from reputable local businesses.
Local link building refers to gaining links from your local websites, and there are several methods to do this.
If you have a community blog, you may submit the valuable information for dentists and physicians and have it linked to your site.
If your business is successful enough, you may gain a connection with a local school by sponsoring a team or kids there.
A connection from the local chamber of commerce may be obtained by joining the room and posting in their news section.
The majority of towns and cities publish their newspapers. You may develop PR material, provide advice, or write articles for these publications in exchange for exposure and backlinks to your site. When you get a link from one of these sites, it will likely have a high domain authority and be of great value to your own.
Get your medical practice listed in local directories to increase your number of inbound links.
Many more local backlinking schemes exist, but these are only a few examples. Your imagination limits it.
8. Use GBP Calls And Messages To Your Advantage
Calls to businesses listed on GBP come directly from Google search results.
Thus, it is essential that you have someone available to answer calls and messages from your online audience if you have posted your phone number on GBP.
Negative reviews and poor marketing might hurt your business if you aren’t responsive to online inquiries from potential patients.
9. Local Reviews
People seeking advice want to know that the professional they’re consulting is competent. It is crucial to them that the facility meets their expectations and does not have a negative reputation.
For these reasons, almost everyone (98%) checks out customer feedback posted on websites.
As a result, most people who use the internet to research medical professionals report that they rely on online reviews when making their final choice.
To attract new patients, your GBP listing has to wow them with positive feedback from a wide range of people.
However, getting reviews is not as easy as you may think. Almost three-quarters of customers (74%) have posted evaluations online.
Almost everyone is happy to go out of their way to give a negative review, but few people will take the time to make a positive one.
To maximize profits, you should work to improve your rating.
If this is the case, you may ask patients for feedback after each consultation by having staff contact them directly or by emailing them.
Be careful to go through all the reviews and scrub them for any traces of personal data that could have been left behind by mistake.
In addition to replying to positive reviews, it is also crucial to answer bad reviews so that the public may see that you care about your patients’ overall satisfaction.
10. Professional Listings at a Single Location
If your company is separate and has its Tax Identification Number, Google will let you have a separate GBP even if it has a physical location with another company.
Consequently, if your clinic is situated in a building with other companies, you may establish a separate listing for only your clinic.
However, if your vast hospital also houses multiple smaller clinics, generating separate listings for each may be challenging.
Because separate listings for firms sharing a physical address require the existence of different legal entities, each of which pays its taxes separately and maintains a particular set of contact details.
Last Words
Optimizing your website for local search may attract patients from a whole new area. It may boost revenue by increasing bookings from nearby patients if you rank highly in their search results.
To reap the rewards, however, you must first put in the time and effort required to establish and maintain a robust Google Business Profile.
To maximize SEO’s potential and attract more patients to your office, you need a GBP listing that is as complete and accurate as possible.
More Resources:
- Best uses SEO keywords tools in 2022
- Why you start SEO outsourcing in 2022
- How to apply Advanced SEO in your website in 2022
