If you are a doctor, it is important to have an optimized website. Why?
Studies show that doctors who have ranked websites in the top 10 of Google often see more patients than doctors with sites on page 20 or higher.
Therefore, it’s helpful for doctors to know elements of how SEO works and what they can do to optimize their site, so they appear higher in search results pages. Here are a few reasons:
- Increase your visibility
- More exposure leads to more potential customers
- People searching for doctors will find you
- Getting higher in search engine rankings = more patients!
In addition to these reasons, doctors also need a quality website with dynamic content. Having a blog and encouraging users to interact on your site enhances the user experience, which is key if doctors want people to visit their sites repeatedly.
Plus, if you have a great website, people might be more likely to share it on social media, which will only help increase your reach.
- Quality website content is important
- Encourage users to interact with your site
- Blogging helps you appear higher in search engine rankings
- People are more likely to share doctor websites on social media
All of these factors work together to create a strong online presence for doctors.
5 On-Page SEO Elements to Improve Your Google Rankings
Many methods make your website more search engine friendly, but certain fundamental elements should be present on every page. If you discover that your pages are underperforming, here are five on-page SEO components to test and improve.
By the way, these are also great for new pages or posts you create.
1. Content
The written content on your page is the first thing you should pay attention to. With your primary objective of creating content is to attract new patients to your practice, make sure each page focuses on delivering value to your audience. Answer the questions that they are asking or searching for online.
What’s the best way to figure out what patients are searching for on Google? Keyword research is an excellent place to start. Make sure that the material you create effectively uses your keyword research with tools like SEMRush. If you do not intentionally optimize your content for SEO as a doctor, patients will have a difficult time finding it.
It would be best if you also used HTML subheadings to provide structure to your material and call out topical relevance signals to both readers and search engines. Take a look at how this article is structured as an illustration.
2. Page Title
The title tag is the “title” of your page, and it is an important factor that search engines take into consideration when determining what your page is about. The title tag should be focused on the keyword you want to rank for, as Google has shown that it plays a role in rankings.
For example, if you are trying to rank for the search: Rotator Cuff Repair in Phoenix, you should have that in your page title.
3. URL of the Page
Both SEO and user experience are enhanced by URLs. Every webpage you create as a doctor will have a unique URL, and you should make sure it includes the proper keywords.
You will want to try and include your target keyword in the URL in a way that makes sense to your audience. In other words, it should be short. Nobody likes a long, hard-to-remember URL. Pro tip: Google doesn’t like them either.
It also helps with SEO if you include your target keyword in the URL. Using the example above, the URL could be:
https://drjanedoe.com/rotator-cuff-repair-phoenix
4. Internal and External Links
Internal links are links that lead to other pieces of content on your site. They aid Google in determining the context of a page and how it relates to other pages on your website. Beyond just SEO, they also provide patients with helpful links to learn more about what they are looking for.
External links, as you might have guessed, point to material on the web. They may assist you in developing consumer confidence by connecting visitors to reliable sources and providing further information on complex or less-understood themes.
5. Image ALT Text
The alt text description of an image is shown behind the visual element. You may have seen them when visiting a webpage, and an image doesn’t load. Rather, where the picture was supposed to be, you see a short text description of what the image was about.
Hopefully, your patients will not experience this on your site. But this is worth mentioning as it’s an often overlooked SEO tactic.
If you’re using a self-hosted WordPress site (my recommendation), you can add the image ALT text here:
Again, you’ll want to include your target keyword in the image ALT text. If you don’t have your target keywords in the alt text for your image, Google won’t index it.
By implementing these on-page SEO best practices, you will set yourself up for success in attracting new patients.