A beginner’s guide to search engine optimization for healthcare

Google has 4.6 billion worldwide users, according to recent research conducted by SEMRush. While that may seem like a huge population, there are also 6 million new blog posts published each day. That means your competition to end up on page one grows by more than a million new competing blogs or webpages each day.

To ensure you rank above competitors (and that the right people find your website), you should optimize your website for search. Search engine optimization (SEO) is a large, multifaceted field, but today we’re going over the essentials for healthcare SEO. You can think of this as a beginner’s guide to search engine optimization for healthcare.

What is Healthcare SEO?

SEO is short for search engine optimization and it’s basically the practice of ensuring your content is liked, and thus shown, by search engineers, primarily Google. When you add the word healthcare in front of it, you’re just indicating that you’re looking at the best practices for a healthcare website, which can be different from other industries.

Over the past three years, I’ve helped healthcare organizations rank on page one of Google. I’ve also been called to help companies who hired the wrong person or didn’t enact SEO and couldn’t end up in anyone’s search queries (big yikes).

Based on that experience, here are ten tips you can implement this week to boost your search engine rating.

Start with Keyword Research

When a healthcare provider starts an appointment, they often assess the symptoms and current health of a patient. You can think of keyword research as a similar thing: you are assessing the needs and queries of your target audience.

To start, you’ll need a solid keyword research tool. My go-to is usually Ahrefs or Clearscope (and TubeBuddy for Youtube SEO), but Google Ads has a free keyword search tool if you don’t want to invest.

When searching for keywords, enter a basic phrase related to your brand, such as “mental health app.” From there, a number of related queries will pop up, along with the competition levels and monthly search volume.

Usually, you want to choose search terms with decent search volume (i.e. not ten searches per month) and medium to low competition. Highly competitive terms are probably already taken by media companies and more robust SEO giants in your field.

Set a timer for an hour and research different keywords related to your business, jotting down any that have that sweet spot of good volume and medium to low competition.

Pro tip: keyword is simply a phrase for good search terms, not a singular word. Feel free to use an entire phrase, especially since longer phrases can be easier to rank for.

Audit your website

Before you start using said keywords, we first need to audit your website. What pages do you currently have and how do they fit together? We’ll get to this later, but there should be a natural flow to your website pages. A user should find it intuitive to click around a website and the site pages should make logical sense.

Your main pages, often called pillar pages in the SEO world, should also be optimized to rank for 1-3 keywords. You can do this by adding those keywords to the on-page copy, meta-description, title, and alt-image text for the main picture on each page.

There’s much more you can do to optimize pillar pages, but this is good for a beginner’s guide to search engine optimization for healthcare.

Create a Blogging Routine That Fits Your Needs

Google likes websites that regularly update new content (and your audience does too!). An easy, effective way to do this is to have a blog. When blogging, you should be consistent about putting out new posts.

While one blog post a day is ideal, few of us have time to do this, especially if you don’t have an entire editorial team. Decide how many blog posts work for your time and budget and stick to that schedule, whether it’s one post a week or one a month.

Use Keywords, But Don’t Keyword Stuff

Ok, back to those keywords. Once you have that list of keywords and have used some to optimize your pillar pages, it’s time to use them in your blog post. For each blog post, you should have one primary keyword and 1-3 secondary keywords.

• If a blog post is 1,500 words or less, try to use the primary keyword five times and all the secondary keywords five times.
• If a post is more than 1,500 words, use the primary keyword ten times and all the secondary keywords ten times.

When using keywords, it’s important not to keyword stuff, aka make the text sound super unnatural by using the same keyword sentence after sentence. For this blog, the keyword was “a beginner’s guide to search engine optimization for healthcare” but I wrote the following paragraph as an intro, you’d probably click off:

“In a world dependent on Google, a beginner’s guide to search engine optimization for healthcare can be really helpful. To answer all your most asked questions–and even just define what SEO is–we created this beginner’s guide to search engine optimization for healthcare. In his beginner’s guide to search engine optimization for healthcare, you can expect nine tips to improve the SEO of your website.”

Pro tip: if you really want to up your SEO on-page optimization, consider a tool like Clearscope. I use it to optimize my clients’ content and it brings up phrases and words to use in your copy to rank higher in Google. A life changer, but a hefty investment.

Provide Value

At this point, you have your keyword list and you’re ready to open up ChatGPT and feed it a mediocre prompt…and let me stop you right there. Remember, there’s over 6 million new blogs per day. And creating your content through ChatGPT isn’t going to make you stand-out.

Instead, take the time (or invest the money) to infuse your blogs with personality and value. Some of the best value-adds for a blog post include:

• Linking to at least 7 external sources. This is especially important in healthcare SEO, where your credibility matters more than other industries.
• Provide thoughtful advice and insight, not just what everyone else in the industry is saying.
• Interview subject matter experts and incorporate their perspectives into the piece.
• Make the text fun, not stiff.
• Internal links in case people want to read more about a certain topic covered in the blog. Each blog you write should include at least two internal links, ideally more.
• Add alt-text that describes every picture on the screen. This not only makes your site more SEO-friendly, it makes it more accessible.

Utilize author and expert bios

This is a super easy way to provide more value, especially to Google: include author and expert bios. At the end of each article, add 2-4 sentences about each author or expert. You can even include a headshot if desired.

By including these bios, you’re providing context about a piece to Google, and you’re building trust with an audience by showing them where the healthcare knowledge is coming from.

You should also add a sources section to the end of your articles, especially if you’re citing medical research.

Answer the FAQs

When writing blogs (or even on pillar page), there’s an area of Google to rank on that people forget about: the FAQs. If you Google a term right now, such as penguins in Antarctica, a “people also ask section” will come up, along with adorable photos of penguins. You’re welcome.

These questions in the people also ask section should be included in a FAQ section at the end of your piece. You can make each question a header three (under a header two) and answer them. If your answers are thoughtful, they may show up in the people also ask section…at least that was the case for multiple of my SEO clients.

Develop a site structure

We discussed this a bit already, but your website should have a logical structure. Map out the different pages of your website and how they relate to one another. This should be done anytime you’re revamping the website.

Since I approach SEO from a content perspective, I’m not as insightful on site structure, but this guide from Neil Patel is helpful.

Blog Structure

Your blogs need structure too. Often, this comes in the form of H2s and H3s. These headers break up the sections of a blog and explain to someone what they can expect from each section.

When utilizing H2s and H3s, here are some best practices:

• Never have a H3 that isn’t under an umbrella H2
• Use a new H2 or H3 every 3-4 paragraphs
• Make sure the flow of the H2s and H3s are logical
• Use primary and secondary keywords in these headers
• Only use one H1 (the title of your piece)

Index Site Pages

Let’s leave the blogging sphere for a second and discuss something else your site needs: an index. Often, this is in the form of a webpage that explains your site’s architecture, such as this one from the Cleveland Clinic. This is called your sitemap

A sitemap is often found at either: yoursite.com/sitemap.xml or yoursite.com/sitemap_index.xml

Each time you create a new pillar page or blog, it should be added to the sitemap. And every piece of content should fit nicely into it. For example, a blog about your dog might be cute, but probably won’t fit into the sitemap of your therapy practice’s website.

Make Sure Your Sitemap is in Google Search Console

Once you’ve created your sitemap, you also want to add it to Google Search Console. Here’s advice from Google themselves on how to do this.

Get those backlinks

This is the first of two areas of SEO I don’t cover (the second is the point below this): get those backlinks. In the non-SEO world, this is referred to as PR. When search engines see that credible sites are linking back to your own, they view your content as more credible.

Think about this like when a patient refers your practice or a customer refers your product to a friend. Instantly, your services or product is more credible in the friend’s eyes.

Depending on your budget, you could hire a PR pro to tackle this. And if you have a budget for backlinks, please hire a trusted PR professional or firm and NOT someone who can buy you a certain amount of backlinks.

If you are DIYing it, there are a couple of tools you can utilize:

• HARO: short for Help a Reporter Out, this organization will send you pitches from those looking for experts on specific topics. In my own reporting, I use this all the time to gain sources for articles.
• Your business network: reach out to those who have a website in a similar niche and offer to do a guest post swap or interview each other for articles.
• Follow reporters and writers: instead of using HARO, some reporters will post on LinkedIn and other social networks when they’re looking to speak to an expert. By following them (and cultivating a natural relationship), you’re more likely to learn about opportunities to showcase your expertise and get a coveted backlink.

Don’t neglect the backend

This is the other SEO thing I don’t do (except for my own website). Usually, this is referred to as technical SEO, and it’s all the stuff going on in the background that keeps your website running smoothly. This includes:

• Improve your site speed (that’s basically how long pages take to load)
• Fix any broken links
• Use HTTPS, a more secure form of HTTP, and make sure you are cyber-secure
• Ensure your website design is mobile-friendly
• Stay on top of site usability and technical issues

For these issues, you can either DIY it yourself or hire a website designer/developer who offers a monthly maintenance package for technical and functional problems.

Your First Steps

Reading over these steps can be overwhelming, and it can be difficult to know where to start. If you have a budget for SEO, it’s always best to hire a trusted SEO company for a site audit. Angela Myers Creative offers these and feel free to contact us if you’re interested in this service.

If you’re DIYing it or want to get a headstart, here’s the steps I would take:

• Do keyword research. Choose one good phrase per pillar page and optimize the page for that word.
• Make sure your website structure makes sense and index it.
• Provide value through your pillar pages.

Once you’ve tackled these three, then you can consider how to set up a blog, keep your sitemap current, gain backlinks, etc. Healthcare SEO doesn’t need to be done all at once. Instead, you can slowly improve your website overtime and watch the traffic roll in.