11 tips for SEO success for your practice
As featured in AAPM Journal September Issue.
Like many aspects of marketing, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is an area that many practices feel daunted by. You are probably familiar with the term SEO but may be unsure what it actually means and how to achieve it for your practice. Well you certainly aren’t alone!
CEO of Reality Marketing, Leonie Arnebark who looks after the marketing requirements of a number of clients nationwide in the healthcare arena has complied some tips to help you get on top of SEO for your practice.
What is SEO?
Search engine optimisation (SEO) is the on-going process of making sure your website performs as well as possible on specific search engine searches. The key distinction between paid and organic search marketing is that with search engine optimisation, you get the visitors you earn. Whereas with pay per click, you get the visitors you pay for.
Why optimise your website?
You have a great practice and you want people to be able to easily find it! Success is based on being top of search rankings. You need to be constantly optimising your website in order to achieve high rankings.
11 tips for SEO success for your practice:
Mobile responsive design
Ensure your website is usable on multiple devices and screen resolutions and is completely mobile responsive. Check this before publishing to ensure your audience can find you easily using a mobile device.
2. Avoid typos and grammatical errors
Google penalises typos so be sure to do a site audit and fix any technical errors or grammatical errors on your practice website.
3. Check site speed
Check all pages are fast loading and working well in mobile responsive design. If your site is slow to load, try reducing the size of your images and also explore your hosting provider as this can contribute to speed.
4. Useful and up to date content
Create high quality, original content that is useful and relevant for your audience. The right words in the right place can have a huge effect on how much traffic you get from the search engines. Ensure your content is up to date and accurate too.
5. Get your metatags and meta descriptions set up
Meta descriptions are HTML attributes that concisely explain the contents of webpages. You’ve seen them before on Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs), where they’re commonly used as preview snippets. When writing your descriptions be sure to make it about your readers’, the more benefit and value you can build for them, the more likely they’ll be to click.
Bonus tip- Ensure all images have alt tags as well
6.Create fresh content regularly
Great content is important. But it’s only a piece of the puzzle. If you want to move up the ranks in Google, you need to be smart about it and be continually creating fresh content. A strategic system for creating content that wows your audience, gets you on the front page, and drives the traffic you need to enhance Search Engine Optimisation is key.
7.Use on page SEO and cross linking
Utilise On-page SEO. This includes creating separate pages for each keyword or phrase i.e. don’t have a general services page, have separate pages that focus on each service.
8. SSL enabled
Ensuring that your website is secure will also assist with google rankings. There is a clear SEO benefit to enabling-SSL on your website, and across all your content.
9.Third party listings and affiliate links
Have your business listed on third-party websites, including business name, opening hours, URL, address, images and phone number.
10.Google my business
Ensure your practices google my business account is up to date, has fresh images and lists accurate contact details, opening hours etc.
11.Drive through social media
Linking to content from your social media platform i.e. blog articles is a contributing factor for SEO success.
At the end of the day you want your website users to have an enjoyable experience when they visit your site and get what they need out of it. To improve your website’s user experience, you’ll want to focus on things like page load time, bounce rate, time on page, page views per visit, and how far a person scrolls down the page.
Your website is a work in progress which needs to be continually updated and nurtured in order to achieve optimal results, so make it a central focus of your marketing activity and dedicate time and resources to keep it current, relevant and engaging for your target audience.
By Leonie Arnebark
CEO, Reality Marketing
Practical and authentic marketing, your Marketing Manager as you need it.
