Healthcare and Medical SEO Strategy - SEARCH ENGINE EXPERT EMEA 2024

As in all other spheres of life, people today use Internet search in those cases when they need medical services. The strengthening of the role of the Internet and the habit of people to find answers to all their questions in the online world took place in parallel with the establishment of private medical clinics, aesthetic surgery, dental offices and the sale of medicines over the Internet. In recent decades, the private sector in the field of health has developed in our region, and with that came the need for marketing representation and dealing with the competition. Presence in the online world is becoming more and more important compared to classic advertising, while at the same time the need for better familiarity with this lucrative niche is growing. This is how the situation came to be that SEO in medicine is defined as another special branch in the improvement of services provided by SEO experts.

In general, if you are working on better positioning of a site that presents a health clinic or practice, you are faced with the same problems and are guided by the same rules as in any other case. 

The importance of keyword positioning in title tags, headings and subtitles, alt tags, the frequency of keywords and related phrases, as well as the role of internal and external linking are not much different from optimization in other areas. However, in order to be able to undertake these routine SEO activities effectively, it is first important to familiarize yourself with the niche and all its specificities. Anticipating changes in the field of providing health services and timely responding to those changes are some of the key tasks of everyone who cares about the good positioning of medical sites on search engines. In any case, specialization in this area by an SEO expert can be a great advantage.

Copywriting in medicine

Quality SEO in the field of medical services implies good (SEO) copywriting that must be adapted to a sensitive topic. We are talking about  a field where mistakes and superficiality are not forgiven, and mastery of professional terminology is of crucial importance. Getting to know the needs of clients and their habits is the first step in creating adequate content that will offer services in the best way and define the clinic's brand as unique with the necessary instilling of trust. By presenting the business in the right way, along with understanding the client's needs and educating them, you can gain the trust of both readers and search engines and stand out from the competition.

A few tricks for good SEO in medicine

The first step in creating a well-positioned medical site is to create a list of strong keywords in a narrow area of specialization. After that, their proper distribution follows. One of the important tips would be not to rely on professional terminology when it comes to the services provided. Unless doctors themselves seek medical services, people will ask questions about their problems and illnesses the way they talk about them every day, the way they think about them.

Always consider local search. Include the cities in which you are present in the phrases you use to effectively target potential service users. Of course, be moderate, because despite good positioning at the local level, you don't want to lose clients who don't specify the city and municipality. In general, local search is very important in the field of medical services because people have to physically visit the medical offices they are searching for. That's why activity on Google My Business is very important.

Be active on social networks. Although it is not a decisive factor, presence on social networks and sharing of content is one of the hundreds of factors that Google takes into account when ranking, and it is also one of the better ways of link building.

A business in the field of medicine and pharmacy without investing funds to optimize its position on search engines is in an unenviable situation, considering that research shows that health-related advice is one of the most frequently asked questions by search engines. Therefore, it is important to have content that will not only represent the spectrum of services, but will also provide answers to frequently asked questions about health problems. The relevance of the source increases in this way, so Google is more favorable to such sites.

Of course, it is necessary to be aware that those who are engaged in the provision of medical services do not only want people to come to their site, but also to make that visit effective, that is, to decide to use the clinic's services. This is work that needs to be done at the level of suggestive text and by instilling trust at the level of the entire site, where design plays a big role, and recommendations from satisfied users are especially important.