Marketing a healthcare website is challenging, especially with restrictions on the information you can share. It can feel like an impossible task trying to balance being a product or service provider and promoting your business effectively. Not to mention ensuring your website is compliant with regulations.
That’s where healthcare SEO comes in. Optimising your website for search engines can increase online visibility and future-proof your site with these regulations in mind. Whether you’re looking to drive more traffic to your site, improve patient engagement, or increase conversions, this article demonstrates the impact of healthcare SEO for long-term growth. Keep reading to understand why healthcare SEO is essential to reach your target audience and beat the competition.
Why is Healthcare SEO Important to Increase Online Visibility?
When searching on Google, you may occasionally get a result that doesn’t quite match your search intent. While it’s frustrating, it’s not the end of the world. Yet, regarding health queries, Google cannot take any chances of showing harmful, inaccurate, or misleading content.
Google is responsible for ensuring the top pages are accurate, useful, and trustworthy. Therefore, some websites must work harder to prove their expertise and secure those positions. These are known as ‘Your Money or Your Life’ (YMYL) topics. YMYL pages directly impact one’s life, including happiness, safety, financial stability, and health.
Google discusses YMYL pages in their quality guidelines, alongside two other factors you must take into account, including:
- Beneficial purpose: pages should have a specific purpose and provide useful content for the viewer.
- Expertise-Authority-Trustworthiness (E-A-T): Google should see that the creator, website, and content demonstrate E-A-T.
Without healthcare SEO, you’ll struggle to show these essential factors on your website. Although these aren’t official SEO ranking factors, they are a part of how Google assesses the quality of your site and content, which plays a significant role in your ability to rank on page one.
SEO is the best way to ensure your healthcare website exhibits expertise and authority. It’ll also show your ideal clients that you’re a reliable source, which is fundamental to increasing conversions.
Nevertheless, is SEO really the best way to market your healthcare website? The short answer is yes. Let’s break it down in the next section.
PPC vs. SEO: Why Successful Healthcare Websites Optimise for Search Engines
Compared to paid advertisements, like pay-per-click (PPC), organic growth tactics are the best way to improve rankings.
PPC offers an immediate way to get traffic to your site because they appear at the top of the search engine results page (SERP). However, not only does the traffic cease when you stop paying, but PPC costs increase as the demand for your keywords rises. Consequently, PPC is more expensive and doesn’t improve rankings over time.
In comparison, SEO is a long-term strategy to secure the top positions in the SERP. Although it takes a few months to see results, it is a more sustainable and holistic way to grow your website. For example, while content is a huge part, a professional also implements technical SEO strategies, creates and organises high-quality backlinks, and measures the success of your methods.
Most importantly, healthcare SEO services establish a strong foundation for your website, so you’ll continue seeing the benefits even if you stop paying for SEO support. Consequently, SEO is a more cost-effective method offering longevity, increased visibility, and a way to build trust and credibility with your audience.
Search Demand for Healthcare Services on Google
SEO aims to position your website as an industry expert so you appear in the right searches. The search demand tells you how many people are searching for your healthcare solution and if it’s worth investing in healthcare SEO.
Firstly, the overall topic of health is enormous. On average, 161,000 people search for healthcare on Google every month — this is the search volume for that keyword. We can see that 63 thousand of those searches come from the United States and 17 thousand from India. However, there are numerous topics under the healthcare branch that you might focus on. For instance, you might work in the mental health industry, providing services to those in need. In this case, your SEO strategy will differ from those offering health insurance.
In the below screenshot, you can see the search data for the keyword ‘health insurance.’ According to this, the global search volume is 404 thousand, meaning an average of 404,000 people search for health insurance every month.
This gives you an insight into how many people are using Google to search for health-related queries and that thousands of people could be searching for your products or services every month. Ensuring you have the right SEO strategy is crucial to accessing these audiences.
People Use Many Terms to Find Healthcare Support
Since so many people search for healthcare centres, wellness support, or practitioners, healthcare SEO ensures you get in front of the right audience to increase lead generation and conversion.
The first step is to identify how your ideal client searches. To do this, you need to conduct keyword research. Here are some phrases your ideal client might be using:
- Services in specific locations (e.g., mental health services in London)
- Support for particular problems (e.g., how to improve sleep?)
- Products recommendations (e.g., best vitamins for joint pain)
- Services for their health issue (e.g., therapy for teens)
- Questions about your niche or services
These are some ways a person might use Google to find information, products, or services related to your industry.
So, how do you access this pool of potential clients and maximise reach? An SEO expert would analyse your website with your competitors to identify which keywords to target to improve site credibility. They would also ensure your site is being found by your target audience. As SEO expert Dave Davies explains:
“Content is what the search engines use to fulfill user intent.” – Dave Davies, Co-founder at Beanstalk Internet Marketing.
Your content can target different search intents, such as people learning about specific issues, those asking for health advice, or people ready to convert into a customer/client. Writing high-quality pages across the entire niche helps you build topical authority and shows Google you’re an expert on that subject.
Above are keyword suggestions related to the search term ‘mental health services.’ These keyword examples highlight some of the opportunities to rank in Google. For example, the term ‘mental health services near me’ has a search volume of 11,000. People using this phrase are probably at the end of their customer journey and actively looking for a solution, or in this case, a local professional to support their mental well-being. Similarly, local SEO targets location-specific keywords and is an excellent option for people offering in-person services.
It’s important to remember the most appropriate keywords aren’t necessarily the ones with the most search volume. Since industry leaders already dominate many of these, an expert would identify terms with a lower search volume that are achievable to target. Securing these top spots makes it easier to target harder keywords in the future, as it proves your authority to Google.
Look at the screenshot below to view related questions to ‘mental health services.’ This data is invaluable as it shows what your ideal customer is learning about and additional areas you can support them.
Other Healthcare Websites Are Getting Results From SEO
If you’re unsure whether healthcare SEO services will work for you, check out the following websites already using SEO to expand their digital presence.
YoungMinds is a mental health charity with a significant online presence. The above data is an overview of their website’s online position. Across their site, they are attracting 249,000 visitors through organic traffic. This is the number of people who click on the site from organic search results. Thanks to their SEO implementation, they get all that traffic for free!
However, if they were to pay for that traffic, it would cost them $207,000 per month. This figure comes from the traffic value — the monetary value of their organic traffic. In other words, the amount they’d spend on PPC advertisements to achieve the same traffic results. Implementing proper SEO techniques sets you up to gain free traffic, saving thousands in the process.
The above image shows which pages generate the most organic traffic for this site. The data indicates a focus on educating their audience since multiple pages outline types of medication. Many pages are on page one or even in position one and bringing in significant organic traffic. This approach demonstrates topic expertise and helps gain the reader’s trust. When you establish a trusting relationship with your audience, they are more likely to return for further information, sign up for a newsletter, or enquire about products or services.
Reviewing the data for the YoungMinds website shows how effective SEO can be in saving money and reaching new audiences. However, they are also an industry leader, so in the following example, we’ll look at using SEO on a smaller scale.
Time To Change gets less traffic each month, with over 6,000 visitors coming through organic searches. Despite having a smaller presence, they are still getting $3,800 worth of free traffic thanks to their SEO efforts. Rather than spending this on advertisements, they save thousands each month by investing in healthcare SEO services.
So, where does their traffic come from, and what strategy do they use? According to the top pages, they rank on page one for many relevant terms, including ‘mental health awareness days’ and ‘support with mental health.’ There seems to be a good attempt at SEO here and a strong brand awareness as they rank high for their brand name.
To improve their current rankings and credibility, an SEO expert might suggest creating more educational pages to target people at different stages of the customer journey.
Should You Invest in an SEO Agency?
Getting medical SEO right is crucial to see results and an ROI. Since the field is heavily regulated and Google has strict quality guidelines, outsourcing healthcare SEO services is worth considering.
Here at NUOPTIMA, we understand the complexities of healthcare SEO and how to identify unique opportunities to attract organic traffic. With years of experience working with brands under the YMYL category, we know how to position you as an expert — in the eyes of Google and your audience.
We’re committed to long-term growth and always ensure your investment goes far. Read our SEO case studies to see how our experts worked their SEO magic for our clients.
What will an SEO agency like NUOPTIMA do?:
- Create a data-driven strategy tailored to your industry, ideal client, and business goals.
- Run a technical audit and fix any technical issues.
- Perform keyword research and create clusters based on search intent.
- Write SEO-optimised articles that are well-researched and better than any other pages on the SERP.
- Organise original backlinks to be placed on relevant sites.
- Monitor progress and measure leading indicators to ensure the strategy is yielding results.
We take a holistic approach to SEO and ensure your site is optimised on and off-page. If you want to learn which SEO strategies will generate the best ROI for your website, jump on a free call with our team!
