When considering the essentials of healthcare marketing, search engine optimization (SEO) should be at the top of your list. It helps you build visibility and credibility by appearing high on relevant search engine results pages (SERPs) to drive high-quality traffic to your website.
But good SEO is more than writing blog posts with keywords. As an experienced healthcare SEO agency, we help our clients leverage the latest healthcare marketing trends by integrating SEO tactics with their overall marketing strategy and finding a creative angle to stand out.
Get a peek under the hood of our well-oiled SEO machine: Brian Cauble, partner and head of SEM/SEO strategy at Spot On, shows you how to walk the fine line between innovative content ideas and lasting SEO results. "There's a structure to SEO. You have to follow best practices, and within that, you get creative."
There are two main approaches to get results through SEO:
Here's how to stand out with a dose of creativity.
Unfortunately, many get caught up in the mechanics of SEO and forget what really matters — to earn the readers' trust and loyalty. You must create content that appeals to your audience and is optimized for Google. Here's how:
Google rolled out the "helpful content update" to reward people-focused content that delivers a satisfying experience to website visitors.
"First, focus on addressing the audience's questions or concerns. Then, come back to the content and fine-tune it to cover your SEO bases," says Cauble.
Another way to engage the audience and deliver value is by adding visuals that complement your story. It's worth the effort and investment because they can help you tell a good story and support your written content to deliver value, increase engagement, and encourage social sharing.
You must develop a deep understanding of the topic before getting creative.
"We talk to our clients and people in the industry to get deep into the audience's head and understand their challenges," says Cauble. "We then find a creative angle and write the content from the readers' perspective. We also pull quotes (e.g., in case studies) to illustrate the point and make the piece relatable."
Boost your SEO by thinking outside of the box. A healthcare SEO agency can help you pull all the levers and experiment with different methods to engage the audience with various formats and distribution methods. Here are some of the top tactics we use.
There is more to what meets the eye when you use visuals in your SEO strategy. You should optimize images with descriptive file names, informative alt tags, and engaging captions. Meanwhile, videos perform very well in SEO because they appear as rich snippets on search results. Make them go further by including the transcript to cover more keywords and help Google understand the content.
Engage your audience with a rich user experience by combining images, infographics, videos, and written content.
"Google doesn't reward people trying to play the game and shortcut the system. It wants to support those producing high-quality and helpful content for its users," says Cauble.
This technique helps Google and other search engines process your content more accurately and reliably by including star ratings, reviews, pricing information, event details, etc. It makes your SERP listing appear differently and at more places to capture attention, provide helpful information, and deliver a rich experience.
Your healthcare SEO agency should help you create localized content whenever appropriate. Localization is one of the top healthcare marketing trends to help you get found by a targeted audience segment and deliver highly relevant content to drive click-throughs and engagement.
Your competitors' SEO strategy can help inform your approach.
"Tracking your competitors and doing keyword research is as much an art as a science," says Cauble. "Some of our clients are startups offering unique solutions outside a traditional, defined category. We often have to get creative, see how others talk about the topics, and use descriptive keywords in our SEO strategy."
AI has changed the marketing game, impacting research and content creation. "I'm using AI more in my keyword research to help me think outside the box and find edge case keywords. But it can't replace human expertise. It's a tool, so you may have to try different queries to get meaningful results," says Cauble. "But it can give you a very good jumping-off point."
Backlinks from trusted sites can help build your domain authority. But it isn't always easy to earn backlinks and media placement from a recognized organization, like a university's or government agency's site. Let's look at a healthcare marketing example of how a healthcare SEO agency can help you build more backlinks.
Backlink profiles on a website are essential for SEO. But how do you earn these media placements? With so many brands and companies vying for attention, you must think beyond the usual suspects, like guest posting.
For example, we helped a client cut through the clutter and build backlinks from high-authority sites with a unique program designed for community outreach. It gives a reason for credible organizations to link to the client's website while supporting their communities and generating goodwill.
This creative approach has little to do with content and everything to do with doing good and creating mutual benefits to get high-authority sites to promote our client's brand. We also tap into the power of PR, a crucial factor in gaining customer trust and establishing leadership.
Working with an experienced healthcare SEO agency is the best way to leverage the latest healthcare marketing trends to boost your search engine ranking and drive high-quality traffic to your website.
Spot On helps healthcare SaaS companies audit and develop their SEO strategy. We'll work with you to design a plan that resonates with your target audience and nurtures leads to convert. Book a meeting to see how we can help you leverage SEO to support your healthcare marketing strategy.
