Healthcare Internet Marketing Tips

Healthcare Internet Marketing Tips
Robert Morrison
8/22/2014
Updated:
4/23/2016

Omabacare may require most US citizens to have health insurance or face IRS penalties, but many people are refusing to pay the outrageous premiums that insurers are asking. People are being much more involved in their own health care now, and they are researching various doctors and procedures. In many cases, it is much less expensive for people to pay out-of-pocket for medical procedures than to pay health insurance premiums, even when the IRS penalties are factored into the equation.

More and more doctors are becoming more visible online, and they are using SEO techniques in order to do this. They can let potential patients see what services they offer, and the costs for each of these services. SEO is important, because it helps those who use it get seen more online. With so many people using smartphones, it makes sense for doctors to take advantage of as many tools as possible for online visibility.

The biggest problem many people, doctors included, have with SEO is that they don’t know how to use it to their advantage. Here are seven tips that will help get your health care organization ranked above the others on search engines:

  • Get Listed on Medical Directories and Medical Comparison SitesYou can be more visible online with the help of Yempl.com, UcompareHealthCare.com, Health & US New Directory and DoctorProfiles. Have a page created that will represent your practice, and that will appear on many search engines. You can list prices, promotions, deals, and more, as well as contact information and social media resources.

  • Keywords – You need to choose the right keywords. Create a list of words people will use to search for your facility. Test these words in Google’s Keyword Planner to see which ones get the most traffic. Look for keyword phrases that have 200 to 10,000 searches monthly.

  • Meta Data – Keywords should be present in the metadata of your web pages. This consists of HTML meta tags that are located between the open and closing head tags in the HTML code. Meta data will tell search engines what the page is about, just with the title tag, meta description, and headers.

  • Varied Search Verticals – Use things like videos, images, slideshows, mobile apps, and more to attract attention to your website. You can leverage your verticals to get more targeted traffic to your site.

  • Original Content – Your website should include original content. Offer articles about procedures, health care tips, and other content people are interested in that will highlight your health care facility. Create content that is going to stand above the rest. This is going to help you to showcase your expertise, and gain search engine rankings.

  • Site-Maps – This is going to help people to better navigate your website. The easier a site is to use, the more likely people are going to come back to it. Site-maps help ensure your site is fully indexed by Google, Yahoo, and Bing, and will help with search engine ranking.

  • Local Search Marketing – Since about half of all local searches are done on mobile devices, make sure you have a mobile-friendly website. Local search is important for health care organizations, because it provides the information people need to find you, including physical address and phone number.

  • Social Media – You can use social media for a lot more than chatting and playing games. You can use it to reach out to potential clients, have two-way conversations with people, and drive more traffic to your website.