Medical SEO is the process of increasing your medical website’s search engine rankings so that your potential patients can find you easily. Medical websites should always be optimized so that Google and other search engines will rank you at the top. SEO tactics or strategies will have to be updated in keeping with changing search engine algorithms for better search engine ranking, to attract more traffic and improve visibility.
SEO is a time-intensive process that needs consistency and persistence to achieve the desired goals. The strategies involved in SEO are complex and comprehensive and using the right techniques will ensure that your page or site is up in search engine rankings. The higher your website is in the ranking, the more likely you are to get new patients.
In-housing Medical SEO
Some medical businesses choose to adopt in-house SEO system. In-housing SEO requires hiring more people and using strenuous strategies due to not having the mobility of large teams in place. This can either make or break your medical website. Following are some of the points you must consider when developing a successful in-house SEO structure.
- Right budget and assessment: Budget is an important factor in SEO, the right budget builds the perfect team and lets you implement a solid foundation for your SEO plan. Similarly, assessing your budget and your plan is also necessary. Spending money on a poor foundation is waste of money, time and resources.
- Know the size of your organization: Understand the size of your organization and its hierarchy system. The size of your medical practice or business can make a significant impact on the outcome of your SEO plan. If you have a large medical unit, then you can assign different managers to take care of different portions of the website. You can also have a large SEO plan with properly scaled SEO campaign. If you own a small medical unit, then implement a SEO strategic vision without the involvement of management and politics at play in an organizational hierarchy.
- Consider the strengths and weaknesses of the leader: The SEO leader should be good at making individual contributions as well as coordinating the entire team. You need a dedicated and experienced leader to control the team and direct them properly.
- Each team member contributes to an effective SEO plan: Each team member in the SEO team works towards achieving positive end results and the SEO manager sets the entire vision for the team.
- SEO specialist: They play individual contributor’s role and take ownership of SEO projects like on-page optimization, offsite optimization of links and some optimization of social media strategy when required. Based on the size of the medical unit, the role of the SEO specialist differs for enhancing SEO performance.
- Content writer: They are also individual contributors that follow the SEO manager’s rules and recommendations for writing content that will help achieve high ranking.
- Social media manager: They are in charge of strategy, but they typically set the style and tone of the social media post.
- Link builder: They are responsible for acquiring or building all the links to a particular website. They create ideas that are usually executed by content writers for piece of link generating copy.
- Assign your metrics per industry: Content metrics, SEO metrics, and other channel specific metrics can either make or break your SEO campaign. Good analytics reporting is necessary to explain why your website is performing the way it is; otherwise it can lead to misinterpretation of data that can harm your digital marketing strategy. So, once you have your metrics ready, run a thorough analysis and create a report based on these findings which can then be delivered to the management. This report is the essence of SEO team. The metrics and effort may be different for every website. So, when considering an in-house SEO structure consider these factors as they relate to the overall context of your SEO plan. Take a careful, deliberate approach to assess these metrics and it will help you figure out how to develop your in-house SEO structure for success.
- Evaluate how each process will be performed: When you are developing an in-house SEO team, certain processes will have to be completely entrusted to certain team members. All web development processes will be under web developers’ control. Each team member must be required to report to the leader, and each individual effort must be monitored and quantified. If you own a small medical unit, then most of the tasks can be outsourced and they have the advantage of quickly changing and adapting to the changing demands of the SEO. If you own a larger company then ownership politics and managerial implications may interfere and make processes and changes to process more difficult and challenging to maneuver. SEO professionals need tools and processes for keyword research, content optimization, optimization of off-site elements and other strategies. Link builders use tools and processes for internal linking, outbound linking and any other type of linking that will need to be established. These tools will help you make positive results.
- Working with a limited budget: If you are a small medical unit, there are many ways to compete with your competitors even with a limited instead budget. Consider how you can use automated processes instead of hiring two to three people for the job. The best ways to compete with larger firms is by using scaling, which is a process of achieving stellar results without necessarily putting in 1:1 effort. With the process of scaling, you can work with writers and editors through outsourcing.
Prioritising your SEO strategies is important to establish your brand and enhance your reputation. Although in-housing SEO lets you have control over all the activities, outsourcing to a medical SEO company ensures you benefits from implementation of the latest SEO tactics. It keeps overheads low, serves your need for a multi-pronged SEO strategy, and offers a cost-effective means of persistent SEO support.
