When it comes to running and growing a private practice or side gig business, visibility to as many potential customers/patients as possible is crucial. Our physician community members frequently ask questions about how to improve new patient intake to fuel the growth of their practice. One of the most effective ways in this era where so many patients are using Google to find their physicians is to increase your search engine presence and rank higher on results, which then leads to more clicks and more business. This is done primarily by optimizing the search engine optimization (SEO) for your website. Below, we’ll cover SEO basics, as well as how to implement it to improve your website’s ranking on search engine results.
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What is search engine optimization (SEO)?
SEO simply means search engine optimization. It’s the practice of using different strategies to increase the quality and quantity of search results for your website in an organic way, without having to do things like pay for ads on search engine consoles. Optimizing SEO entails better understanding not only how search engines function, but also people in general, as it requires thinking about what people are searching for, what words or terms they’re using to search it, and what type of content they prefer to consume.
SEO is broken down into three main areas:
Technical Optimization: this refers to identifying any issues with your website that could be preventing search engines from being able to obtain a comprehensive view of your content. When search engines can’t access or effectively read your full site, this may interfere with your content coming up in search results.
On-Page Optimization: these tactics help a search engine to better understand what your website is about. When search engines have a better understanding of the subject matter of your website, it makes your site more likely to come up in relevant searches.
Offsite Optimization: this is in reference to building links that point to your site, which indicates to search engines that your content is valuable to others as it is being referenced. This is often achieved through backlinks from other sites or mentions on other popular content.
How do search engines work?
One important thing to note about search engines and optimizing your SEO is that you’re both trying to accomplish the same goal of helping searchers find the information they’re seeking. Search engines use computer programs to search for clues on websites in order to give searchers the exact information they are looking for. The three steps to these computer programs are crawling, indexing, and ranking.
Crawling refers to the search engine sending out web crawlers to find new sites/content and record the information about them. Web crawlers periodically check the content on pages they visited to check for updates/changes and to find new web pages. Web crawlers are able to track this information through following links they’ve already discovered. So, for example, if you have a patient portal linked to the homepage of your private practice, the web crawler would discover it through that link.
The next step in a search engine’s programming is indexing. After a web crawler has found information, indexing decides whether or not the information is worthy of being added and stored to its database. If a web page offers unique information that could be valuable to a future search it will likely be indexed. Reasons a web page may not be indexed are if it couldn’t be crawled, if the content is considered a duplicate of information (which it’s why it’s important not to copy and paste the same information word for word on various pages), if it’s considered low value or spam-content, or if the page/domain lacks inbound links.
The third and most important step in a search engine’s programming is its ranking. Once the first two steps are complete, the search engine will sort through and rank the content of a website as they fit under the main three components of SEO (technical optimization, on-page optimization, and off-page optimization). Search engines rank websites on a myriad of factors, but some of the main ones include having the keyword in the title tag, the loading speed of the website (docked for being slower or not mobile-friendly), the website’s reputation (reputable source for the topic), the quantity/quality of backlinks to the page, and the relevance/quality to the target audience.
Benefits of SEO
Now that you understand the basics of SEO and search engines, let’s talk about just how beneficial it is. While paid advertising, social media, and other promotion methods are an important part of your business; search engines remain one of the main sources of online traffic. In addition, organic searches tend to be much more successful and cost effective than paid advertisements. Paid advertisements (the ones that show up at the top in blue on Google searches), whilst seeming like a quick fix to increase website traffic, actually only account for 2.8% of clicks from US searches, as users tend to avoid advertisements in favor of other results.
In fact, SEO has been shown to be 20 times as effective as PPC (pay per click advertisements) on both mobile and desktop search engines. Paid search can also stagnate or decline over time when, in contrast, SEO often improves with time and is a good long term investment in your website.
SEO is especially important for physicians with private practices as 81.5% of internet users report having made a health-related search in the past year, 49% of searches on specific conditions convert (lead to someone clicking on your site), and 77% of patients use Google before scheduling a doctor’s appointment.
Setting search engine optimization (SEO) objectives
When it comes to determining how you want to appear in search results, it’s important to understand what your specific business/private practices’ goals are.
Start with what you want your KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) to be. Common website KPIs for private practices are intake form submissions and phone calls. Common KPIs for businesses are sales, downloads, email signups, contact form submissions, and phone calls.
Note that your main KPI should not be “increased traffic”. This is because increased traffic doesn’t necessarily mean profits for you or your business. If your viewers are random and not potential future customers/patients an influx of traffic will do nothing to help your business grow. For example, as an ENT you would much rather get 500 monthly visitors to your site with 60 people calling your practice than an influx of 5,000 monthly visitors to your site but only 10 potential patients. You specifically want to create content that attracts your ideal client avatar.
Tips for optimizing your search engine optimization (SEO)
SEO is a complicated topic with many layers of things that can be done to optimize it, and doing it extremely well consists of a lot of fine tuning of the formatting and wording of your website. However, these are the basics:
The first step towards optimizing your SEO is ensuring your website is web crawler friendly. Remember, if a web crawler can’t access a link through your site, it won’t index or rank it. Many of the search engines have their own proprietary tools where you can list your website and it can alert you to problems it encounters when trying to crawl your website.
The next step is to research your practice’s/businesses’ competition. For example, if you own a dermatology private practice, think of what a future patient of yours might search (ex: “dermatologists near me”, “treatment for eczema”, “best dermatologists in New York City”, “help with severe acne”, “face covered in scaly rash”, etc). If you’re on a side gig business, think of what a potential future customer might search for. If you’re a podcaster, you might think of searches like “doctor podcast on GLP-1”, “doctor advice for sleep disorders”, “neurology podcast”. If you are an expert witness, you might want to search things like “cardiologist expert witness near me”, “list of neonatologist expert witnesses in Philadelphia”, etc. Look through the top ranked websites from these related searches and pay attention to what the sites of your competition are doing well/what elements you can incorporate into your site.
In using this strategy, you may be able to start visualizing your target audience more effectively. If you already have a customer/patient base, analyze the demographic factors of this population. What is the age, gender, medical need/business need, and location of your current audience? For example, if 60% of the audience already interested in your site are men in their mid-to-late 40’s, what might that demographic be searching in order to find your site? We recommend even going a step further and creating several “target personas” made up of demographic information and online behavior patterns for the types of patients/customers you hope to acquire. For example, if you’ve started your own medical grade skincare company (product development), you might create a persona for a teenager struggling with sensitive skin, a thirty-year old interested in anti-aging skincare, and a seventy-year old looking to decrease the appearance of dark-spots.
There are actually tools and products that can help you determine which terms to use based on popularity of searches, as well as entire courses on SEO with additional layers of refinement that can further optimize the likelihood of getting your content seen on search engines.
How do I increase my private practice’s SEO?
Most physician private practices, especially once they’ve grown past the startup phase, usually outsource the creation and maintenance of their website.
Therefore, while you should understand SEO and the importance of it, as you may be able to suggest changes to the website, articles that could increase traffic to the website, or encourage the creation of backlinks to your website via other publicity that you create, you are likely not the one formatting your website to optimize it for search engine results.
Beyond the basics above, though, there are many additional refinements such as what words are programmed into your website script to help search engine crawlers find or rank your content, how your website should be formatted, and what headings should be used throughout your site.
Given how much value a good website brings to making patients aware of your practice, it’s easy to see how investing in SEO can pay off with even a few more patients that choose your practice because it was more visible to them on their searches. Additionally, as pointed out above, the effects of these efforts are much more longstanding than a temporary advertisement such as a billboard or many marketing campaigns run by private practices, so it should not be shortchanged.
If you’re a physician who doesn’t quite have the time to conduct your own website SEO, or if you want more in-depth SEO implementation that includes advanced strategies such as professional competitor analysis and tracking, online reputation/review management, and link building; you may want to hire a company that specializes specifically in physician SEO.
Related PSG Resource: We have partnered with GMR Web Team to provide our members with a comprehensive suite of digital marketing solutions for physicians, including SEO, content creation, website design/management, and more. GMR can help you build a strong online presence, cultivate patient loyalty, and achieve sustainable growth for your practice. PSG members receive 20% off blog writing services, website design, and website hosting when they sign up through our affiliate link.
How do I increase my business website’s SEO?
If you are a small business, it’s likely worth your time to learn a little more about SEO so you can implement basic measures into your website. If you are using a templated consumer website hosting service, pay attention to their suggestions for SEO optimization when creating content such as blogs or creating keywords.
If you are growing your business and feel that the cost of SEO services will pay themselves off in the additional sales of your goods or services, then you may also want to consider investing in SEO optimization services. Consider how much of your sales come from website and the cost of your services when picking packages, as SEO service expenses vary a lot depending on the depth of involvement, and while these often make sense for private practices considering the obvious ROI and profits from growing your practice, they may not translate to similar revenue if your products have low profit margins.
Related PSG Resource: We have partnered with GMR Web Team to provide our members with a comprehensive suite of digital marketing solutions for physicians, including SEO, content creation, website design/management, and more. GMR can help you build a strong online presence, cultivate patient loyalty, and achieve sustainable growth for your practice. PSG members receive 20% off blog writing services, website design, and website hosting when they sign up through our affiliate link.
Conclusion
Whether you’re promoting your side gig business or trying to get more patients at your private practice, SEO is crucial to your success. Search engines focus on getting users as close to the information/answers they’re looking for, and search engine optimization of your website ensures your site is as close to the top of the list as possible. Regardless of if your business is brick-and-mortar or exclusively an online venture, increasing valuable, targeted traffic to your website is what you need to set yourself apart from your competition and improve the profits and reputation of your company.
Additional digital marketing resources for physicians
Explore related PSG Resources: