Healthcare SEO: Top SEO Strategies for Medical Practices in 2024

Since 2018, with Google’s Medic Update algorithm, medical SEO has become much more complicated. There are now more rigorous standards for reaching the top positions on Google. On-page and off-page healthcare search engine optimization must accomplish this. 

So, if you want to increase visits from potential patients and grow your business, you need to rely on a team of experts in the field. And, of course, use advanced Healthcare SEO strategies. 

 

What Is Healthcare SEO?

SEO for the healthcare industry is also known as medical SEO. It involves optimizing visibility on search engine results pages (SERPs). This process, central to healthcare SEO, aims to attract more organic traffic, thus reaching the target audience: those looking for medical services and health information.

77% of people’s first step is to use search engines to find medical information. And Google is one of the biggest channels in the healthcare SEO industry.

The main benefit of SEO for the healthcare industry is its ability to help organizations stand out in a competitive market. Implementing an SEO strategy will improve search rankings, increase online visibility, attract more patients, and give greater online authority.

Related Content: The Complete Guide to Digital Marketing for Healthcare in 2024

The Importance of SEO for the Healthcare Industry

SEO in the healthcare industry is indispensable for medical providers to maximize their online presence. This becomes even more essential in a world where healthcare decisions often start with a Google search.

Particularly for B2B interactions, B2B SEO tactics can significantly influence the visibility of healthcare services among businesses.

Greater Visibility for Potential Patients

According to a Milestone report, approximately 83% of patients book medical appointments through hospitals’ sites. 50% use health insurers’ websites. Plus, 50% use health information websites, while 26% of patients use online review sites.

In the healthcare business, a strong online presence reaches a larger audience. For example, if potential patients are searching for “inflammation treatment,” a well-optimized website with the right keywords will appear in the top results.

Increased Trust and Information Dissemination

When sites appear at the top of search results, readers tend to consider these sites more trustworthy. For healthcare providers, it increases visibility and strengthens their reputation.

Effective SEO for healthcare providers allows patients to receive education proactively. This way, people can disclose accurate and accessible information about medical concerns. This helps build a community that trusts its provider for guidance.

Competitive Advantage

A differentiated SEO strategy for healthcare can put an institution ahead of its competitors, especially in saturated markets. This is particularly important for medical specialties.  

The client, for example, is a leader in enzyme supplements. The brand faced the challenge of establishing itself as a provider of inflammation treatments in the Czech Republic and Germany. Using an integrated SEO strategy, content marketing, and paid ads, NetShopping helped the client improve its online visibility and strengthen its authority. 

Implemented Strategies

• SEO: Focus on high-impact keyword research and on-page optimization to improve organic search rankings. 
• Content marketing: A healthcare digital marketing strategy with an emphasis on healthcare SEO. It’s based on the production of educational articles and blogs. Additionally, it addresses common questions and dispels myths, with a focus on medical compliance. 
• Paid ads: Targeted campaigns on Google Ads and social networks to reach specific audiences with clear intentions to search for health solutions. 

Results Achieved

• Significant increase in organic traffic, reaching 25,000 monthly visits. 
• Growth in the number of followers and expansion of reach to 500,000 users. 
• Improved conversion rates, resulting in 15,000 new conversions.

Features of SEO for Medical Websites

Medical websites belong to the ‘Your Money or Your Life’ (YMYL) category, and search engine standards are higher for them. These sites can influence people’s lives, that’s why the information they provide must be accurate.

• High importance of the E-E-A-T factor: Author credibility is essential for any medical SEO strategy. Therefore qualified healthcare professionals must create or at least validate the content.
• Greater scrutiny by Google: To make Google like your site, include trust signals such as citations from established medical sources and relevant awards and certifications.
• Reputation management and transparency: Healthcare organizations need to show how they operate, which specialists work there, and what to expect after reaching out to them. Additionally, it is important to respond to both positive and negative reviews on various platforms so that other users can see that the organization is accommodating to its clients.
• Regulatory-sensitive content: Content on medical websites must comply with advertising and privacy regulations such as HIPAA in the U.S. The site must protect patients’ personal information.

These unique characteristics bring their own challenges to medical SEO strategies: 

• Legal and ethical compliance: Must consider medical industry regulations and ensure content is ethical and complies with local and international laws. So, it’s better to opt for local SEO services to comply.
• Constantly updating content: Keeping content updated with the latest medical discoveries and treatment guidelines requires constant review.
• Technical SEO: Websites should be especially careful with technical SEO services, ensuring they are fast and secure.

The Most Effective Healthcare SEO Strategies

As we’ve seen, medical SEO strategies are more complex, as search engines demand much more from healthcare websites. To increase the online visibility of healthcare organizations and ensure people find the correct information, you’ll need to use a range of SEO for healthcare techniques.

Conduct Comprehensive Keyword Research With a Focus on Search Intent

It means that you need to identify and analyze the keywords potential patients use when searching for information about the health sector. The goal is to understand the intent behind these searches to ensure that the content you offer meets users’ needs.

Search intent can vary greatly within the healthcare sector, ranging from queries for specific symptoms, treatment centers or local specialists. Each type of query requires a different approach in terms of content and Google search engine optimization.

Search for Main Keywords

You can identify the main keywords in the health sector with tools that provide detailed information on search volume, the difficulty of competition, and the relevance of keywords to the sector. Common options include:

• Google Keyword Planner

• Ahrefs

• Moz

• Semrush

Next, you need to identify the keywords that patients use when searching for medical services, symptoms, treatments, or healthcare providers. This includes specific keywords for medical conditions, procedures, drug names, and more generic terms such as “best dermatologist near me.”

Once you’ve accomplished this step, it’s time to strike a balance with keywords that have a high search volume and moderate competition. This increases the chances of achieving better visibility on search engine results pages.

Search Intent Analysis

Intent is the goal a user has when typing something into a search bar. Therefore, understanding exactly what the user wants can influence the effectiveness of communication and the relevance of information.

In healthcare SEO, analyzing the intent of each search is crucial. This is due to the sensitive and often urgent nature of the information sought. Such a process helps digital marketers and healthcare providers deliver content that meets users’ expectations.

Examples of Search Intents:

 

Keyword	Intention	Description
“Causes of diabetes”	Informative	Understand the causes of diabetes
“Mayo Clinic hospital website”	Navigation	Access this hospital’s website
“Buy glucose meter”	Transactional	Buy a glucose meter
“Best health plans 2024”	Commercial	Compare different health plans
“Dermatology clinics in New York”	Local	Find dermatology clinics in a specific city

 

How to Align Content With Search Intent:

• Informative Intent: Ideal for blog posts, FAQs, and educational articles. For example, an article on “How to prevent hypertension” can provide useful information for users looking to better understand this condition.
• Navigational Intent: It means that a user is looking for specific web pages. Make sure you have optimized SEO, so people can easily find your clinic or hospital website.
• Transactional Intent: Create detailed product pages with information on purchasing, how to use, and the benefits of healthcare products. Ensure a simple checkout process.
• Commercial Intent: Develop buying guides and comparisons that help users make decisions. Include product reviews, user ratings, and quality certifications.
• Local Intent: Optimize content for local keywords, including city or neighborhood names. Include your exact address, opening hours, and contacts.

Cluster Keywords by the Rule: One Keyword Cluster, One Page

One of the most important SEO rules is to organize keywords into groups. This way, you can assign each group to a specific page. Medical content needs to be highly specialized. So, clustering related keywords according to their topic and search intent is an excellent way to keep content organized and relevant.

Instructions for Clustering Keywords:

• Identification and grouping: Use keyword research tools to identify relevant keywords. Group them according to similar themes and search intentions.
• Page designation: Assign each group of keywords to a specific page on your website. This way, associated search queries will perceive the page content as highly focused and relevant.
• Avoid keyword cannibalization: Cannibalization occurs when several internal pages on the same site compete with each other for the same search terms. To avoid this, make sure that each group of keywords is unique.

Example of effective and ineffective healthcare keywords clustering

Assess Competition and Potential

To optimize healthcare SEO, you’ll need to assess the competitiveness and potential of the keywords you’ve selected. Partnering with a specialized healthcare digital marketing agency can provide the expertise necessary to navigate these challenges.

The first step is to use specialized SEO tools to get detailed metrics on each keyword, including the keyword difficulty score. This score indicates the level of competition in search results based on the quantity and quality of content already positioned for that keyword. A higher score means greater difficulty in ranking.

Each keyword has a monthly search volume. It indicates how often users search for it. By combining this information with competitor analysis, you can estimate the potential traffic for your site. Moreover, it is important to consider the type of intent behind the search for each keyword. Keywords with transactional intent generally offer higher conversion rates.

Finally, prioritize keywords with a balance between high potential and manageable competition. Select those that, while they may have moderate competition, also offer a high search volume. It’s significant that you align those words with the site’s content, too. For example, a clinic may focus on “type 2 diabetes treatment” if it offers information and services for this disease, even if competition is high.

Don’t Forget to Update Your Content

Fresh content is significant in medical topics. Discoveries and guidelines are constantly being developed, so for an effective SEO strategy, periodic reviews should be made.

Therefore, you need to establish a schedule of periodic revisions. Depending on the nature of the content, it can be quarterly, biannually, or annually. During these reviews, it is essential to evaluate the accuracy and also identify opportunities to improve healthcare SEO. Google and other search engine algorithms favor regularly updated content.

Checklist for Content Updates

• Check the current guidelines: Make sure that any health practices or medical data mentioned are in line with the latest guidelines or studies.
• Keyword integration: Re-evaluate the keywords for each page. Update them according to SEO trends and industry developments.
• Improve readability: Use subheadings, lists, and short paragraphs to make content more accessible.
• Check for broken links: Remove or replace broken links that could affect the site’s authority.
• Update meta descriptions and titles: Ensure that meta descriptions and titles are attractive and contain relevant keywords.
• Add multimedia content: Include or update images, videos, and infographics to enrich the content.
• Review statistics and data: Update any outdated statistics or data that could compromise the credibility of the content.

Optimize Your Content for Keywords

You need to use keywords naturally in your content without overdoing it. The practice of “keyword stuffing” can penalize your site, as mechanisms see this as an attempt to manipulate search engine rankings.

It is necessary to integrate in a way that makes sense in the context with fluid reading. Understanding search intent helps align your website content with people’s needs. So, when optimizing your content, focus on keywords that match user intent.

Here are some tips on how to write SEO technical specifications for a writer:

What else should be included:

Improve Your Website’s E-E-A-T

The concept of E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) is a critical ranking factor for healthcare sites. So, improving these elements can increase users’ trust and enhance visibility in search engines.

Experience

• Usability and accessibility: A website must be easy to navigate, and users of all abilities should be able to access information without difficulty.
• Site speed: Fast websites are essential for a good user experience. Tools such as Google PageSpeed Insights help evaluate and improve speed.

Expertise

• Qualified specialists: Medical professionals should write and review the health-related content. This increases expertise.
• Expert profiles: Include links on your website to the experts’ profiles who validate or write the content. These profiles should include qualifications, experience, and any other information that highlights their expertise.

Articles on this website are reviewed by experts with relevant education and experience

Authoritativeness

• Publications and recognition: Demonstrate the site’s authority by presenting publications in recognized journals. Citations of studies or articles and awards in the health sector are also interesting. Include collaborations with renowned health institutions, too.
• Expert contributions: Encourage experts to contribute to other respected domains. This can increase the authority of your own site by association.

Trustworthiness

• Certifications and site security: Make sure your site uses HTTPS to protect users’ privacy and security. Certifications from recognized health entities and security seals can also increase the site’s reliability.
• Transparency of practices: Offer clear information on privacy practices, terms of service, and any necessary warnings, including an easily accessible page with contact details and user support.

Optimize Your Website Architecture

The site architecture also needs to be well-planned. It makes it easier for search engines to understand the content and improves the users’ browsing experience. This also positively influences visitors’ behavioral factors and can boost conversion into desired actions.

However, each page should be specific to each service offered, following the principle that a group of keywords should correspond to a separate page. For example, if a clinic offers magnetic resonance imaging services, it is essential to create a dedicated service page for MRI.

Here are some MRI related keywords and their metrics:

Users who are looking for an MRI scan near them will have the following Google search results:

The clinics that appear at the top of the search results for MRI queries also have dedicated pages for X-ray services. Here are examples of popular queries related to finding nearby X-ray services:

 

Technical Website Audit: Identify Key Performance Issues

The technical aspects of the site must also be optimized to improve SEO performance. Technical errors can have a very negative impact, affecting everything, such as Google page crawling. Here are some examples of such errors:

Google has introduced INP (Interaction to Next Paint) as a replacement for FID (First Input Delay) in Core Web Vitals, which shows the importance of measuring a site’s responsiveness. INP evaluates the latency of all user interactions with the page, reporting a single value in which all (or almost all) interactions were below a certain threshold.

A Technical SEO Audit Checklist

• Check site speed: Use valuable tools to evaluate and optimize loading speed.
• Test JavaScript rendering: Ensure that all critical content is accessible even without JavaScript.
• Audit mobile responsiveness: Ensure the site is fully functional on all devices and screen sizes.
• Review HTTP status codes: Fix any server errors that could prevent indexing.
• Measure INP and other Core Web Vitals: Monitor these metrics regularly to understand how user experience affects SEO and identify areas for improvement.

Make Sure Search Engines Can Crawl and Index Your Site Correctly

In order for a health sector website to rank well in search engines, all its pages must be correctly crawled and indexed. This means properly configuring two critical files: robots.txt and sitemap.xml.

Robots.txt File

These files tell Googlebot which pages of the site they can and cannot access. To configure this file correctly, you must first make sure to locate it in the root of the domain (e.g., https://www.mysite.com/robots.txt).

You can also use the file to control access to areas of the site that you don’t need to index, such as administrative directories, or to limit crawling in areas with sensitive or duplicate content. Use the Allow and Disallow directives to specify what to crawl clearly:

Syntax errors can lead to pages being indexed improperly or important pages being blocked.

Sitemap.xml File

This is an XML sitemap that helps search engines understand your site’s structure and discover all the important pages. In this case, the best thing is to set up a content management system (CMS) to automatically update the sitemap whenever people create new pages or update the existing ones.

In addition to the URLs, include information about the last modification of the pages (lastmod), the frequency of changes (changefreq), and the priority of each page (priority). This data helps search engines understand the importance and timeliness of pages.

Useful Tools:

• Robots.txt Tester

• XML Sitemaps Generator

Implement Structured Data Markup

This is an advanced SEO technique that helps search engines better understand a page’s content by providing a patterned way of providing information about the page and classifying its content.

The addition of structured data can activate more attractive search results for users, which are called rich results. These results encourage greater interaction with your site, which in turn can increase click-through rates on search results. In addition, they greatly improve the user experience by presenting information in a more organized way.

How Structured Data Works in Google Search

Google uses the structured data found on the web to understand the content of pages and collect information about the web and the world in general. For example, information about people, books, or companies included in the markup.

Advantages of Structured Data

• Increased visibility: Pages with structured data are eligible to appear in rich results, such as featured snippets and carousels. Increasing the visibility of your page in search results.
• User engagement: With information visible directly in search results, users are more likely to interact with the content.
• Improved click-through rates: Studies show that pages with rich results tend to have much higher click-through rates (CTR).

Focus on Local SEO

To increase the visibility of medical services online, the SEO strategy must take into account the specific needs of the region. The Google Business profile is an excellent tool for local businesses. Clinics and healthcare professionals can improve their local visibility with a well-optimized profile:

• Complete and accurate information: Includes all important information, such as name, address, telephone number, and opening hours.
• Responses to reviews: Responds to positive and negative comments professionally and thoughtfully.
• Quality photos and videos: Publishes photos and videos that professionally represent the installation and services.
• Regular posts: Keeps the profile updated with new services, events, or useful information.

Example of a healthcare Google Business profile

The essence of this strategy is developing content that speaks directly to the local community. For example, publications specific to the region or information about local health events and partnerships with other local health institutions are useful.

Another option is to add links to other sites within the same community to boost local SEO presence. By partnering with local businesses, you can collaborate on cross-promotions. Participating in local events such as conferences and publishing articles in local newspapers or news websites also helps medical SEO.

Build High-Quality Backlinks

The links that lead to your site, called backlinks, act as a “vote” from the perspective of search engines, indicating that the content on your site is trustworthy. However, it’s not just the quantity that matters, but quality. Links from reputable and relevant sites in the health sector carry much more weight.

Useful Backlink Analysis Tools

• Majestic Backlink Checker

• Semrush Backlink Checker 

• Ahrefs Backlink Checker

Strategies for getting high-quality backlinks include:

Guest Posting

Writing and publishing articles on reputable sites within the health sector can generate a strong backlink profile. These articles must offer real value to the readers of the host site. However, you also need to identify influential blogs and websites in the health sector that accept guest posts. You should propose topics that are useful to their audience and beneficial to your site.

Link Insertion

This technique involves contacting webmasters to include your link in existing content. To do this, look for articles that are already classified under relevant topics and could benefit from the addition of your link. You will have to contact the site owners with a proposal for how your link could add value to their text.

Example of an email to a webmaster

Press Releases

Issuing press releases about important news, research, or events can help attract backlinks if relevant sites and portals reproduce the news. Prepare convincing materials and distribute it via specialized platforms that can guarantee visibility.

Build a Successful Internal Linking Strategy

Internal links help search engines understand the site’s structure and distribute page authority. They also improve user usability and navigability. Ensuring that they can easily navigate to relevant content.

Types of website internal links:

It is important to use varied and relevant anchor texts for internal links. This helps avoid search engines’ penalization for link manipulation and improves the destination page’s relevance. The anchor text should accurately describe the content of the target page.

Internal links should also be monitored to ensure that they don’t lead to 404 (page not found) errors, as this can damage user experience and the site’s rating by search engines.

How to Determine Which Pages Are Most Important to Link

• Identify key content: Pages critical to the business, such as services offered, product pages, or key articles you want to position better.
• Use analysis tools: Tools like Google Analytics or Ahrefs can show you which pages have the most visits and conversions. These pages should have frequent internal links to increase their authority and visibility.

How Much Does Healthcare SEO Cost?

The costs of healthcare SEO services can vary greatly. Different pricing models are available, depending on the complexity of the strategies and the specific needs of the project.

There three common pricing models for healthcare SEO services:

For example, more competitive areas such as plastic surgery or specialized medical practices may require an intense and, therefore, more expensive effort. 

Achieving SEO goals—local vs. national—can also impact the cost. National-level strategies or international SEO services are generally more expensive. 

NetShopping Marketing Subscription

NetShopping offers an all-inclusive marketing subscription that can be especially attractive to the healthcare industry, where managing multiple providers can be complicated and expensive. The service offers many advantages:

• Transparent hourly billing: You know exactly what you’re paying for, with no hidden fees.
• Access to marketing experts: A diverse team of global experts is available to handle all your digital marketing needs.
• Flexible subscription model: Allows you to scale marketing efforts as required.  Ideal for adapting to seasonal variations in demand for healthcare services.

Healthcare SEO requires a carefully planned investment. Therefore, opting for a monthly subscription like the one offered by NetShopping can provide effective cost control. It can ensure access to high-quality medical SEO marketing services.

Conclusion

Effective SEO strategies are essential for enhancing the online presence of healthcare professionals. This approach extends beyond traditional healthcare search engine optimization and includes aspects like site architecture and localized content.

A medical SEO marketing subscription makes it easier to manage the various digital marketing demands and allows you to scale your efforts as needed. We encourage you to take the next step in optimizing your healthcare SEO services with a robust online presence. By clicking the button below, you’ll discover how our experts can help transform your online visibility and connect you to more patients who require your care.