If you are just starting out with content marketing for your medical practice or you have been at this for a while and aren’t seeing enough positive results, today’s message is for you. Local businesses (and that includes medical practices) have a particularly difficult task when it comes to improving rankings, especially in local searches.
Beyond the Basics
Anyone can seed a blog post or page element with generic keywords and rise to the top of a Google search. The real problem is figuring out how to get the attention of the right audience. If you are attracting traffic from Daytona when your practice is in Duluth, what good is it?
This is why getting good at local SEO is such a big deal. You need several things to advance the ranks and make your practice show up first on search engine results pages (SERPs). Those things include:
• Regular new content seeded with relevant keywords
• Inquiries from local sources (typically gauged by IP address)
• Content sharing by local users
• Longtail keywords in multiple page elements
Today, I want to take a look at each of the above points and explain how they relate to local SEO. I’ll even give you some advice on how to improve your rankings before you even spend another dollar on content creation. That said, medical content creation can be difficult to keep up with, especially for a busy practice. Here are several things you can do to optimize the time spent on content creation and its effectiveness upon publication.
#1 – Consistency Is Key
I’ve said it many times before, but it bears repeating: Don’t think you’re going to advance in the ranks by producing just one really good blog post. You have to be consistent. You have to provide a steady stream of optimized content, period.
Placing all your chips on one piece of content (like a well-written, long-form blog post) might yield you some good short-term results, but the momentum won’t keep up for long. It’s like eating a candy bar for energy. You’ll almost definitely get a quick burst, but you will also crash and crash hard when the effects wear off. There is nothing sustainable about it.
That said, it is a good idea to be prepared to spend some time and money to keep your content delivery strategy consistent. You have help at your disposal with everything from content creation to scheduling and publishing to content and page optimization, so use the resources that exist if you want your practice to keep growing. Use these services to your best advantage.
#2 – Cultivating Local Traffic
This is where the worlds of inbound and outbound marketing collide: using offline tactics to generate online results. You want to provide ways for people to find you online by keeping your online presence in front of them even when they are offline. Posting your site URL and social media links in your office or adding them to your signature on letters and other forms of correspondence is a good place to start.
You probably already ask for patients’ email addresses on their intake paperwork, but if not, set up a clipboard and pen with signage asking them to sign up for your newsletter or email alerts. Of course, if you do this, you need to be prepared to deliver that content, but we discussed that part of it already. QR codes and similar scannable media that bring patients directly to specific pages on your website can also help boost SEO by bringing traffic directly to strategic pages within your website.
#3 – Social Media
All new content should be announced or posted on social media and through email. You should also make clear and direct calls to action to like, share, and comment on all content posted to social media. For email campaigns, add a call to action to forward messages to local patients who might be in need of your services or are looking to work with a new practice.
Use your social media presence to its best advantage. Engage directly with your audience. Answer questions quickly. If you can’t spare someone in your office to do this with consistency, consider working with a virtual personal assistant who can field questions and respond quickly. Always include some piece of content with your response, and add a call to action to click the link.
#4 – Longtail Keywords
I have written more in-depth explanations of this concept in the past, so I will skip the “what” and steer directly to the “how” at this point. You can search the blog for a more complete explanation of how longtail keywords function within your content.
Basically, you want organic phrases that identify your location seeded throughout your content. That includes your blog posts, landing pages, individual webpages, and more. Longtail keywords also help when included in page meta descriptions and image text tags. If you aren’t already using these strategies, you aren’t getting all the local traffic possible.
As a final note on longtail keywords, please don’t ask your writer to integrate silly keywords like “primary care physicians Duluth” into your copy. Google and the other search platforms favor organic content and recognize connecting words like “near” or “in” as part of your longtail keyword strategy. If your practice features primary care physicians in Duluth, that’s what it should say on the page.
Final Takeaway
From the perspective of someone who has built a career out of content creation, these are the basic things you need to start doing (if you aren’t already) to boost local SEO. If you find you need help (and you probably will) we at BeezContent would be happy to discuss your ongoing SEO strategy and offer some advice specific to your practice.
Don’t keep spinning your wheels wondering why you aren’t attracting more new patients online. The solutions to that problem are right in front of you and can be easy to implement. With a small investment of money and time strategizing with a professional agency that deals with and understands medical content creation, your local SEO can improve significantly.
