You don’t normally think about SEO for doctors. After all, if someone needs medical care, they have to go to a doctor right? That’s like saying that when a person is hungry they have to buy food.
To think of it logically, people have nearly limitless choices in food and they only decide what they want by knowing what’s available and going with what they want or what suits their appetite. By taking advantage of digital marketing, you not only help let more people know that you’re available to help, but you turn yourself from disgusting kale into yummy chocolate. If you want to succeed in business you want to become the chocolate when everyone else is kale.
Ok, so we’re not literally talking about food, but the point is that content marketing through SEO is the way you get noticed, show what you have to offer, and set yourself apart from the competition if you’re a doctor.
For doctors, the purpose of SEO is to capture the online search market for services. Foot traffic only accounts for a portion of the potential business that a doctor can get. Local search ranking is the best way for doctors to drive in new patients. New patients mean more money, more money means a successful business.
More Specialized Leads
There are millions of results when you search for a doctor. The options quickly narrow down when looking for a doctor who specializes in one area in a certain town or neighborhood.
Through SEO, those who are specifically seeking for what you have to offer will see your website. These leads are more likely to be patients since they are a better match for your clinic and are more likely to visit your website for more information.
Lower Price
Traditional advertising is costly, has a small audience, and a short shelf life. With SEO for physicians, this is not the case. You may reach more individuals over a longer period of time for less money. This not only results in a higher return on investment, but it also enables you to compete for patients with bigger practices who have the resources to fund expensive advertising efforts.
Greater Power
The quantity of visitors to a website and their behavior—whether they stay on the page for a while or promptly “bounce” back to the search engine results to find a better choice—are factors in search engine rankings. A website that ranks higher on search engines is thus considered to be more reliable than one that ranks lower or doesn’t show up at all. As the popularity of your website grows, so does public confidence in it, which is a crucial consideration when choosing a doctor.
The Bottom Line, Medically Speaking
The bottom line is simple. Doctors and other medical personnel need to have a legitimate and prominent presence on the internet. Otherwise they risk having trolls and hackers hijack their reputation and work for their own nefarious ends. It might just be as a cruel joke, or it might go much deeper. Either way, doctors must create and control their own medical practice SEO strategy.
