“No man is an island,” as the saying goes. Similarly, no digital marketing method can carry the weight of growing your business. You must incorporate new strategies complementing and multiplying the effects what you already use.
For example, content marketing and search engine optimization (SEO) are among the best and most cost-efficient pairings. A top SEO tip is to capitalize on unique services because having a niche that others lack helps generate customer interest in your hospital or clinic.
Read on to learn how to combine SEO with healthcare content marketing for maximum effect.
3 Practical Ways to Combine SEO and Healthcare Content Marketing Strategies
Healthcare content marketing is anything you do to leverage your blogs, photos, videos, and other posts to drive traffic to your website. Email marketing was, and still is, a prime example of this strategy at work. A quick reminder for products and posts is effective in attracting attention.
On the other hand, SEO is anything you do to improve your ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs). It refers to adjustments to your content that tell search engines what your website is about and whether it fits the patient’s search query.
A good content marketing strategy has one goal: to generate interest in your website, business, products, services, etc. Meanwhile, a good SEO strategy makes your website visible and accessible to patients online.
1. Find and Use the Right Keywords
Keywords are one of the most fundamental concepts in SEO. In fact, they are one of the most prevalent aspects of digital marketing as a whole. A good keyword strategy boosts SEO results because relevant search terms help laser-focus your content for converting leads to customers.
So, how do you find rich keywords?
- Market research is a great way to identify patient concerns and content niches.
- Online tools such as Google Trends can help you develop and refine your ideas.
- Listening to your patients, in-person or online, can help you identify keywords.
The next step is to make a list. Make sure you include a mix of different types, such as:
- Long-tail keywords: Specific health concerns result in longer keyphrases. For example, ‘how to clean your ears’ or ‘broken arm surgery.’ Ranking for longer search terms also means less competition on SERP.
- Trending keywords: Current health concerns such as COVID-19 and Monkeypox are excellent examples of this. They are timely because they present patients’ urgent need for information.
- Local SEO keywords: Your local area is rich with leads and potential customers. However, you need to tap into that market to get patients. Add your local area, including adjacent towns or cities, to your keywords to show up in local searches.
Here are some more examples of how to use keywords in content marketing:
- Blogging about your hospital’s services is a great way to gently direct patients to your website. For example, a dentist writing a blog with the keyword ‘root canal’ improves their website’s chance of appearing on searches for that procedure.
- Social media is another popular channel. The typical approach with this is posting visual and educational content relevant to your hospital or clinic. On these platforms, hashtags function as keywords that people use to search for content, so choose them wisely.
- Getting and responding to comments is one of the current trends in healthcare content marketing. Patients want to know their prospective healthcare provider as much as they can. Therefore, positive reviews encourage them to check your content for their benefit.
2. Have an Active Social Media Page
As mentioned above, social media is a fantastic way to share content and increase brand awareness. In other words, social media can impact people’s choices.
However, its contributions to your business’s growth go beyond hashtags or keywords. You can also leverage your profile to drive organic traffic to your website.
If you have seen influencers or popular users on social media, you know that you can actively promote yourself by providing a website link. It is not restricted to you too. Other users or current patients can also share your profile, content, or website with friends and family.
Look at the following scenario:
- Patient A’s aging father is struggling with arthritis. While chatting online, a friend who follows your clinic’s profile tells her about your clinic and sends her your website link.
- Patient A was amazed by your service and decided to comment on your social media posts. The comment describes how excellent and helpful you were to her family.
- Patient B is a middle-aged blue-collar worker starting to experience joint pains. While browsing social media, he sees your clinic on his feed, reads Patient A’s glowing review of your services, and decides to contact you from there.
As you can see, it is not exclusively for networking. Social media is another source of information or a way to find services that people need. By broadening your online availability, you can positively impact your website’s performance and help grow your business.
3. Make an Effective Landing Page
According to Digital Authority Partners, people want to see what they get before getting it. That goes double for something that potentially costs a large amount of money, like healthcare.
A well-made landing page is one of the best SEO workarounds for this problem. How? Well, for one, it focuses on one thing and is tailored to that purpose.
A patient looking for a healthcare provider is not interested in services not relevant to their immediate concern. They are not looking to flip through the pages of your website to find what they need. Why not make it easy for patients and build a web page with everything they need?
That is a landing page in a nutshell. It boosts your website’s user experience (UX) rating to have a specific page that informs and directs patients on what they need to do. Search engines love good UX, so you get a boost on SERP when you build it.
Here is what you need to build an effective landing page:
- An introduction: Let your patients know who you are and why you’re right for the job.
- List of services: Showcase what you can do and how you solve their problems.
- Contact Information: Make it easy for your patients to contact your hospital or clinic.
- Patient reviews: Allow patients to leave comments about you and your service.
- Call-to-action (CTA): Add a straightforward call, such as ‘Schedule an appointment.’
Summing Up
Combining digital marketing strategies is a great way to maximize their benefits. However, the prospect of doing even just one can already be confusing and intimidating. In this case, it is important to know when and how to apply SEO and healthcare content marketing effectively.
By following this guide, you learn what you need to do to get the best of both worlds.