SEO is never easy, and even experts such as surgeons need to wrangle with their search presence if they want to see proper success. While this can feel overwhelming initially, especially if you have minimal SEO experience, some tips make things much easier.
Surgeons are in demand just like any other specialist or expert, so it is important to use SEO to put yourself in front of the right audience at the right time. But how can you do this, and what techniques or trends make the biggest difference?
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UX Optimization
The UX, or user experience, of your site matters more than you might think. UX is not just about giving users a site they can easily understand at a glance – it is about ensuring that important and SEO-related features are present to give you the greatest possible benefits.
Factors like site loading speed, mobile suitability, and easy navigation all benefit your users as much as they benefit your own SEO. If you want to make a site that ranks high, then you need to focus on making a site that users can actually use consistently and reliably.
Remember that mobile-friendly sites are important and that many modern searches are made with mobile devices rather than desktop computers, laptops, or even tablets. Making sure that mobile users can easily get the information they need from your site is very important since it dramatically impacts your overall SEO results.
Local SEO
One of the most important parts of optimizing your site is going local. When you focus on local optimization, you can target a specific geographic location and reach people in that location who need your services.
This is especially important for surgeons and medical experts who are looking to draw in clients from their own geographic areas.
For example, if you practice medicine in a certain city, you will most likely see a lot more patients coming through the door if you use local SEO to promote your practice within that city, compared to just optimizing for general searches that may include users that are too far away for your services.
When using local SEO, you can use tools like Google My Business to set up your business information on the search engine and ensure that the correct information is readily available to potential clients.
You can also optimize the rest of your site and pages to feature important keywords or phrases that mention your location, which can be important if you want to catch people using a broader range of terms in their searches, like state names or colloquial names for areas.
Location-Based Content
As a part of local SEO, creating content that relates to or references a specific local area can provide its own benefits no matter how you use it. While you can name your site or business after the area you serve or insert location-based keywords into an otherwise normal article, it is far more effective to produce content that is specifically related to a local area that you want to target.
Doing this allows you to capture a local audience with content that is specifically tied to their location and needs, giving you a better chance of actually capturing new customers and building up a larger audience. For example, you might write articles about a specific illness that has spread throughout a certain area – something that local people are likely to look up on their own terms.
This also ties you into your local community a bit more, which can be a good thing if you want to ensure a strong connection and plenty of future business. Becoming accepted as “the local surgical practice” means that you can usually expect to get plenty of customers from that area.
Procedure-Specific Articles
Just like locations, writing about specific procedures can be a good way to draw in customers who are looking for those specific procedures. More importantly, it boosts your SEO for searches related to those topics since you have entire pages and/or articles dedicated to them.
Very few users are going to simply look up “local surgeon” if they have an active problem that they need help with, and that means that targeting the specifics can be far more valuable. This does not mean that you can’t include the broader term, but it is far better to make sure that your pages are focused on a single topic at a time, both for traffic purposes and to boost SEO.
Since SEO is focused on keywords, creating articles that focus on larger keywords, such as procedure names or types, can be incredibly powerful. The more focused your content is, the better it will perform and the better chance you have at drawing in a larger audience.
Featured Snippets
Another technique to keep in mind is the featured snippet. Featured snippets are small blocks of information that are shown directly beneath a search result, often featuring the answer to a specific question.
These can be very helpful for getting your information directly in front of potential patients. These are meant to be direct answers to a search query taken from one of the top-ranking pages for that search, essentially meaning that users are shown an answer straight from your site.
While achieving this can be tough since it requires you to already be ranking quite well, providing very clear answers within your own content can help. Even if you do not necessarily appear as featured snippets, that content still has value since users will want easy answers to whatever they are searching for.
It can also be helpful to consider creating an FAQ page that is optimized for search engines. These can include questions that you anticipate your future patients or potential visitors asking, letting you provide answers ahead of time, and build up a page that has value as both a resource and a way to drive traffic to your site.
Online Surgeon Directories
Getting listed in online directories of medical or surgical businesses can be very useful for promoting yourself online. These allow you to put your site or even a physical business in front of people who are specifically looking for a surgeon in a specific area.
Many of these are free to list on, while others require a one-time or upkeep fee. However, a good directory essentially places you on a long list of similar businesses, which can be surprisingly good for both boosting your SEO and directing occasional traffic your way.
If nothing else, this helps to get your information out there in the same place that future patients may be looking and can provide solid SEO benefits if you choose the right directory. Since you can also include information about your business, it might also serve as a way to get your contact information and practice hours out to the public.
While these are only a handful of top surgeon SEO tips and trends, SEO for surgeons can be surprisingly easy once you understand the basics. SEO works the same way regardless of industry – you just need to apply typical SEO techniques correctly as a surgeon.
