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Whether you are in the process of building your own practice or work as a web designer in the healthcare industry, writing SEO-friendly content is pivotal for online visibility. According to 99 Firms, 75% of users never go past the first page of their search engine results, while only 21% of users access more than one link per search. Another research done by Small Biz Genius reported that 70%-80% of users completely ignore Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ads in search engines, making original content and SEO optimization a high priority for businesses worldwide. Healthcare content marketing is important for many hospitals and healthcare providers and practices. It’s a way to speak to patients, current and potential, and provide useful and engaging information. Among the many benefits, it is a means of improving patient engagement and retention.
Positioning your website high on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) can effectively help you attract clients, patients, future partner clinics, and other stakeholders. With that said, let’s take a look at several important benefits of writing SEO-friendly content for your healthcare website, as well as some actionable guidelines to do so on your own as soon as today.
The Advantages of Writing SEO-Friendly Content
Before we get into the “how,” let’s briefly discuss “why” SEO is an essential part of website optimization. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) represents a set of algorithms monitored and enforced by Google. Joseph Mitchell, SEO Specialist at Studicus, spoke on the topic briefly: “Creating content and publishing it without SEO in mind will lead to it underperforming no matter how creative, original, or relevant it may be. Make sure to always keep an eye out for what works and doesn’t work in your particular industry to ensure that your website ranks well down the line.”
Each industry, healthcare included, features different content trends, including popular keywords, topics to explore in future articles, etc. Following these trends via dedicated tools such as Google AdWords and SEM Rush will allow you to have the upper hand regarding your competition by including trending words, phrases, and optimization patterns into your content pre-publishing. In doing so, you will gain several important advantages as a healthcare-centric website on the web, including but not limited to:
- Increased incoming traffic, engagement, and conversion
- Higher healthcare industry positioning and brand reputation
- Growth of healthcare industry authority leading to partnership and collaboration opportunities
- Long-term content optimization and brand marketing, unlike a traditional advertisement.
- High Return on Investment (ROI) in terms of attracting clients and patients via SEO
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Guidelines for Writing SEO-Friendly Content
- Write with an Audience in Mind
The first rule of successful, SEO-friendly content is to create it with an audience in mind. Given that your website operates in the healthcare industry, you can narrow your audience down to potential patients (based on your area of expertise) and partners (other clinics, local or abroad).
This will give you a sense of who will read your content, which allows you to filter ideas and create articles that are more meaningful in the long run. Never create content for the sake of filling a publishing quota – less frequent posts with higher quality will outperform constant publishing any day of the week.
- Mix Content Types
Mixing up your content from time to time will make it SEO-friendly and more interesting to your audience. You can write articles and create videos, audio interviews, infographics, and other materials and publish them just as you would do with written content.
Jeffrey Brook, Head of Content at Is Accurate spoke on the topic recently: “Creating a format variation in your content publishing strategy will ensure that your content is always fresh and seen as SEO-friendly by search engines such as Google and Yahoo. If you can’t come up with an idea for a new article to write about, turn to images, videos, or a podcast format instead for the time being.”
- Scheduled Publishing Works Wonders
Publishing your writing ad-hoc and without planning will be detrimental for your website for several reasons. Your SEO ranking will drop due to sporadic publishing, while your followers won’t have a pattern to follow in terms of when to expect your new content.
In this regard, it’s best to plan your writing, several articles, and content pieces. Using planning techniques such as SMART will enable you to plan your writing activities with tangible and objective Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to follow. This will give your writers time to do research, come up with relevant topics, and write them properly and add up to your SEO-friendly goals as a healthcare website.
- Writing & Optimization Tools Matter
When it comes to online publishing and SEO, it’s never a good idea to rely solely on text editors such as Microsoft Word or Google Docs exclusively. While they may assist you in writing and editing, SEO and subsequent optimization for search engines will take more than that.
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You can refer to tools such as Trust My Paper (dedicated writing platform), Evernote (cloud-based writing tool), Pick the Writer (writing and editing service), Hemingway Editor (legibility and text-flow tool) as well as Grab My Essay (an outsourcing and editing platform) for your writing and content optimization needs. Never publish your writing without running it through multiple tools and platforms to ensure its quality and SEO-friendly nature, and your healthcare website’s ranking will reflect that initiative.
- Include Calls to Action
Every piece of writing you publish on your website should have user interaction and engagement in its focus. As such, including calls to action (CTA) in your writing and multimedia content is highly recommended.
Calls to action represent a marketing strategy that revolves around asking visitors to act or react to the information they just acquired. From simple “call us now” to “share your comments below,” CTAs will allow you to animate your readers and let search engines know that your healthcare website is relevant to future search queries due to its activity.
- Share on Social Media
It may not seem like social media platforms are related to SEO ranking at first – however, their addition to your writing and publishing going forward is of utmost importance. Both your B2B network and future patients use social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn to contact their social circles and explore interesting content.
By creating dedicated social media pages under your healthcare website’s brand name, you will effectively position yourself as a competitive entity in the industry. This will allow you to share new content as it appears on your website, respond to reader questions, engage with the community, and learn about new healthcare trends and ideas to explore in writing.
In Summary
When all is said and done, creating SEO-friendly content is all about remaining true to the healthcare industry and the audience your writing is intended for. Don’t rely on strategies such as keyword stuffing or posting content made by other companies or writers on your website.
Instead, take time to develop a schedule based on your available resources and the time you want to devote to future SEO ranking optimization. Before you know it, you will settle into a healthy (pun intended) routine with your industry research, content writing, and subsequent optimization. Once that happens, your healthcare website will see an uptick in incoming traffic, search ranking, and overall revenue generation as a direct result of your efforts.
Kristin Savage
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- The Guide to Writing SEO-Friendly Content - 01/20/2020