5 Online Marketing Tips to Help Your Medical Practice

If you are a doctor or run a medical practice, you need to have a strong digital presence. In today's world, the internet has made it easy for competitors to take your share of the medical market. To prevent losing potential patients, use these proven techniques of online marketing that will boost your business.

Great Keywords
The first thing about online marketing to understand is the power of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). This refers to making your site rank better in the organic, or natural, search results from Google, Bing, and other search engines. Without SEO, your practice won't show up when people are searching, and they might not come into your office for a procedure or assistance.

A huge part of SEO is ranking higher based on the keywords you use. For instance, if you are an optometrist in Los Angeles, you would want to use a combination of phrases and words surrounding eyes, doctors, optometrists, Los Angeles, and more than you think your target market would be using. Hire a content writer to produce articles that include these words and begin to build your online presence and get found.

Engaging Content
Your content should not be low quality. It should actually provide value to the reader or viewer. First, you want to do this because it helps boost your brand and authority in your patients' eyes. Secondly, if it is more engaging, people will stay on your site longer and boost your SEO.

Backlinks
You can have the best keywords in the world and fantastic articles on your site but still not rank as high as you want. The reason is that another major component of this SEO is your backlink profile. A backlink is simply any link from another website to your website, particularly other websites within your niche. The more backlinks you have, the higher you will rank in general. However, there are some exceptions.

If you have links from low-quality sites, it could actually hurt your rankings. An example of a low-quality site would be a spammy blog about fake supplements created very recently. Google finds sites like this unreliable, and if you have a backlink on it, you'll be associated with it. Google wants people to have confidence in the search results when using Google's services, so they show sites with good reputations. Don't ruin your reputation by negative association. Monitor the backlinks you have and disavow bad ones to make it clear you do not endorse them.

Compliance
Don't try to cheat Google. Even professionals with certifications or IT degrees and/or SEO training cannot predict what Google will change next. Play by the rules of online marketing and watch your practice grow.

Clean On-site SEO
There are two types of SEO: on-site and off-site. Off-site SEO includes things like links and having great descriptions in the meta section of a Google result. If your off-site SEO is good, you can usually get decent rankings. But the content on your page needs to be optimized as well.
​
Behind the scenes, there's HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) that controls how your site is laid out visually to the end user (humans). But Google's algorithms also need to understand how your site works via software. So make sure you have a programmer who understands proper formatting for SEO.

When it comes to online marketing, it can seem confusing at first. However, it doesn't have to be. If you want your medical practice to thrive, it is possible. But you need to use the tips above so you rank higher and can be found by the right patients. That way your practice will grow in the way you envisioned it in the first place.

Resources
https://www.shoutmeloud.com/importance-of-keyword-for-search-engine-optimization-seo.html
https://optinmonster.com/5-dos-and-donts-when-choosing-keywords-for-seo/
https://www.wgu.edu/online_it_degrees/programs
https://ninjaoutreach.com/get-rid-of-bad-backlinks/
http://www.webconfs.com/importance-of-backlinks-article-5.php
https://blog.kissmetrics.com/seo-is-content-marketing/