Why Content On Your Healthcare Website Is So Important
We’ve found that many clients come to Full Media for website design wanting something modern, minimalistic and sleek. We love modern and simplistic when it comes to website design! This is just another way that you can reflect your credibility to your audience.
Many healthcare clients want to meet this goal by taking away content and making the site more visual. While this may certainly make for an attractive website, it could also hurt your search engine rankings. Having a beautiful website doesn’t always ensure it will be seen. In order for your healthcare website to show up in the search results, search engines have to know what your website is about. One of the main ways to educate search engines about your website is through optimized content. It’s all a part of how search engines work .
But content isn’t just for the search engines, it’s also for the patients visiting your website. So let’s talk about a few reasons why content is important to search engine rankings, improving your visibility and converting website visitors to patients.
What is the SEO value of content?
For your website content to have any SEO value, it needs to be relevant to potential patients. Before you begin creating content, make sure it’s:
- Useful – if you have a physical location, be sure to include hours of operation and contact information so that patients can easily find you
- Credible – highlight why your healthcare organization stands apart from your competitors just down the street
- Quality – your content should be specific and engaging to give patients a good experience (images and videos are forms of content too!)
In our industry, we often say that content is king. Not only can content improve your search engine rankings and increase traffic, bring quality visitors to your website and improve user experience, it can also help convert users into patients.
What is SEO optimized content?
High quality, useful information
When users come to your site, they’re most likely looking for something such as a medical condition, symptoms they are experiencing, a service or information. One of the ways to provide this information and details concerning procedures offered and services is through content. Providing users with the information that they’re looking for in a clear and easy way can help keep users on your site and increase conversions, such as leads or appointments.
The secondary audience for your website content should be search engines! Always put patients first, but don’t forget search engines second. Having great content on the variety of services you offer and conditions you treat will help ensure that you should up in search engines for the things you do. Our rule of thumb is that if you don’t have a page for it, you won’t be found for it! If you offer care for a variety of needs, be sure to create a page discussing your unique approach to care in that area.
Internal links
Content also provides a great opportunity for internal links. An internal link is text within the content that is hyperlinked to another relevant page on your website. Internal linking is a great way to lead users to additional information that they may be looking for.
Search engines also like to see internal links throughout a website. As search engines crawl and index the pages on your site, they often move from one page to the next through internal links. Therefore, internal links may help the pages on your website to be indexed and understood by search engines faster.
Keywords
Healthcare content should always reflect your keyword strategy (learn more about keyword research ). Keywords are the terms that you want to be found for online and that best describe your practice and/or services. These terms should be unique to each page on your website. Content is a great place to highlight these keywords in a natural, relevant way and to help search engines make the connection between your website and the keywords that you want to rank for.
Meta title tags
The Meta title tag is the clickable headline that users see at the top of each search engine result. They are important because they help users see what your page is about. If your Meta title tag isn’t optimized, it can be a determining factor for why patients will click on another search result instead.
Calls to action
You can also use content to provide a call to action to your audience. A call to action is an invitation to users to complete an action. A few examples of calls to action are: contact us, book an appointment, get directions, leave a review and download a PDF or whatever it is you might want users to do on your website. Adding calls to action throughout your site may help increase conversions through your website.
To learn more about healthcare digital marketing and Full Media, please contact us today.
