As online behavior shifts to using generative AI more frequently (even daily), healthcare organizations are challenged to consider ways to keep their website top of mind. With multiple AI and generative search platforms available, there are no definitive rules to guarantee your appearance in these tools.
However, making sure your website is optimized for AI engines through a handful of proven online search tactics can steadily (and safely) increase your healthcare organization’s brand mentions and citations on these platforms.
Key Takeaways:
- The nature of online search is changing, but key search engine optimization (SEO) practices are still the best way to communicate to AI engines what your website is about.
- The best way to ensure your organization is mentioned in AI search results is to have quality content on your website. Your content should answer common questions your patients have and match what they are likely to ask an AI tool, like ChatGPT or Gemini.
- There are other ways to help AI engines understand your website and the services you offer. These include technical SEO practices your digital marketing agency is likely already focusing on, as well as adding schema mark-up to your pages.
- Partnering with a digital marketing agency that stays current will help ensure you are marketing your organization on the right platforms.
Changing Nature of Search
For decades, users have typically gone to Google or another search engine, entered a search query and were shown a list of search results to click and learn more. Google has offered answers to many questions directly in the search results for some time. This is what the industry calls “zero click” results. AI tools are Google’s first major competitors in this space as more people turn to ChatGPT or Gemini to get answers.
AI queries tend to be longer and more detailed than the types of questions people ask Google. The AI agent then crafts an answer based on a vast bank of knowledge developed through research and machine learning. Sometimes a website may be cited in in the answer. Other times the question may be answered without showing citations or mentioning businesses’ name.
SEO best practices ensure your website is both user-friendly and search-engine friendly. Now healthcare websites must make sure they are AI-friendly too.
Helpful Content System
The key to ensuring your website shows in AI is to have helpful content on your website. Does your website answer the questions your patients have about your practice or services? Is your content high quality, original and use E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) practices?
By structuring content to answer questions, using lists in your formatting and writing in small, easy-to-scan paragraphs, you ensure your website uses a helpful content system for AI, SEO, and patients that visit your website.
Entity-Based Search
With the nature of search changing, many people are asking, “Are keywords dead?” To make it clear to SEO and AI engines that you are an expert in the topic you are covering, the “keywords” about your topic should naturally fall into your content. The key is to cover the whole subject, answering questions your patients will have with credible, detailed and authoritative information. This is nothing new. HubSpot and other SEO leaders have been talking about content pillars since at least 2018.
For example, if your medical practice provides flu treatment, you might want to structure a page about “flu” like this:
- Flu Testing & Treatment in (your city name)
- What are flu symptoms?
- Where can I get tested for flu?
- What types of treatment can I take for flu?
- What does flu recovery look like?
- Flu signs & symptoms to Monitor
- Choose (your organization) when you have the flu
By fully answering the topic you are writing about, you are helping your patients and demonstrating to SEO and AI engines that you are an expert in the subject.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO is still an important part of website performance. Ensuring your website does not have 404 pages, 301 redirect loops, broken links or missing meta titles, meta descriptions and header tags are still best practices. This helps search engines understand what your webpages and websites focus on. Having these components on your website allows AI engines to easily scan and retrieve information and return it to the end user.
However, other technical website components like site speed, accessibility, core web vitals and other technical aspects are becoming more critical.
Structured Data
Using structured data is one way to optimize your healthcare website for AI. Structured data is a code that is only visible on the back end of the site. Visitors cannot readily see the code, but search and AI engines (Google, ChatGPT) can read this code. Adding structured data to your webpages gives online crawlers a more contextual understanding of what information is most important on your site.
It’s important to use schema to optimize your site but try not to fall into the trap of functionality stuffing. Examples of structured data may include JSON format schema or Open Graph Tags.
Don’t Panic, You’re How Google Makes Money
With the rise of AI and the changing nature of online search, it’s easy to panic. We’ve entered a time of rapid change, but the cogs of capitalism will keep turning. There will continue to be ways to market your business, through Google, AIs and other emerging technology. It’s critical to work with an agency that’s staying current AND is level-headed in their approach.
If you are interested in learning more about optimizing your website for AI, contact Full Media. For more than 15 years, our digital marketing agency has served healthcare organizations of all sizes.
Full Media offers comprehensive SEO and AI optimization services, including reporting, mention monitoring, competitive monitoring, research, technical expertise and content development. We would love to help your organization stay relevant and competitive as technology changes!
