Ever considered how websites appear on the first page of Google’s search results organically, without resorting to paid advertising? It is through implementing the correct Search Engine Optimization (SEO) measures to meet the ranking algorithm.

SEO is hard to ignore – statistics show 75% of people never scroll past the first page results. For allied health professionals, this could mean that other industry practitioners and potential clients never find you online.

There is no single, hard rule to get your health practice website climbing the search engine results pages (SERPS). Instead, here are 8 SEO tips that can benefit your business’s online presence and increase traffic to your website.

SEO Tips To Boost Your Health Practice Website Rankings

Although there are several types of SEO, we have included some easy and actionable Local, On, and Off-Page SEO tips in this post.

1. Ensure Your Website Supports Fast Loading Speeds

Both Google and your website visitors will baulk if your website renders slowly. The algorithm favours sites with quick loading speeds, and stats show that 40% of visitors will abandon a site that takes longer than 3 seconds to load. Of those, 80% won’t return.

Remedy this by hosting your site with a reliable company, and ensuring that your content, images, and files are set to a size that won’t hamper loading time.

2. Map Out Your Keywords

Keywords form the backbone of meaningful content used to attract visitors to your website. Knowing the language and terms people use to research your industry or type of services you offer means you can write it into your website content to answer the search queries.

There are both free and paid tools to help you perform keyword research. Start by considering how your target audience would search for your services. As an example, you might want to explore the metrics for the search terms occupational therapist Sydney, or occupational therapist near me if that is the service you offer. After entering these into the keywords explorer, the tool will display search volume results, provide extra keyword suggestions, as well as display the keyword difficulty (ability to rank in the Google’s top 10 results).

Overall you want to find a balance between using broad keywords that see high search volumes, and ones with more intent that have lower competition in your content.

This is just a brief overview of the importance of keywords for your website. We will cover this topic in more detail in another blog post.

3. Work Keywords Into Website Blog

One of the most valuable SEO tips you will receive is to start a blog. This is where your website will realise the benefits of your keyword research.

While service pages which detail your health care services are essential, the real value comes in creating long-form content, such as blog posts, where you can optimize writing around your keyword.

4. Optimize Posts Correctly With Headers, Image Tags, As Well As Meta Descriptions

When writing a blog post, there are certain practices around formatting headings, images, and metadata that you should observe. These help Google’s spider bots to identify and make sense of what you are writing about, as well as make it easier for people to find and read the content you publish.

5. Link Out To High Authority Sites

Links to and from your blog content can send positive signals to Google. An outgoing link to a high authority website shows that you have researched the topic, and establishes trust with the search engine and reader.

6. Encourage Backlinks

Similarly, once your content is published, you might find that other industry professionals link to it as they consider you to be an authoritative source. This provides Google with another signal to say that your content is meaningful to visitors.

7. Set Up Google My Business Listing

As your patients are primarily going to be people who live in your community, it is important to set up your Google My Business Listing. This can boost your website’s local SEO, and help connect patients in the area to your practice.

Final Thoughts

While our SEO tips should help you to boost your online presence, our allied health, OH, and vocational rehabilitation software can help you to manage your case workload.  Get access to the free e-book to find out how it can support you with the administrative caseload so you can spend more time doing tasks that matter, like providing health-care.