Most doctors advise against Googling your symptoms, but that hasn’t stopped a huge wealth of healthcare blogs and websites being available online today. In fact, as long as you’re not convincing yourself that something’s a major illness when in fact it’s easily treated, the internet can be an extremely useful place for people who want to learn more about improving their health and fitness. If you’re a health and fitness fan who wants to share your knowledge with others, then it makes sense to start your own blog on the subject. But, with so many websites out there offering this kind of thing, you’ll need to work hard to ensure that yours stands out from the crowd. And in this case, that means getting high rankings in the Google search results. We’ve put together ten top SEO tips for healthcare blogs that you can start using today.
#1. Focus on User-Friendliness:
First of all, for the time being, forget all about keywords. Whilst they’re useful, they really won’t get you anywhere if your site isn’t user-friendly and people are having a terrible time trying to look up what they need. Invest in a modern, easy-to-navigate website design for your blog, and above all, make sure that it’s mobile-friendly. Since most web users today like to read blog posts on the go, having content that’s tricky to read on a smartphone won’t do your blog any favors.
#2. Understand Your Audience:
Although it may not seem like an SEO tip on the surface, understanding your audience is important for getting the best results. Today, simply building a link database or researching keywords isn’t enough for getting your audience’s attention and holding it. To do that, you’ll need to know who they are and what they want – and once you’ve got that, your SEO results will begin to improve too.
#3. Develop a Keyword Strategy:
Keywords are no longer everything when it comes to SEO, but it certainly still pays to research them. However, bear in mind that whilst it’s important to know what your audience is searching for, relying too heavily on keywords can have the opposite to the desired effect. Simply stuffing keywords into your website will earn you a penalty, so make sure that once you’ve determined the most relevant keywords, they fit in naturally wherever they’re placed.
#4. Build a Credible Content Library:
Content is King – and that’s certainly true when it comes to SEO. After all, even the best keywords are going to be useless to you if you don’t do anything with them. And, the key to ranking highly on Google is to provide your audience with content that’s interesting and engaging – even if the keywords aren’t included. The more your audience reads, shares, and interacts with your content, the higher it will rank in search engine results.
#5. Set Yourself Apart:
Differentiation is a vital component of success when it comes to success with SEO. Make sure that you know exactly what distinguishes your brand and sets it apart from your competitors. If you have any insight into a specific area of health, for example, share that rather than focusing on the entire industry. In order to further set yourself apart, you might want to consider conducting competitive keyword research. A better understanding of what your competitors are trying to rank for will help you build a strategy that allows you to carve out your own niche.
#6. Minimize Your Bounce Rate:
The bad news is that no matter how well you build your website, you can’t stop everybody from visiting and simply bouncing straight back off. But when it comes to SEO, getting this number as low as possible is usually good enough. Across industries, around 41-55% of visitors will bounce after seeing just one page on your site, so your goal is to keep this at the lower end of the scale. Since high bounce rates tend to correlate with low search engine rankings, consider the factors that can affect it. Simple reasons, such as slow load speed, can have a massive effect on bounce rate numbers, or perhaps your site is designed poorly, and users are struggling to find their way around. To keep your viewers on your blog for longer, offer a next step – ask for their opinions, or give them the option to sign up for more.
#7. Build High-Quality Links:
Link building used to be a very common SEO tactic, but today, it’s increasingly frowned upon since search engines are making more and more of an effort to ensure that each and every one of your links is organic. However, this doesn’t mean that link building shouldn’t be an option. Building high-quality, organic links is key. In fact, quality content that’s relevant to your audience can prompt them to build links for you through social sharing, or you might want to consider partnering with another relevant industry blog to create engaging, high-quality guest posts with your site link included in your author bio.
#8. Encourage Online Reviews:
Getting people talking about your blog online is a great way to build natural links, improve your reach and boost your SEO results. One of the best ways to do this is by encouraging online reviews of your brand. This is easy if you provide a healthcare service or product alongside your blog, but even if you’re only offering information, don’t think that reviews won’t still be useful. Give your readers the chance to share their opinions on social media, Google Reviews and Trustpilot.
#9. Optimize Title Tags and Meta Descriptions:
In addition to using choice keywords naturally in your website content, you should also try and include them as much as possible, but also naturally, in your title tags and meta descriptions. The information included here helps search engines know what the page is about, and when they are indexed in search engines, they become your advertisement.
#10. Consider the Future:
Last but not least, don’t underestimate the ever-changing face of search engine optimization. Google alone releases dozens of new algorithm updates every year, making changes to the factors that influence where you rank in search results. Being ready for these changes is key.
If you found these tips helpful, we’d love to get your feedback in the comments!
