Hello doctors, dentists, practices which offer specialist medical services, massage therapists and wellness practitioners. This article is for you. I realise: digital marketing is not as important as patient care in your mind. Yet, spending a bit of effort on local SEO marketing will really help you build your business.
Local SEO (stands for ‘Search Engine Optimisation’ ) is a unique way of making sure that patients in your neighbourhood or city find out about you online. This technique is important for any health care practice for several reasons for your health care practice.”
Let me explain.
Reason #1: Referral.
It builds your word-of-mouth referrals, digitally, so to speak.
Health care practitioners such as physicians, dentists, nurses, chiropractors, as well as alternative health practitioners get many (if not most) new clients and patients through word-of-mouth. Why worry about Local SEO then, you might wonder?! Simple. These days, when your client is passing on your name, she will tweet, Skype, chat or send a message, along with a verbal recommendation. That digital message needs to point to 1 thing and 1 thing only: your information online. Being easily findable online means ensuring good local SEO.
Why you need Local SEO Reason #2: Findability.
Your client is running late and he must find a nearby parking quickly. By having your address in digital form, easily findable online (or in a digital message to him), he can quickly pop it on a map and locate the parking lots in your surrounding. He’ll be on time. Fancy that.
Reason #3 for Local SEO for HealthCare Practitioners: Credibility and Trust.
Strange as it may be, the ‘written’ word still has a connotation of ‘it must be true’ vs. the spoken word which ‘may be true’. Have your industry accreditations, credentials and cheery customer feedback prominently posted on your website or blog. Have a professional looking website, fully optimised for mobile. And sweetly ask happy customers to vouch for you on local ratings sites.
Reason #4 for local SEO for HealthCare Practitioners: Easy comparison.
As customers are walking up to 60% of the customer buying journey before they talk to you, that means they do most of their comparison shopping online, in communities, with peers and friends and what’s written on your website. If they can find you. Locally. As they want/need someone local. Sometimes that comparison check can be as simple as checking opening hours.
These four reasons are the ‘’why’. Here’s the ‘how’.
How to do Local SEO for Healthcare Practitioners
No article is complete without a pretty picture. Here is a wonderful infographic which sets out the how.
It’s not a complete picture of what can be done to improve your local SEO, but it sure is an excellent start. You’ll see that Local SEO is only in part done on your own website. There are many web locations where you can influence your findability and optimize what will be found. Most notably: Google+, Yelp, online Yellow Pages and local industry associations and rating sites. Here are the details.
How to find New Client Patients Online with Local SEO
- Setup your Business at Google
Your Local SEO
What do YOU do to improve your local SEO? I’d love to have your input, as the online world is expanding and evolving and none knows all. Just leave us a comment below or chat with us at Twitter ~ @CloudAnalysts. We’d love to discuss what other marketing activities would complement the ones mentioned in the Local SEO infographic to successfully marketing your business online.
Image Credits
Many thanks to Google+, Moz.com and Hubspot.com for the infographic content and SmtUSA.com for compiling and presenting; and to cliparts.co for nurse illustration.
*SEO = search engine optimization = things you can do online so that search engines will show you in their search results (organic traffic).
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