There is no shortage of numbers used in healthcare, from cholesterol levels to dosage of medicine. The same can be said for healthcare marketing, where numbers are used to provide tangible data about the effectiveness of your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts. That’s what key performance indicators are for.
Key performance indicators (KPIs) are metrics that can help you see how much your healthcare brand has grown and how efficient your SEO efforts are in moving your bottom line. By tracking the right KPIs, you can see where you’re thriving and where there might be potential cracks in your SEO strategy that are interfering with your growth.
The 5 essential SEO KPIs for healthcare brands
There isn’t an exact number, but it’s likely that there are more than a dozen SEO KPIs that you can track. However, we’re here to shine a spotlight on five of the most essential performance indicators that should be used as data to back your SEO strategy decisions.
- Qualified organic traffic
Organic traffic refers to website visits that stem from click-throughs on search engine results pages (SERPs), social media and email campaigns that don’t involve paid advertising. But not all traffic will bring you the new patients you’re looking for.
Qualified organic traffic is a KPI that tracks how many site visitors are likely to convert into patients because they engage with your content and relate to the needs you’re trying to address. This KPI can give you an idea of how many people click on your site because they are actively interested in what you do and are a part of your target audience.
- Keyword rankings
The higher you rank on search engines, the more traffic you get. The goal of SEO is to get your site to rank as highly as possible on SERPs for relevant keywords. The algorithms take many aspects of your site’s content into consideration when trying to rank you, such as credibility, backlinks and quality.
By keeping an eye on your keyword rankings as they fluctuate over time, you can see how well you’re addressing your demographic’s needs, how relevant your content is to the target audience and how you’re comparing to your competitors.
- Conversion rate from organic visits
It’s one thing to get a person to click on your site from a search engine. It’s another for them to actually fill out a contact form or schedule an appointment. Your conversion rate shows how many people complete an action on your site that furthers their connection with you.
Looking specifically at the conversion rate from organic visits, you can determine how engaging your site is to a person who is looking for the information you provide. It’s a better indicator of your growth than traffic from paid advertisements, which have a more short-term impact.
- Bounce rate
The term “surfing the web” has been around for decades, but it’s not what you want from your potential patients. The key to SEO is to be intentional with your keyword usage and content creation to achieve conversions, not just quick site visits. Your bounce rate indicates how many people leave your site after visiting just one page.
You always want to aim for a bounce rate of 40% or lower. By tracking your bounce rate, you can get a better idea of exactly what potential patients are looking for in order to test new strategies to engage them further so they explore your other pages.
- Domain authority
Relevance is one of the main contributing factors to your SEO success as a healthcare brand. Information about health topics is something that should be told with credible, valuable content. Your domain authority gives you an idea of how relevant your site is to your industry in comparison to your competitors.
Your domain authority tells you how likely you are to rank for relevant SERPS using a scale from 1 to 100. You can boost your domain authority by building a network of backlinks, which means that your site is linked on another website. Backlinks can showcase your credibility and relevance to your target market.
Leading versus lagging indicators in SEO
Even though all KPIs can play a role in tracking your SEO marketing performance, you should pay special attention to the ones that indicate where you’re going and how far you’ve come.
Leading indicators are the predictive metrics that help you adjust your strategy in real time by showing how you’re progressing toward your goals. Examples of leading indicators include:
- Session duration
- Keyword ranking
- Social media engagement
Lagging indicators look at your SEO journey so far by showing you what your efforts have already accomplished. Here are some examples of lagging indicators:
- SEO return on investment (ROI)
- Conversions
- Bounce rate
Want to see an improvement in your key performance indicators? BURG+CO. can help
Creating an effective SEO strategy is only one part of the puzzle. You also need to track the progress of your efforts and tweak your methods accordingly. At BURG+CO., we can help you create and implement your SEO as well as track the resulting data to see where we can improve.
Our team has years of experience in helping healthcare brands improve their digital presence to attract new patients and retain existing ones. If you’re looking to perform better in search engine results and attract more potential patients to your site, we’re ready to talk to you to see how we can help.
Contact our team today for more information about digital marketing or to schedule a complimentary consultation.
