Bringing new patients into your practice isn’t a simple one-step process, especially because there are so many different ways that they can learn about you. Many small practices often thrive from word of mouth in the community. Other practices often take advantage of the many social media platforms that potential patients are scrolling on every day. One of the best marketing courses of action to include in your patient acquisition strategy is search engine optimization (SEO).
Search engine optimization is all about making sure that your website is ranking well for relevant keywords. SEO can help your healthcare practice in a variety of ways. It can increase web traffic, engagement and brand awareness. It can also play a significant role in the success of your patient acquisition strategy.
How search engine optimization can benefit your patient acquisition strategy
Patient acquisition is always one of the main goals of a healthcare practice’s marketing efforts. Without new patients, it’s difficult to grow and scale your practice. A patient acquisition strategy can include many different types of efforts, from referral programs to social media. However, search engine optimization is worth incorporating into your strategy. These days, everyone turns to search engines for their healthcare-related questions.
SEO can help you appeal to prospective patients by:
- Boosting brand awareness — You can’t acquire a patient who doesn’t know that you exist. With a strong SEO strategy, your practice can appear as a result for relevant keyword searches. This allows potential patients to see your name and what you do. By boosting brand awareness, you’re not only increasing visibility for your website, but you’re also increasing recognition. When people are ready to look for care, you’re at the forefront of their mind.
- Showcasing your expertise — When it comes to healthcare, people want the best. No one should ever settle when it comes to the care of their body. That’s why it’s essential that people know that you’re an expert in your field who they can trust. SEO showcases your expertise, as algorithms use authority as one of the contributing factors for ranking. If a prospective patient sees your site’s content high on a results page, they’ll deem you as knowledgeable and experienced. It also boosts your online reputation.
- Taking a local approach — Whether you have one small location or multiple branches, the community surrounding your practice is full of prospective patients. They’re the ones you should be trying to appeal to. Local SEO strategies help your brand to be seen by the people in your area who would benefit from your treatment. By focusing on local SEO, you can improve your recognition and reputation in your community, often leading to word-of-mouth referrals.
- Targeting the right keywords — When people have a question or concern about their health, the keywords can range from broad, like, “back pain causes,” to incredibly specific, such as, “Why is my left knee hurting after I run?” With SEO, you can boost patient acquisition through keyword research that will help your website show up for trending keywords. When your name pops up high on a search engine result page for a particular issue, the user will immediately associate you with a possible resolution.
- Encouraging engagement — Search engines rank websites that people are actively clicking on and interacting with. Having attention-grabbing content, such as blog posts, infographics and videos, will lead people to click on your call-to-action buttons, share your work on social media and leave feedback. Increased engagement results in patient acquisition because it shows that you’re intriguing people enough to further their connection with you and move along the patient journey.
At BURG+CO., we want to help you reach every one of your marketing goals, including patient acquisition. That’s why we’ll make sure that SEO is a pillar of your patient acquisition strategy. We understand the role that search engines have in appealing to the right people, and we’ll help you take the actionable steps to achieve the best results possible.
Want to attract new visitors to your website through a patient acquisition strategy? BURG+CO. can help
Increasing traffic to your website plays a role in increasing conversions and leading to new clients. However, it’s difficult to attract visitors to your site when you don’t know what to do. Fortunately, this is what we specialize in at BURG+CO.
Our team has years of experience in helping businesses improve their digital presence to attract new leads and retain existing ones. If you’re looking to perform better in search engine results and attract more visitors 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.
