Eyeworld

AUGUST 2020 | EYEWORLD | 53 I Contact Ifland: crawford@messenger.md Ready to attract more patients online? As with any large endeavor, it's important to make sure expectations align with reality. There's no way around it: SEO takes time. However, as a strategic part of your practice marketing plan, SEO is well worth the invest- ment. An SEO campaign can deliver incredible financial, reputational, and strategic benefits that can't be obtained elsewhere. SEO isn't like playing the lottery. It's more like contributing to a 401(k) consistently over your career. It takes time, but the power of that compound interest can be staggering. If you've been ranking on page 12 of Google, it's highly unlikely you'll break onto page 1 in the first few months. And if someone tells you they can get you on page 1 in 6 weeks for five easy payments of $19.99, run in the other direction. How long does healthcare SEO take? The simple answer is that it depends, but it's well worth the investment. Although Practice B is in a more com- petitive market, their site had better structure, fewer technical SEO problems, and the practice pushed out content on a more regular basis. These factors made it easier to rank for the keywords that were most valuable to them. As a result of a strategic SEO campaign, monthly website traffic and patient leads have increased by 152% since the beginning of their campaign. How to structure an SEO campaign for best results Structuring an SEO campaign appropriately to deliver more patients from organic search is crucial. Here are a few things to watch out for when beginning a strategic SEO campaign to attract more patients. Perform an onsite SEO audit to uncov- er technical issues. Onsite health is a major factor in Google's ability to rank your site. Incorrect or inconsistent code implementation is quite common among older websites, so it's important to address these hidden liabilities with an audit. Ninety-nine percent of patients will never notice these issues, but they have a huge effect on Google's ability to crawl your site and index your content. If you want to rank well, you have to make Google happy. Perform a keyword audit to discover the best opportunities to rank. Rather than trying to rank for every keyword, find keywords that represent the best opportunities for your practice. Look for keywords with relatively high monthly search volume and low competition. There is SEO software that can help with this. Build a backlink strategy. Backlinks (the number of sites around the internet that link to your site) are another crucial factor in rank- ing well. It's not enough to just create content anymore. You need to get other websites linking to you to increase your authority and reputation in Google's eyes. Having a detailed plan for obtaining more backlinks is a vital part of your journey to better rankings.

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