How to Avoid Common SEO Setup Errors for Your Medical Practice

Setting up a medical website is like building your medical clinic. You need suitable materials and tools to build your local office and the proper optimization strategies to promote your website. Set up is crucial to both; you need the right plan to avoid costly errors.

Let’s focus on the most common SEO setup errors that impact medical websites. Avoid these errors to create an engaging, optimized, and converting medical website.

Always Start with an SEO Audit

An SEO audit determines how well your site relates to search engines’ best practices. An audit is usually done before crafting an SEO campaign to ensure that your strategies are up to date. Audit results tell you which aspects of your website are working and which ones need updating.

Not starting with an audit can result in costly errors. You could be choosing keywords poorly, budgeting, and targeting inefficiently. You will also miss tremendous opportunities to help your site rank better if you don’t start with an audit.

An audit comprises several factors. It checks your on-site optimization, technical SEO, off-page factors, SERP positions, social media performance, and more. An SEO audit is a unique service provided by SEO agencies, or you can use free SEO audit tools online.

You’ll need an audit before and after a campaign. Do it also whenever you feel the need to review your marketing efforts.

Choose the Right Medical Keywords

Using the right medical keywords is crucial to SEO. Search engines use keywords to understand your content better. When users search for your business, retrieving your web pages is easier. If you overlook keyword research as you create your SEO strategies, you may use medical keywords that nobody uses.

Google Keyword Planner is an excellent tool for keyword research. Use this to find the correct terms. This tool shows how many users search for the keywords you select monthly. You may also use the Google search page and type in a keyword related to your practice.

Google will show suggested keywords you can use. Marketers can search for the top keywords from these suggestions and use the ones that can provide the best value to your PPC campaigns.

Finally, checking your competitor sites is an excellent way to determine if you are using the right keywords. Which keywords or key phrases are they using, and how are they ranking with these keywords? Take note of these questions when preparing your medical keywords.

Prefer Low-Competition, Focused Medical Keywords

Advertisers select high-competition keywords to increase site traffic and improve sales. Only businesses with large SEO budgets can afford expensive search terms. High-competition keywords will only cost you more per bid. Thus, using these could be more complex and costly for an average marketer.

Try ranking using low-competition keywords because only a few sites and businesses compete for these terms. These low-competition keywords are perfect for crafting your new SEO campaigns for a smaller or new market. Instead of using “dermatologists” or “skincare,” try to rank for “acne removal dermatologist” or “natural skincare for sensitive skin.”

You can use the Google Keyword Tool to look for low-competition keywords. Also, every SEO tool has a unique formula to find keywords; some use keyword difficulty instead of keyword competitiveness, like the Ahrefs Keyword Difficulty score.

Keyword difficulty is a metric that determines how easy or difficult it is to use a keyword for ranking. Specifying the difficulty of a keyword will help you determine if a keyword is worth your time and resources to rank.

Fine Tune Your User Targeting

Digital Authority Partners said improving user targeting can prevent common medical SEO setup mistakes. Overlooking user targeting is like ignoring your customers or clients. You’ll end up spending on-site optimization tactics, but all your efforts will be in vain as your target market won’t be able to see your website.

Your target audience refers to people whom you want to visit your website. They are potential customers or prospects looking for businesses similar to yours using search engines. Modeling your optimization strategies based on their needs serves you best. You should also consider how they find you (search engines, social media, video sites, etc.).

Use Google Analytics to enhance your user targeting. With GA, you can check user behavior, demographics, geographic (location and language), preferred device, interests, user flow, behavior, and many more.

Try checking forums and reviews, using a quiz, or calling your prospects to discover your target audience’s needs. These traditional ways of collecting user data can help marketers improve targeting and create better-paid ad campaigns.

Don’t Overlook Technical SEO.

Technical SEO has become an important ranking factor that you cannot ignore. If you overlook technical components that deliver an amazing user experience, ranking in the SERP could be harder.

There are many aspects of technical SEO that you should focus on. Be sure to include these tips as you set up your SEO strategies.

• Use SSL or Secure Sockets Layer for all your landing pages. SSL enhances site security by encrypting data between the browser and your site to avoid interception.
• Optimize every page of your site for mobile use.
• Find and fix duplicate content. Ensure that these are not indexed in your site’s XML sitemap.
• Ensure that every page has structured data markup. Doing so can help search engines locate and understand your site’s content.
• Enhance page speed by compressing your files, trimming your codes, updating plugins, and checking for redirects.

If implementing technical SEO sounds complicated, consult a website developer to help you. Most SEO agencies offer technical SEO services that support on-page and off-page SEO efforts.

Final Words

The SEO setup phase is a crucial part of crafting your optimization strategies. Failing at this point can affect the success of your overall SEO strategies. Follow these techniques to avoid common setup errors, and you’ll surely be steps closer to optimizing your medical practice website in no time.