If you have a website – and maybe even some social media pages for your practice, like a Facebook page – is your work done? The answer is no, because the mere fact that you have a website for your practice does not necessarily mean that it will help people find your practice and convert them into patients. What you need for this is SEO.
SEO, or search engine optimization, consists of a variety of strategies and techniques aimed at drawing traffic to your website. This includes improving the ranking of your website’s pages in search engine results, getting more “clicks” to your website, and ultimately, the conversion of a website visitor to a patient. While you may think that things like traffic and clicks are not what you need – you need patients, after all – these strategies and metrics are essential for drawing people to your website and eventually converting them into patients.
Because SEO has been around for several years now, it has become increasingly varied. For SEO professionals, there are numerous factors to consider – crawling and indexing, loading speeds, language targeting, UX issues, website accessibility, and much more. If you did not understand some of those terms (or have only a very basic knowledge of their meaning), do not worry. After all, your specialty is audiology, not search engine optimization.
However, that does not mean that SEO is not essential to the growth of your practice. Two main SEO factors are especially important for your audiology practice:
- Organic SEO: Organic SEO refers to search engine rankings and website traffic obtained with unpaid methods. This means you are not using paid online advertising (such as Google Ads) to get more people to visit your website.
Organic SEO is important because you want your website to rank well on search engine results pages (SERPs) and to draw traffic without the need for paid ads. After all, you don’t want to pay for online ads indefinitely, do you? If your website ranks well organically, it will continue drawing in new traffic – and in turn, new patients – over time.
Plus, surveys show that 70-80 percent of people completely skip over the paid search engine results, choosing to only click on organic results. In many people’s minds, organic rankings are more meaningful. Some basics for achieving a solid organic ranking include using relevant keywords in your site content, providing website visitors with useful information, making your contact information easily accessible, and having a website that is developed using the most up-to-date methods.
- Local SEO: The simple truth is that audiology is largely a location-based service. While teleaudiology is developing and may be a bigger player in the future, most people looking for an audiologist are looking for a brick-and-mortar practice in their local area. This means that you want your website to appear as a top result when people search for audiology services in your community.
While Google and other search engines are constantly updating how local results are determined and listed, they typically highlight the top local results. For Google, this means you want a spot in the “Local Pack.” If your practice can appear in one of these coveted positions, a person who searches for services you provide will be able to easily access your website, your service descriptions, your office hours, and your contact information. Research indicates that 72 percent of consumers who conduct a local search visit a store/office within five miles of their current location, so you want to get as many of those local searchers as possible!
With strong organic page rankings and a solid local presence, your website is sure to draw in the traffic and new patients your practice needs. For more information about the value of SEO, we welcome you to contact us today at AudiologyPlus. We have more than 20 years of experience in marketing, and we are here to help you grow your business.
