According to the Search-Engine-Journal, the leads in an SEO website have a 14.4% rate of closure. It means that 14.4% of the total users visiting the optimized website are converted to customers- whereas leads from other sources (Print Advertising etc.) have a closure rate of 1.7%. Today around 56% of adults in America use smartphones. It shows how important it is to optimize the website and rank higher in the search engine results for the prospective patients who use search engines for relevant healthcare-related searches.  

SEO Tips for Healthcare Providers

1. Choosing the Right Keywords

The goal of optimizing the keywords of a website is to ensure that keywords that are chosen prove to be effective- that would help drive the right kind of traffic to the website. It also proves effective in driving maximum traffic to find the website rank high in the search results to quickly find the right type of traffic. 

Choosing the right kind of keywords is very necessary for managing the website in the healthcare industry. First of all, making a list of the most searched keywords relevant to the website or the service provider is the primary task. The chosen keyword should make it clear to the algorithms of search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.)what the website is all about, what it contains, what type of services or products are featured on the website, etc. It also ensures in helping the search engines to understand for which kind of search queries the website should yield in top search results.

After making or compiling the list of keywords or search items- those have to be tested by searching each of the keywords in the Google keyword planner to find out which of these have a decent amount of local traffic monthly- also need to find out which of those phrases or keywords have less amount of competition from various advertisers. When analyzing the keywords – it is good to shoot for keyword phrases of 200 to 10,000 monthly searches locally. After completing the final filtered list preparation, it’s now turning to incorporate the keywords organically through relevant web pages through various blog posts/articles and other types of content.

As per Google, “77% of the people prefer to search before booking an appointment with google”. So, it’s necessary to incorporate the right keywords in the website development or management of a healthcare organization. The goal behind metadata management is to make it easier for an individual or a program to locate specific data. It also helps an organization in the establishment of policies and procedures to ensure that the information can be integrated, accessed, linked, and analyzed to provide the best benefits to the organization.

The Meta-data consists of the HTML meta tags between the open and closing tags in an HTML code. These tags help the search engine know what is there on the page with the help of metadata description, title tag, and headers. The title tag reflects at the top of the browser and acts as the page’s title and in blue text in the search engine results. They should be edited so that it is no longer than 65 characters and make sure that it naturally incorporates the keywords while naming the page. A meta description must not be more than 150 characters as it describes the content of the page.  Benefits of Metadata management include:

• It helps inconsistency of the metadata definitions so that the terminology of variables doesn’t create any issues in data retrieval.  
• Lessen down redundancy of the efforts and greater consistency across multiple instances of data.
• It maintains the information across the organization so that it doesn’t need to depend on a particular employee’s knowledge. 

2. Defining Meta-Data: Title Tags and Meta Description 

Metadata management refers to administering those data that describes other data. As per Digital-Commons reports, Meta-data helps address the problem of documenting multiple information systems and exchanging data between them.  

3. Creation of Original Content

Creating original content for the healthcare service provider website is very important to stand out in the competition. There should be a professional representation of those contents to make sure that their completeness and accuracy get increased. By providing the right kind of knowledge and educating the audience, the website’s value and the institution receive increased. This also helps in gaining a high ranking in the search engines.

By publishing various types of content such as blog posts, videos, interviews, patient testimonials or videos, and other conversations and information about the healthcare industry, the website would drive more traffic- which has an excellent possibility for conversion into customers. A healthcare organization should try to answer the audience’s questions and queries, which would lead to driving more potential customers to the website.  

4. Including a Sitemap for the Website

A well-executed technical SEO helps make the website crawlable. An HTML site map is one of the critical factors that help in achieving the goal. This allows the search engines to crawl the website- It means they send a boot to the webpage to read it. Google boot is then able to determine what’s there on the website. It leads to search engines showing the website in the search results. Site maps are helpful for users to access the website better. There are two types of sitemaps- HTML( Hypertext Markup Tools) and XML(Extensive markup language). HTML is highly recommended as it helps to make the website more user-friendly.  

5. Own Different Search Verticals

Often, it’s seen that the website fails to rank itself in other search verticals such as in videos, slideshow, images, mobile, etc. For a healthcare service provider website and a good option to leverage the search as mentioned earlier engine verticals to get more and targeted audience/traffic to the website. For example, the presentations shared on slide-share can also be optimized- can help drive more traffic using relevant keywords or phrases for long-term benefits.

6. Local Search Marketing

Optimization of the website for Local Search Marketing is one of the most important things for a Healthcare Service Provider. Yet estimates that about 50% of the searches are being performed on mobile devices. So it’s highly recommendable for using a local mobile-friendly experience for the users for standing out in the competition. Healthcare providers can benefit tremendously from local high rankings.

Local search is considered one of the essential search verticals – as the patients have to visit the local healthcare professionals to avail themselves of the healthcare services. It’s necessary to ensure that the organization’s or the institution’s name, address, contact details are correctly updated on Google+ local page, Foursquare page, and on the organization’s website footer in the entire website. It’s also very important to continuously review the reviews posted on the Google+ Local Page to ensure there isn’t any negative review posted- which can adversely affect the website ranking.

7. Using Social Media to Improve Rankings

Various search engines such as Google, Yahoo, etc., consider a number of factors in order to determine the Quality of a website- Social Media is one of those factors. For example, if a website is shared across social media networks effectively, Google or other search engines take this into account. Social media platforms help in facilitating two-way conversations between a healthcare organization and an individual.

The impact of social media on SEO is basically link building. It also helps in driving more traffic to the website. Using Google+, Linked In, etc., are good social media platforms to connect with users and build an audience. They are focusing more on Quality than one quantity is one of the essential factors to be emphasized when it comes to Social Media Platforms.

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• WHY DO HOSPITALS NEED DIGITAL MARKETING?

There are various reasons for hospitals to go for digital marketing. Some of them are as follows:

• To target a specific audience in a particular target area or locality.
• To advertise specific medical services available in the hospital.
• To use social media platforms to increase footfalls in the area or locality that was untouched earlier to attract patients from those areas. 
• To analyze the productivity for the effort put forward and the cost involved in digital marketing.

DIGITAL HEALTHCARE MARKETING STRATEGIES It’s much better for a hospital to have a digital marketing strategy in place than to wait until they find out that their CRM patient marketing database is nearly empty. Digital healthcare marketing is an investment the doctors or healthcare marketing professionals make. For extensive digital marketing, they may have to hire an outside professional or a marketing agency and plan for a larger budget than what they have had in the past. In the end, it would prove the worth of time and money- and I would love to see the patient volume increase like never before. Following are the few digital marketing strategies for hospital and other healthcare professionals as mentioned by MDG advertising   

• Search Engine Optimization Marketing

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is optimizing the website of the hospitals and keywords, etc. so that the website ranks high when a relevant query is searched on google. In other words, it helps the website to appear higher in search engine result pages ( SERP). SEO is a free strategy as per Alter marketing Solutions. It takes time to do the ranking, and there are various other factors on which the SEO or ranking is dependent. SEO keeps the website up with any changes made by search engines on how to display the results or information to the users. According to an in-depth research report as presented by google on the way users search about hospitals, “77% of the potential patients do their search in search engines whereas 76% turn up to the organization’s websites. Does it help in answering the most crucial question as to whether an investment in paid ads and optimization of the hospital’s website is essential or not? The statistics as put forward by Google show that the investment in ads and optimization is vitally important. Of course, the key is devotion to the optimization time and ads on the right things so as it targets the right services, location, and patients to gain maximum advantage. 

• Relevant Digital Content for Relating to Health

When it comes to content, many hospitals are seen in an enviable position. But many of them are still not able to realize its importance. By creating unique content such as articles, blog posts, videos, interviews, and medical breakthroughs or changes in the healthcare industry, they may become authoritative figures in the healthcare field. 

According to WebFX, symptoms and healthcare conditions have been the most searched topics by a patient before they visit a hospital or a medical practitioner. So by having good informational content on the website, the hospital can expect to have more patients visiting their hospitals. This makes the website more engaging and informative, helps Google understand this more nicely, and allows it to appear on the first page of relevant searches. This can help the hospitals in more lead acquisition. Following are some of the to-do features for Digital Content Management by Hospitals and other Healthcare Providers:

• Easy Administration

The admin dashboard is regarded as the heart of any Employee Content Management System (ECMS). So it should be easy for all tasks involved in content production, such as keeping track of scheduled content, adding functionality through modules and plugins, notification management for assignments, etc.

• Powerful Publishing Tools

A good ECMS needs to involve the content they want to publish on their websites – everything for the short press release or long blogs. 

• Social media Interaction

Social media interaction is an essential tool for Content Digital Marketing. Social Media Interactions and updates have proved to be a necessary element for interaction with the target audience. It refers to the fact that having an easy social media button on any page or piece of content on the website can encourage people to interact more and generate more audiences. 

• Multi-Platform capabilities

ECMS Capable of managing or functioning in Multi-Platform gives an organization room to grow more. For example, suppose a hospital wants to leverage the ECMS to deliver content to a second screen- such as a kiosk, mobile app, etc. In that case, it is essential to have multi-platform capabilities.

• Detailed Analytics

Tracking of the audiences and engagement with them is an essential part of ECMS. So, the ECMS should be such that it can integrate with the most popular analytics tool- So that it is possible to track KPIs right from the dashboard design.

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Evolving of Healthcare Marketers to include Digital Marketing 

During the mid-1990s, the internet grew to be a mainstream media of marketing. It led to forever changing the landscape of digital marketing. Many healthcare providers then started opening websites with the resources available to them. The goal behind creating the websites was to make the people know the healthcare services provided by a particular hospital or by any healthcare clinic. Websites have led to becoming more complex, and sophisticated healthcare marketing websites came into practice. Earlier it was seen that healthcare prospects used the internet or websites to search for contact details of any hospital or of a healthcare professional. But now, websites have changed and are showcasing best practices in the healthcare industry. Today the website for a healthcare provider is a hub of all kinds of advertising and promotional activity.  

Role of Digital Marketing in the Healthcare Industry 

Over the last few years, it has been seen that the healthcare industry has been able to become pivotal to the success of practices. Digital marketing practices in the healthcare industry are seen to be progressing at an immense speed. Digital marketing allows healthcare professionals to show their expertise to prospective customers. It offers better and effective ways to communicate with the customers than traditional marketing techniques. One survey conducted by Mckinsey found out that about 75% of respondents are interested in using digital healthcare-related services. Following are some of the reasons responsible for huge turnout towards digital marketing in the healthcare industry and why digital marketing has turned out to be the need of the hour:

• Conscious Customers

Nowadays, customers are seen to be more aware and conscious than ever before. The journey towards searching for a specific healthcare service begins at Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. It starts by searching for various causes of particular symptoms seen by the patients and DIY solutions for the problems they are suffering from. 

 Also, people are seen searching for special diagnostic centers, specialist doctors over the search engine. 

Search Engine Optimization and Marketing for Healthcare Marketers

Social Media helps publish educational content related to healthcare, which helps keep the people informed and connected. It helps in trust-building. For a healthcare professional to build an online presence, it’s essential to use Social Media to create awareness and stay healthy. For example, the Government of India has developed a Facebook Messenger chatbot that helps people by answering their questions and also helps by directing the citizens to the right kind of information and practice. Following are some of the statistics as per healthcare success that shows the importance of Social Media Marketing in the Healthcare Industry:

• Facebook has a record of having 2.5 billion users from all over the world.
• Whatsapp has over 1.6 billion users worldwide.
• Facebook Messenger has over 1.3 billion users worldwide.
• Instagram has 1 billion active users.
• Twitter also has an approx. 340 million users worldwide. 

So, the above statistics showcase the importance of social media in digital marketing for better ROI.  

The Future of Healthcare Marketing Digitally 

The future of healthcare advertising is based on digital marketing. Following are some of the addition to the digital healthcare marketing tools or techniques to stay connected to their prospective customers digitally:

• Use of Beacons

Beacon is a Bluetooth-enabled device used by retailers. Through this, they can connect and communicate with the customer’s phone. Similarly, for medical practitioners, using beacons in the future can prove to be very helpful. It can lead to staying connected with the patients in a specific geographical location near the office. 

It would be beneficial in providing real-time solutions to the patients’ queries residing in a specific geographical area or location. It would also help provide enhanced services and offer follow-up messages for appointments and other possible benefits. 

• Using Voice Assistant Technology

Google had introduced voice assistant technology for the benefit of its users. It helps in performing faster web searches. This technology is said to be fit for the healthcare industry. It is because the healthcare industry involves a high volume of information. Voice Assistant will provide hands-free use of technology. Speaking to search for something is a much faster process than typing something on a phone or a computer. For patients, it’s annoying to every time fill up forms to avail of any healthcare services online also can involve error. These problems can be quickly sorted out using virtual voice assistant technology into practice in the healthcare industry. 

• Push Notifications

Push notification service is referred to as opt-in online messages for various mobile apps. This is a very widely used feature by digital marketing professionals to increase user engagement and advertise the new offers easily. 

Push Notifications for the healthcare industry can be beneficial for the healthcare industry. Healthcare-related notifications from websites and apps can help in building trust and loyalty from users. Healthcare providers can use web push notifications for the following reasons:

• Remind patients about the appointment that is scheduled
• Reminding patients about their medication routines.
• Helpful in providing information about their diagnostics test results.
• It helps educate users about necessary steps or precautions to be taken in case of any health-related issues. 
• Useful in informing users about the availability of medicines in stock. 

• Market Automation

This refers to the segmentation of users based on specific criteria for advertising certain specialized products or services by a business. This feature can be helpful for the healthcare industry to send particular information only to the targeted customers or users. Customers want to remain updated about what’s happening. Market automation helps the healthcare industry or healthcare professionals to do this more efficiently. Market Automation can help in transforming the healthcare industry by sending automated emails and important notifications to the target customers. A study found that the industries or companies that used market automation techniques have a 107% greater lead conversion rate and have 17% or better accuracy in forecasting, as mentioned in commonplaces.com. Market Automation software can help the healthcare industry analyze the in-depth customer-related data and also campaign-related data and helps in better forecasting the future needs and demands of the market.   

• 360-Degree Photo & Video Tours

It can be an innovative technique for the healthcare industry to engage the audience and create value for the customers. For example- A 360-degree view of the hospital showing various facilities available for diagnostics and treatment in the hospital can help in more engagement of the audience. 

Facebook introduced 360-degree features in the year 2016, especially for iPhone and Samsung Galaxy Users. Healthcare Marketers can use this feature to produce 360-degree photos or video features to share views of their offices etc, on Facebook.  

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