Posts in category: Local SEO

Back in the old days, healthcare professionals got new patients by hanging signs to inform people about the medical services they offered. Then came newspaper ads and the Yellow Pages. However, in today’s world dominated by the Internet, those days are long gone.

The number of people relying on the Internet to get information on various health-related matters, more specifically finding the right healthcare provider, has significantly increased.

In the US, about 72% of the population use the Internet when searching for a healthcare professional. Interesting to note here is that 77% of the population uses a search engine such as Google, Bing, or Yahoo for their search and only 13 percent use a health-specific directory.

Growing your online presence as a healthcare provider is no longer optional

To thrive in this digital age, it is indispensable to have a great online presence so that new patients can find you easily. Otherwise, they are finding your competitors, which is obviously, not the desired outcome.

Getting your potential patients to land on your website is the major reason healthcare providers leverage search engine optimization or SEO services, which is the process of increasing the organic (natural) visibility or ranking of a website in a search engine using a methodology of strategies, techniques, and tactics.

It is a strategy used to ensure your website is one of the first non-paid listings in the search engine results for health conditions and medical treatment searches related to your specialty.

Local SEO brings customers through your door

Now you may be wondering where does Local SEO come into the picture?

Local SEO is about bringing customers through your doors, thus helping you and your practice grow by meeting your business goals through improved search ability online and increased visibility for your website in a specific location.

So if you want to expand your reach in your locality, you need local SEO. This marketing approach is now widely utilized by healthcare professionals.

One important feature of local SEO is the Google Maps Local 3-Pack. The primary objective of local SEO is to get your business listed highly in Google Maps, with the ultimate goal of being listed in the Google Maps Local 3-Pack and preferably for multiple keywords.

Google Business Profile Listing is critical for your local SEO

Google Business Profile is crucial to your online success as well. GBP is a free online profile offered by Google, that helps consumers learn about your business. GBP also functions to help professionals like you manage your business presence online on Google-owned properties such as Google Search and Google Maps.

As you sign up, you will be asked details of your practice/ business so your potential patients can have as much information as possible. It is important that you make the most of the features in Google Business Profile as Google relies on this for local searches.

In fact, according to a recent study, GBP signals are the number one ranking factor for the 3-Pack, accounting for over 25% of a 3-Pack ranking!

When a patient searches for a healthcare provider, Google displays the 3-Pack, which consists of top three results near the patient, in the form of a map indicating clinic or office location and then a list of three providers, with basic information, including the name of the business, address, phone, website, and directions.

Google then decides which businesses show up in the 3-pack based on relevance, distance, and prominence for local SEO.

Optimizing Your Google Business Profile Listing

Completeness
As mentioned earlier, you will be asked details of your business as a healthcare provider. It is essential that you have a complete account profile.

Avoid leaving blanks and ensure that the details you provided like your phone number, website URL, business hours, and business categories are all accurate. If you can, try to also provide significant photos of your practice and yourself especially those that can manifest your credibility.

Correctness
You will definitely miss out on your chance making it to the local pack on search results if you failed to provide accurate information. Google also sends a verification card to your physical location before you complete your listing.

If you will not receive the card, then you cannot proceed. This goes to show how important it is to have a correct address.

Consistency
Consistency is vital to any local SEO technique. Do not assume that search engines and potential patients are smart enough to distinguish the right NAP (Name, Address, Phone) data among different names, varying addresses, and incorrect phone numbers.

When Google see inconsistencies as it crawls your website and online directories, then it will simply won’t place you in the local pack. Worse yet, according to a recent survey, 80% of consumers lose trust in local businesses if they see incorrect or inconsistent contact details or business names online.

Boost your Local SEO through Positive Patient Reviews

You may probably underestimate the impact of online reviews on your practice. You may be the best as a specialist but the absence of online word-of-mouth could jeopardize your business.

While online reviews do not necessarily reflect your competency as a medical professional, almost 90% of people who search online are influenced by positive online reviews as much as personal recommendations.

Thus, if you want to boost your local search engine rankings, you have to strive to get your positive reviews from your patients.

Google is now the fastest growing online reviews platform in the world and because it handles the majority of search traffic, acquiring a five-star rating for your business can immensely affect your online reputation in a very constructive way.

You need to leverage your patient’s experience through testimonials. This way, people looking for comparable health-related issues can be provided valuable information while driving traffic to your site at the same time.

However, if negative reviews make you hesitant to solicit feedback from your patients, you may benefit from an expert online reputation manager who could strategize a way to help you prevent getting a bad review online.

Leverage local SEO techniques to win more business

So, if this is the first time you are setting up a business listing, or you are reviewing a current marketing campaign, or you are simply unsatisfied with your current search rankings, we are here to help you boost your local rankings with our advanced local SEO practices.

The team at NewStar SEO can help your business grow by helping you achieve your goals as a healthcare provider.

Get ready to show up on the first page of search results with our full-service digital marketing solutions!

Google is so ubiquitous when it comes to web searches that it’s often used as a verb. But despite their popularity, Google searches now account for less than 65% of the total search engine market in the US. And the primary reason for Google’s loss of market share is the slow but steady growth of Bing. That’s right, it’s time to take notice of Bing. The onetime little search engine who couldn’t, is now used for 23.7% of all web searches in the United States. And when you add in the 11.9% of searches that are performed using Yahoo and its affiliates (which are powered by Bing) its total share of the search engine market climbs to over 35%! These numbers are just too big to ignore.

Need more convincing that it’s time to take Bing Seriously? Not only are more than one out of every three searches being conducted using Bing’s technology, but Bing users tend to have a higher conversion rate than Google users. And equally compelling is the fact that there is so much attention focused on Google, that there is often less SEO competition on Bing than there is with Google. So many times, it’s easier to get first page rankings on Bing.

Bing SEO

This isn’t just limited to desktop organic search either. There are plenty of consumers that use Bing Maps for local search, so it’s important to make sure your site is optimized for that as well. Again, this will take some extra work by the SEO agency. And don’t forget optimizing for mobile search. This is important because more than have of searches are now made on mobile devices. But the results will be well worth it.

Also important is setting-up a Bing Places for Business Listing. Similar to Google Business Profile previously GMB, the listing is free and if properly set-up can be quite helpful in getting new customers.

Considering these facts, it’s important to make sure that the SEO agency you choose is optimizing your website for Bing. This isn’t something that happens automatically. There are a number of steps that need to be taken to optimize your site. First, all your website’s pages need to be indexed with Bing. Your sitemap will need to be sent to Bing as well. Bing’s keyword algorithm is different than Google, so you will want to make sure that your SEO is familiar with the differences and will proceed accordingly. An as is the case with SEO keyword research and implementation with Google, your SEO agency’s proficiency here can make the difference between a successful campaign and a disappointing one.

SEO doesn’t have to be hard to understand. There really is a process that will achieve great results almost every time. But there are countless SEO agencies out there – so many that making a decision to move forward with your company’s SEO can be a really difficult one. However, if you are looking for an SEO agency that keeps up to date on all of the newest trends. And who prices their services fairly and transparently. Look no farther than NewStar SEO. We will make sure you get the most for your digital marketing dollar, which will result in more leads, sales and profits. Because it’s not about SEO. It’s about growing your business.

Note: While NewStar SEO loves the results clients can achieve by adding Bing to their overall digital marketing strategy, we feel it’s important to state that we are not affiliated with Bing.

Imagine your local business in the Google Maps Local 3-Pack for multiple keywords in less than three weeks. And while we have been able to achieve these results, I wouldn’t call them typical. However, I mention this to illustrate the point that local SEO is different from Organic SEO, which typically takes at least two to three months to see any significant results. Local SEO requires specialized knowledge, tactics and procedures. And while implementing the standard SEO process used for organic SEO may eventually get a local business into the Google Maps Local 3-Pack, there are much better ways to achieve this goal.

Since the main goal of local SEO is to get your business listed highly in Google Maps, with the ultimate goal of being listed in the Google Maps Local 3-Pack and preferably for multiple keywords. There are a number of reasons for this, mainly that 3-Pack listings are very prominently displayed in search results. visible. And that local searches are highly likely to turn into a visit to your local business or website, resulting in a sale and revenue in a short period of time.

For this blog entry we are going to focus on Google. However, the techniques discussed will generally work for other search engines such as Bing, Yahoo and YouTube.

First, you need to understand goals, with Proximity, Relevance and Prominence being the three primary ranking factors that Google uses when determining how highly to rank a local business in a search:

Proximity

Since this is a local search, it only makes sense that Google will be looking for businesses close to where the user is conducting the search. By using information such as the IP address on a laptop or desktop computer and GPS in a mobile phone, they are able to determine a user’s location with a high degree of accuracy. This is why it’s so important to help Google determine exactly where your business is located. It’s also important to have your business name, address and phone number (NAP) accurately displayed on your website. And you need a map on your website as well. There are a number of special, little known (but still totally white hat) techniques that can be used to give your business an advantage here as well. And being an agency with a strong focus on local SEO, NewStar SEO will use all techniques at their disposal to give your business an edge over your competitors.

Relevance

This is where having great content comes into play. When a search engine like Google indexes your site, they analyze the content. They then take your content, along with all of your competitors’ content and try to match it to search queries. Basically, whoever has the best content wins. But it isn’t just information about your business that’s important. Your SEO agency needs to understand how to properly use and distribute your keyworks into your site’s content. Also, of great importance is the making sure the context of your keywords is clear. For example, Google has to be able to tell the difference between a company building boat docks and a company selling computer docking systems.

Prominence

Google loves prominent companies because they believe that a prominent company will be able to best serve the needs of a customer. From an SEO standpoint the best way to make your website prominent is through references to it on relevant, high authority websites. However, local SEO differs from organic SEO here as well. With a site that’s focused on only achieving good organic search results, backlinks to the site are the number one priority. However, while backlinks are still important for local SEO results, local citations are at least, if not more, important. A citation is any time the name address and phone number (NAP) of your business is a website is mentioned on the Internet.

Almost all citations will be set-up by building listings for your business on local directories and while a good local SEO agency will initiate a citation campaign for your business, a great local SEO agency will know which niche and location-specific directories will be best for your own particular business. And what specific business information and ranking signals need to be included in each citation to make sure it will be as effective as possible for your business. A citation in the wrong directory could actually hurt your search rankings and a citation that isn’t indexed by Google and the other search engines has pretty much no value to you.

And while there are no guarantees in life, including search rankings, when all three of these ranking factors are properly addressed, the likelihood your site will rank well, including appearing in the Google Maps Local 3-Pack, will greatly increase.

For over 20 years SEO has been great way to grow your business and increase your leads, sales and profit from your website. If you have a local business and are looking for a great local SEO agency, let us know. The team at NewStar SEO can help you reach your goals and help your business grow.