How Do I Make It To The Top?

Every business, big or small, wants to be #1 on the search page when a potential customer is searching for services. Doctors and hospitals are no exception.  While no one can be #1 all the time for everything, ranking higher consistently is possible with some good SEO guidelines. Physicians are using content marketing to gain more patients and to be ranked as experts in targeted areas.

What Is Content Marketing?

The phrase content marketing gets tossed around a lot, but most people aren’t sure what the term means. Think of content marketing as a way to explain a procedure or medical condition in layman’s terms. Content marketing is a way to give people an understanding of a particular topic briefly.

Writing for SEO results is different

Google likes simplicity. There’s no reason to add a lot of fluff. Google wants well-structured and straightforward wording. Especially for people writing about topics in the medical sector. The more understandable a topic can be, the better. Aim for 6th-8th grade level skills on the Flesch readability scale. When big words are being used like cardiology or obstetrics or ambulatory surgical center, keeping all the other words small will make sentences easier to understand.

Tips on structure

1. Create lots of headings. People have short attention spans and using headings will engage the reader.
2. Keywords are important. The keyword or keyword phrase should be in the title, in the first paragraph and sprinkled throughout the article. Every 100 words or so should contain the keyword.
3. Short sentences make points. Keeping a reader’s attention is difficult and sentences longer than 20 words will lose interest fast.

Tips on readability

1. Be clear. Be concise. Make points quickly.
2. Get rid of unnecessary punctuation. Drop the Oxford comma. Don’t use emdash for emphasis and eliminate ellipsis. In other words….. please – stop – adding characters that don’t need to be there. Excess punctuation confuses Google and loses impact, especially on mobile devices.
3. Stop using $5 words. When appropriate, keep the medical jargon to a minimum.  For example, use heart instead of cardiac when applicable.

How much information is enough?

There are many schools of thought about the length of a topic that is to be used for content marketing. If the primary objective is to drive traffic and gain exposure, a few short articles per month is the best strategy.

Why content marketing works

Providing useful information on a regular basis that answers medical questions a patient may have builds trust.  No one wants to be advertised to; people just want answers.  Providing bite-size information on niche topics will help patients understand procedures and medical conditions.  This type of marketing has proven to be successful for physicians, hospitals, pharmacies and ASCs.

Providing knowledge builds trust

Most people like to do research.  WebMD has built a reputation of being a place to refer to for some medical information.  By providing information through blogs, social media and medical awareness campaigns, a site becomes a trusted resource.  Creating content that is easy to understand and read will bring more traffic to a website, but more importantly, Google will rank a site higher with expert content.

More content equals faster growth

Companies that provide content every day or even every other business day grow the fastest.  This is the quickest way to accelerate domain authority growth, especially for newer websites.  With competition to retain existing patients and obtaining new ones becoming more challenging, using a holistic approach to a healthy digital web presence is vital for survival.