Search engine optimization, or SEO, is a mandate for growing your business exponentially. It increases brand awareness and attracts new patients to your practice. But not utilizing SEO carefully can hit your search engine ranking. Your website traffic could take a nosedive and no longer would you receive better conversion rates. Below are the common SEO mistakes to avoid for strong online reputation and growth of your practice.
- Keyword selection
Selection of keywords is a tedious task. There are numerous criteria behind finalizing the right keywords. Instead of going with generic keywords, you need to select practice- or service-specific keywords. Generic and broad keywords bring in traffic initially but not conversions. The more accurate you are with keywords, the better results you will get for your practice. Secondly, don’t forget long-tail keywords or key phrases specific to your practice. This will give you high-quality visitors and better conversion. Keyword phrases should include the USPs of your practice.
Thirdly, don’t forget to target your local customers. Focus on your local customers instead of placing global keywords that just attract visitors who will land on your web page but miss the genuinely interested potential patients. For instance, if you are a gynecologist in Austin, select ‘gynecologist Austin’ as your keyword instead of just ‘gynecologist.’ Check for keyword variation for not missing high-volume terms. Make use of Google AdWords Keywords Planner before finalizing the keywords.
And fourthly, check the occurrences. Keywords should never be ‘stuffed.’ Over-optimization can cause you trouble. A keyword in every sentence can make content useless for potential patients visiting your website. Even worse, keyword stuffing can get your website registered as spam.
- Internal linking
The best way to promote your website’s top-performing pages is by placing internal links in your content. This will highlight them. For good internal linking, make use of keyword-specific anchor text. Just like keyword stuffing, overdoing internal linking can make all your efforts go in vain. So place links only at relevant and exact places.
- Inconsistent citation
Citation is the mentioning of your practice over the Internet. It includes your name, address and phone number, also known as NAP. It is a much-required practice for building strong local SEO activities. In case you are launching a campaign in your locality, inconsistent local citations can spoil it all. This will not only affect your Google ranking but also potential patients’ trust in your practice.
- Title tags, meta descriptions, and header tags
Each page of your website should be unique. Make use of Google Search Console tools to check for any duplication. To save your ranking and click-through rate, you need to avoid duplication. Tags help Google and visitors to actually check what the page has for them. Refrain from using the same words repeatedly. Make use of combinations of keywords.
- Irrelevant content
Good-quality and relevant content is what search engines look for when ranking your site. Content with irrelevant keywords and not focusing on customers’ searches will surely rank low in the search engines. So instead of uploading immaterial content on your website just for the sake of increasing the number of pages, it is better to have high-quality content that educates and empowers your target audience.
- SEO expert
If you don’t know SEO, hire an SEO expert instead of making blunders with your hit-or-miss methods. An SEO expert will ensure high ranking for your practice. The expert will make use of marketing strategies and trends. But be sure to hire efficient a person/agency instead of a marketing professional who just has education and no real-world experience in dealing with market scenarios.
- Analyzing data
Once your website and blog are up on the Internet, you need to track the status of traffic along with the location of traffic, conversions and keyword ranking. Based on your analysis, you can identify the most and least performing keywords and use them accordingly in your content, links, and tags.
It is necessary to rank high in search engines for your practice to grow, but you cannot compromise on your ultimate goal of attracting more patients. This can never be achieved without quality service and informative content. These act as the reputation builder of your practice. Thus, hire an expert and follow the above tips to build a strong online image for your practice today.
Don’t take your practice at risk and avoid these SEO mistakes!