In every industry, digital marketing has become a vital part of their success. Unlike other industries, the healthcare industry was pretty slow in adopting digitalization due to lack of government regulations and the way you see healthcare (as a service than a business). Relying on experts in medical SEO is now necessary for your healthcare marketing as the COVID-19 has changed the situation. To provide healthcare services in a more flexible way, the government relaxed regulations and started providing essential services to those in need. This persuaded the healthcare industry to go digital and adapt to new challenges using technology.
According to rapidboostmarketing, healthcare businesses have faced a 50% decrease in revenue due to the COVID-19 impact. In 2021, the main concern of healthcare providers will be to revamp their brands and recover the lost revenue exhausted during the epidemic. So, healthcare practices realize that they must have a marketing strategy to attract and retain patients. By increasing online engagement and optimizing your brand presence, you can boost your healthcare brand’s growth.
To recover from the onslaught of the virus and to make your digital marketing efforts effective post-COVID-19, you have to replace your old strategies with the new trends emerging in healthcare marketing. Here are some top marketing trends to consider to achieve better growth and stand ahead in the 2021 healthcare marketplace:
Patient Retention is a Top Priority: Patient retention is always and will remain a top priority. Many healthcare practices had their loyal patients with them during the COVID-19 situation. It is because these smart practices used powerful marketing tools such as social media and video marketing to keep their practices afloat. Due to this, patients remembered them in spite of not being able to go out physically and book their services. With their online presence, they are keeping their patients engaged with the brand and have also highlighted the safety measures they have in place to keep their patients safe the second they opened. It is crucial to use strategic content marketing to retain the patients during this shutdown and for your continued growth and success.
The Demand of Quality Social Media Content is High: Like every other industry, social media promotion has become a powerful strategy for healthcare marketing. For instance, in the case of plastic surgery practices, new patients on social media want to see your posts showing your treatment processes and results, like before and after pictures, and patient video testimonials. However, people are getting tired with repetitive content appearing on their feeds with a clear-defined sales promotion goal. What people look for is a credible brand that genuinely cares about them. Your patients want to see you, not some fake image you downloaded online. Publishing things like stock images, unless they are customized for your brand, will lower your brand’s online credibility. Healthcare providers should make use of the social media platform with a pure concern of sharing valuable information on health to followers. New patients will engage with healthcare practices with which they feel emotionally connected. You can establish an emotional connection with your target audience through surveys or testimonials. In 2021, social media content marketing will continue to be a trend in healthcare marketing, but the frequency of quality content publishing will make all the difference.
Effective Patient Communication will be Trending: It is very important for hospitals and healthcare organizations to check whether the patient gets better care in a timely manner. So, effective patient communication is a critical component. Not only today, but also in 2021 healthcare, patients want to get the best care with complete safety as the COVID-19 situation could continue through the beginning of 2021 also. So, to perform effective patient communication, whether it is sharing of medical records with other doctors or treatment records with patients or any other information regarding any disease symptoms, treatment, etc., communication should be trustworthy and useful. Healthcare marketers can offer the best services from subject matter experts with the healthcare organizations and make that content obtainable to their patient communities through different communication channels.
Captivating Videos and Healthcare news help Attract Patients: Sharing valuable content will educate your patients and create trust in your healthcare products/services. Everyone is posting healthcare-related videos, product demos, etc. but what does your patient need at a particular moment? Understand it and identify the common questions that your patients ask and then deliver them the right content. Good, relevant video content will help you rank well in Google. So, get ready for 2021, and create valuable content, captivating videos, and attractive images about your healthcare services to support your overall healthcare content marketing strategy. It will help you attract more readers and reach more people.
Source: @hopkinsmedicine on Instagram
Brand Reputation Remains Key: Patients only go with brands. When a patient hears your treatment plans or about your healthcare software features for the first time, they will immediately search the web about your organization to know more about you. What they get to see in the search results is essentially their first and the best impression. So, for healthcare success, online brand reputation is crucial. To achieve a good online reputation, expand your social media presence, ask for customer reviews that will help you do better, and showcase your customer testimonials that show your achievements.
Telemedicine will become more Prevalent: The COVID-19 situation has forced many changes, the resurgence of telemedicine (telehealth) options being one of them. While some appointments still need in-person visits, telemedicine appointments are helpful and suitable for visits that don’t require a face-to-face examination. It reduces exposure and spread of the disease by keeping both patients and doctors safe. Telemedicine also gives doctors a way to see and check people with COVID-19 symptoms without direct exposure. Telemedicine will not replace traditional healthcare, but it is predicted that telemedicine appointments will become more common and crucial for specific market segments.
Healthcare marketing trends are guaranteed to change throughout the year, but your patients always need the same thing, that is, a healthcare provider who is knowledgeable, genuinely helpful, and produces great results. The thing that has changed is how people find and build trust with healthcare providers. To make it possible, the effective implementation of the above-mentioned strategies is required. A reliable SEO company can help healthcare organizations and medical practices implement these strategies and stay ahead of the competition.
As we are all set to welcome the New Year with hopes and aspirations, here are some facts we need to keep in mind while we step into the world of SEO in 2021. Being an experienced digital marketing agency, providing medical SEO and SEO for diverse businesses, we have the privilege of working on success-driving strategies with clients on a daily basis.
Take a look at what’s coming for SEO in 2021. Here are some top SEO strategies that are working great right now.
Voice Search Will Impact Search Queries
Voice search uses innovations like Google Assistant, Apple’s Siri, and Amazon’s Alexa. Many such voice queries will highlight a featured snippet that suggests some tips, which would be a direct answer to the voice search question.
To optimize for voice search
explore the queries people search on Google and create content accordingly
consider your keywords and identify long-tail phrases that people use in everyday conversation
use a conversational tone in your content and answer the questions asked by your target audience
use Site Explorer tool for organic keywords report and filter the results that include interrogative words such as “when” and “how”
Make sure to adjust your content to the questions that people ask on Google
Page speed is a key factor in voice search optimization. Optimize your site with better page speed
Add Schema Markup to help search engine bots crawl and understand your content easily
While adding content based on voice searches, make sure to note the “People also ask” feature and provide content for relevant queries.
Automation – Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Optimization done using automation is one of the biggest trends in SEO for 2021. Automation should be another main focus in SEO to avoid penalties and remain competitive. In the last few years, artificial intelligence (AI) has changed how people interact with online content. With artificial intelligence, even huge volumes of datasets can be collected and analyzed. Also, site audits and search engine optimization can be made highly efficient.
RankBrain is one such Google AI algorithm that plays an important role in Google’s ranking factors for search engine results pages (SERPs). It provides better answers to users’ queries.
Mobile device user experience (UX) plays a key role. 2021 is the year to shift your focus to improving that experience for your mobile users. It is no longer optional, but mandatory to ensure your website and content perform well from a mobile perspective. Based on Google’s mobile-first indexing update, scheduled for March 2021, Google will no longer be ranking your desktop and mobile experiences differently.
Make sure to personalize the website content and elements based on your user.
Review your pages and check whether they are intuitive for your users, are easy to navigate, and you aren’t hiding valuable content and images on mobile devices.
Consider dynamic serving configurations so that the server responds with different HTML and CSS code on the same URL depending on the user’s device.
Perform regular website health check and ensure mobile-friendly design is operating right.
Make sure your mobile site has a URL different from your desktop site, which allows Googlebot to examine your site’s resources.
Check mobile and desktop site content and keep the headlines consistent and aesthetically pleasing on both versions.
Make sure to provide your user with high-quality pictures and videos in a supported format with relevant tags.
For businesses that still have a separate mobile site, it is time to reconsider migrating to a mobile responsive site instead as your mobile site will determine your rankings.
Core Web Vitals
Good user experience (UX) will have a more prominent impact on search engine rankings going forward. Google Search has added a variety of UX criteria, such as quickly loading pages and mobile-friendliness, as factors for ranking. It is important to check whether your pages are delivering the best experience possible for your user.
Core Web Vitals refers to a set of real-world, user-centered metrics that quantify key aspects of the user experience. These metrics help measure dimensions of web usability such as load time, interactivity, and the stability of content as it loads. Other search signals for page experience include mobile-friendliness, safe browsing, HTTPS and more.
In May 2020, the Chrome team introduced Core Web Vitals, a set of metrics for a healthy site. These metrics and tools across Google help business owners, marketers, and developers to identify opportunities to improve user experiences.
The foundation of the 2020 Core Web Vitals include
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) measures perceived load speed and marks the point in the page load timeline when the page’s main content has likely loaded.
First Input Delay (FID) measures responsiveness and quantifies the experience users feel when trying to first interact with the page.
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) measures visual stability and quantifies the amount of unexpected layout shift of visible page content.
Largest Contentful Paint is highly dependent on First Contentful Paint (FCP) and Time to First Byte (TTFB) which helps to monitor and improve. Wikipedia explains Time to first byte (TTFB) as an indication of the responsiveness of a web server or other network resource. It is announced that Chrome will update Core Web Vitals on an annual basis and provide regular updates on the future candidates, motivation, and implementation status.
Chrome UX Report enables site owners to quickly assess performance of their site for each Web Vital
Consider checking out dedicated Core Web Vitals report through Google Search Console. This provides an idea of where your web pages stand from a UX perspective and suggestions on how to make improvements
Use developer tools such as Lighthouse and PageSpeed Insights to surface Core Web Vitals information and recommendations
Google Passage Ranking
In October 2020, Google announced its new Passage Ranking algorithm. With this Passage-Based Indexing algorithm, Google will be identifying individual passages on a webpage to surface relevant content in the search results.
Even though publishers have nothing to do in response to this algorithm, it is better to review and rewrite heading elements and structure your content so that it’s easier for automated systems to understand your content better.
Only textual content benefit from this algorithm, and so keep your content organized. However, featured snippets and passages ranking are not the same and are two different systems.
Featured snippets refer to an “instant answer” with a few sentences or less that can be read right there in the search results. At the same time, a passage might not necessarily give a concise answer, but would be more of a “blue links” type search result. Passages that the algorithm picks up can be as short as a few words or as long as a paragraph. Passages can help publishers who may not have the best optimized pages. Websites that follow good SEO practices and know how to create well-structured content will not be affected by this algorithm. Also, mobile first indexing has nothing to do with ranking and nothing to do with rendering. It is made clear that sites with poorly-structured content should not rely on Passages to help their pages rank.
Some Bonus Tips
Focus on Visual Search – people are conducting more visual searches than ever before.
To optimize for visual search-
Make your pages mobile-friendly
Optimizing image filenames and alt text
Focus on E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness)
Make sure to have a thorough About page
Your contact page is easy to find
Add references and external links to sources
Use Video to Improve your SEO
Google highlights video featured snippets
Create clear sections in your video so that Google understands the content
Optimize video title, description and tags
Upload transcripts for your videos
Include video content in text-based blog posts
Search Intent is Important
Each content created should match users’ search intent
Publish content that searchers are exactly looking for
Consider re-optimizing old content
Hope getting prepared for these SEO trends would help you improve your website ranking and reach your targeted audience in 2021!
The holiday season is a good time for businesses to plan and implement effective SEO strategies. Any industry – healthcare, BPO or plastic surgery can consider publishing content optimized for the holiday season. Health care businesses can rely on the services from experienced medical SEO providers to improve their website visibility. Plastic surgery practices can publish content related to painless, hands-free body contouring, as in the wake of COVID-19, people prefer healthcare solutions that involve minimal physical contact.
SEO is a vital factor for business websites to ensure visibility, traffic, and ranking. During the holiday season, you have to publish content optimized for that particular period. For instance, if you have a website selling gifts, you can publish articles with titles like ‘5 Amazing Christmas Gift Ideas for Your Parents’. In healthcare, it is not that simple. The demand for healthcare services does not magically increase over the holidays. Many people put off their appointments or procedures until after the holidays. Even so, to improve your healthcare website SEO, you have to publish content optimized for that particular season. This year, the holiday is different, and people prefer shopping and obtaining healthcare solutions by avoiding maximum physical contact. For instance, if yours is a plastic surgery practice, publishing content like “Latest painless hands-free body-contouring methods that help you recover fast” or anything like that can improve your website traffic as well as conversion rates. So, your audience who need this treatment will be recharged and ready to work on their health again.
To improve the site visibility and traffic during this period, the following tips can help:
Update relevant keywords: There are a number of tools that can help you create a list of relevant keywords to target. Google’s keyword planner lets you segment keywords by month. During the holiday season, you need to identify high-volume keywords. Tools such as Moz Keyword Planner, Neil Patel’s UberSuggest, SEMrush, and Ahrefs Keyword Explorer are the other tools that can help to find relevant keywords. As the holiday season comes with increased traffic, it is crucial that websites focus more on relevant keywords. So, check your current rankings and traffic first and integrate holiday-related keywords that fit in with your content.
Use correct internal linking structure: Rather than ranking websites as a whole, search engines rank individual pages in SERPs, so internal linking should be a vital part of your SEO strategy. Your e-commerce website may have hundreds of pages; all of it needs to get traffic apart from the home page, and here internal linking becomes important. To transfer some traffic from the homepage to your product page, you can link your homepage to that product page, you can also link blogs or informative content to the relevant product page.
Launch new products: The holiday season is an excellent time to introduce new products. If you are aware of the potential best sellers for the future holiday season, ensure that you have started writing content about these products now. The more you write about the new products in advance, the chances are more that the sales pages for these products will rank when it matters. Ensure all pages you made upfront are linked to that one main page that you will establish when the product is launched and available to buy.
Add structured data: Adding structured data, also called schema markup, communicates to search engines what your data means. When you add or change the product pages to fit the season, you should not forget to optimize them. It is because, when rich snippets are displayed in Google search results, the additional data you add is usually pulled from structured data. So, check whether you have added structured data to your product pages, because the rich snippets for the products on the results page, including ratings and prices, can give you an edge over your competitors.Image Source: https://www.trustyou.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Meininger-Rich-Snippet.png
Optimize for speed and mobile: It is important to check and optimize your website speed and for mobile. Today, these are the recommendations you commonly get from an SEO expert. Mobile, website speed in mobile, and website speed in general are becoming more important and it matters in everyone’s life. When preparing your website for this holiday season, it is best to re-check your mobile website and the site speed, and if needed you have to update or improve it. It is crucial for your business, otherwise, you may be losing out on many potential buyers. To begin with, you can check Google’s Core Web Vitals and use these to improve your website.
Promote on Social Media: According to a survey mentioned in an article in makewebetter.com, 50% of companies that ignore social media marketing struggle to get good ranking for their website. Having a good social media marketing plan helps you attract maximum target audience. Make sure to optimize your social media posts and be consistent in posting. It allows you to engage with potential buyers, increase the website ranking, and boost conversion rates.
SEO is vital for websites to increase their visibility and traffic all the time. During the holiday season, it is essential to focus more on publishing content for that particular period and optimize them using the right SEO techniques to improve ranking. Medical SEO experts can help you implement the right SEO strategies for your website to achieve better visibility, traffic, and ranking during the holiday season.
Over the past few years, the healthcare industry has undergone drastic changes. With significant advancements in the field of technology, patients now have access to more information than ever before. Physicians are slowly adopting new digital marketing strategies to increase new patient visits and retain the existing patients as well. Social media platforms have become a growing necessity for all small businesses, including medical practices. As a healthcare professional, the question of how to increase patient volume is a major consideration. Reports suggest that on an average people spend about 144 minutes on social media platforms every day. With 2 billion active monthly users, social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram are crucial to reach a wider group of patients. However, as a physician how do you make yourself stand out from thousands of other physicians or medical practices that are advertising and striving hard to gather the attention and maximum “Likes” and “Views” of targeted users? Whether you are a medical practitioner or physician who is looking for efficient ways to improve the visibility of your clinic, it is vital to incorporate a solid healthcare digital marketing strategy to widen your clientele.
Significance of Digital Marketing for Physicians
Digital marketing and SEO for doctors can be challenging. This is particularly because medical professionals need to go that extra mile to build a sense of trust and assurance with potential patients in the online space. Apart from marketing aspects, social media platforms can be effectively utilized by doctors as a tool for networking, educating patients and also as a customer service tool to answer non-urgent patient queries for funneling appointments. If done rightly, social media marketing can provide huge benefits and opportunities such as –
An opportunity to reach more people than just the patients in your practice
Ability to communicate with current patients (including sharing product recalls, new updates on health trends, and medical breakthroughs)
A platform to find new patients
Improve brand awareness
Experience a visible increase in leads
Boost digital profile and improve healthcare website’s SEO
Social Media Marketing Tips for Physicians
Posting to social media platforms like Instagram or Facebook won’t bring magical results or a flood of new patients to your door. Like any other digital marketing medium, social media also takes time, testing and patience, and to succeed, your efforts need to be guided by a well-considered strategy.
So, how can physicians use social media platforms to improve their deductive skills, market their medical practice, educate existing patients and move new patients into the marketing funnel?
Here are some top digital marketing tips that could help physicians navigate the wonderful world of social media and stay relevant and patient-centric –
Develop a Clear Strategy – Before you get started, ensure that you have a clear, definite social media strategy in place. Incorporating a more strategic approach will ensure your marketing efforts don’t go in vain. This is the stage where research is done. Take note of what other physicians or competitors are doing on social media and devise strategies on how you can do it better. The strategy will include – the specific social media goals, which specific channels you will use, how you will use them, what postings may be done as well as whether paid social media channels will be used.
Choose a specific social media platform – With a plethora of social media platforms available, choosing the right channels is crucial to achieve your social media marketing goals. The strategy for social media will vary from one physician to another. For instance, Facebook (FB) is the obvious choice for most healthcare practices. In fact, this is the venue where maximum number of users may be present and hence highly competitive. However, there are definitely good opportunities on Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter as well. For example, if you want to be perceived as a thought leader or connect to the industry, it is best to engage with professionals and publications on Twitter or LinkedIn; on the other hand, if you are a medical practice looking to gain new patients, choose Facebook.
Source link – https://www.facebook.com/MedicalOfficesOfManhattan
Bring value to your community – One of the top ways to establish a good reputation for your medical practice on social media, is to bring value to your patients and give them a reason to follow you. This can be done by sharing information about current health topics, general tips on how to stay healthy, or updating about the medical practice like opening hours or staff changes. Tone of voice is another important factor in social media marketing. Make sure to avoid jargon and keep your posts concise.
Be more than just an information provider – Utilize social media as a platform to share relevant information on common health issues and diseases, preventative health tips and other public health issues in general. Share and communicate educational and health information and encourage behavioral and corrective changes. Connect with the audience and implement marketing strategies when applicable.
Understand the laws and regulations applicable: This is very important and these regulations may vary from one country to another. Do not post any content that could compromise the patient’s confidentiality. Give only advice that has been thoroughly researched and verified.
Make sure you use searchable keywords in the content you post and in your social media profiles: Given the importance of online search when it comes to boosting business, it is vital to include relevant keywords related to your medical specialty, the treatments/services you provide, and your location in your profiles and posted content.
Measure your results – What works for one physician may not work for another. Make sure to use content that actually works and has the most engagement. Adopt strategies to give patients the information they need. Use tools like Google Trends and see what people are searching for. When creating content, try to link current events or trends in order to gain traction in a relevant manner.
Track and Monitor – Utilize social listening tools such as HootSuite, SproutSocial etc. Correctly utilizing these tools for your healthcare brand will not only do you good, but also give you details on what the audiences are saying. Any campaign you operate will bring leads to your website and blog. Track the number of users contacting the physician in person and by clicking links on the campaign. Also, remember to use unique hash tag for each campaign.
Advertise your availability outside of regular office hours: If you are providing additional hours of service, such as special hours around holidays, you can spread word about that via social media. You can even let patients know in real time, about any last-minute call-in appointments that may be available via Twitter.
Strengthen relationships with your patients: Social media is a great venue for bolstering relationships. Make sure that you reply to questions, comments, and reviews. If required, give carefully considered feedback as well.
Effective digital marketing is critical to growing your physician practice and social media is a core part of this. Social media is growing every day and more doctors are embracing this powerful marketing tool. By choosing the right platforms and ensuring consistent and timely posting, you can boost your medical practice’s presence online through social media channels. Professional medical SEO companies offering healthcare digital marketing services can provide the best support and solutions, and help you improve patient – provider engagement.
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