Why is SEO Important to Healthcare Marketing Success?

Healthcare marketers face multiple hurdles in practicing their craft. Regulations, costs, competition, and healthcare consumer scepticism all contribute to a challenging environment. So it is critical to focus attention in the most effective, compliant, and efficient methods possible.

Search engine optimization checks the boxes in all three areas.

Healthcare marketing SEO is not often a top priority for healthcare marketers, yet these days over 89% of healthcare consumers use search to research their health issues.

Traditional marketing channels – 1:1 meetings, journal ads, conferences, digital ads, and recruitment sites – have benefits and should definitely be part of a comprehensive marketing strategy.

But SEO is what connects your brand to the uninitiated, prospects who are exploring for answers. Making your brand visible where they seek answers online should also be part of that strategy.

Healthcare SEO Tactics

The steps healthcare marketers take to optimize their online content are similar to those taken by marketers in other industries, and there are a few key SEO areas to focus on:

• On page SEO. Optimizing your page titles, headers, and images with keywords or phrases.
• Off page SEO. Building backlinks through social shares, third-party sites, and reputable blogs.
• Content creation. Publishing content that is valuable to others and lengthy enough to lift ranking.
• Domain authority. Making sure your website has a high level of expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness.

How Has SEO Changed?

Search optimization has changed several times over the past 20 years. Algorithm updates like Panda, Penguin, and more recently BERT have all shifted the optimization landscape. Archaic tactics such as keyword stuffing earn more penalties than page views these days. And with the move to AI and machine learning, Google and others are building algorithms around natural language processing (NLP).

The latest changes have been significant moves toward NLP. Search algorithms look for contextual language that helps determine what the engine considers the page’s meaning. Part of the formula still relies on keywords, but in the future, existing keyword-specific tactics will be not be as useful. So if your pharma, medical device, or other healthcare brand is focused on SEO, make sure to keep up to date on the most recent best practices.

Why SEO Should Be In Your Healthcare Marketing Strategy

Beyond the simple fact that a high percentage of healthcare consumers first turn to search engines for answers, marketers have several reasons to add SEO to their marketing plans:

1. If you aren’t at the top, your competitors will be. Today’s savvy marketers understand how to get their brands discovered in search queries, so competition is fierce.
2. Your website will be visited. A site that ranks in the first three positions for unbranded terms gets a much higher clickthrough rate.
3. Your credibility will rise. Being found means you have a chance to create a trusted relationship if your content is valuable and responsive.

The benefits of SEO – when done properly – outweigh the disadvantages of ignoring SEO. It may take time to see big results from new SEO projects, but the big win is the long-term strength that optimization provides.

One way to support your SEO practices is to get your healthcare brand name in respected, highly visible channels such as those provided by Elsevier. Check out the healthcare advertising options we have to offer!

Article Written by: Alex Brown