Introduction
Did you know that 93% of the customers use online searches to find a local business? Yes, it is unbelievably true. Now more than ever, Local SEO is turning out to be the primary way that a small business is landing customers. The volume of searches to find local businesses online is enormous, so it is only natural that we take advantage of them.
So what is Hyper Local SEO? It is a narrowed-down part of the usual SEO (Search Engine Optimization). It is the same optimization done for services that are limited to particular geographical localities. A good example of the usage of local SEO would be when a customer uses the word “near me” in his searches. Here, the customer is looking only for services near his area. When such a request is made, Hyperlocal SEO will turn out the search results that are best matched for his query.
Similar to that, Hyperlocal SEO comes under Local SEO. It is an extremely narrowed version of the Local SEO. It targets customers down to specific locations such as particular streets.
You might wonder what is the relationship between hyperlocal SEO and the healthcare Industry. When a potential customer searches for a term like “Hospitals near me”, the hyperlocal SEO will turn your hospital’s name if you are around the customer’s locality.
When your healthcare business is optimized according to local SEO it will help you a great deal with the number of people visiting your healthcare business. Crafting a decent hyperlocal SEO for your healthcare business is important to increase your local business’s visibility.
Why Is Local SEO Important For The Medical Healthcare Industry?
Like any other business, the healthcare industry is also a business with the notion of serving many patients. Only when a medical and health care industry is well known and visited by many people, can it fulfill its mission and objectives.
For that to happen, the patients should be aware of local health care stations near them. That is when Local SEO and Hyperlocal SEO come into the picture.
These are some of the answers to the question of why hyperlocal SEO is important for the healthcare industry.
- Helping patients find hospitals and clinics
Hyperlocal SEO does a great deal of work in helping patients to find healthcare places nearer to them. The only thing the patient needs to do is search for “Doctors near me” or anything similar to that from their devices.
- Helping healthcare industries to serve more patients
Statistically speaking, more than 50% of the patients use the internet to search for new doctors. Implementing SEO for doctors and their clinics on their respective websites will enable customers to find new doctors who are the right fit and serve them well.
- Building credibility with reviews from patients
Be it a hospital or a food shop, people check their credibility through the rating and review available on the internet before visiting. So it is important for healthcare industries also to maintain a good profile with the help of healthcare SEO services.
- Allows faster communication
Earlier, whenever a patient needed to visit the doctors he/she had to visit the clinic personally and book an appointment. Local listing of doctor’s services will remove that hurdle. The clinic’s address, mobile number, etc can be viewed online and the patients can book appointments remotely.
- Facing competition
Local SEO supports the healthcare industries to face competition from other local competitors. With the help of Hyper local SEO, the individuality of your business can be established which will attract more patients to your healthcare business.
How To Do Local SEO For The Healthcare Industry?
Once you understand how important it is to do Hyperlocal SEO for your hospital or clinics, the next question that would come to your mind would be how to do SEO for medical practices. Here you can find the top 7 tips through which you can start implementing healthcare SEO services.
- Create a “Google My Business” profile
Google My business is a service that acts like an Index that helps patients to find you. It is a free tool provided by Google to help business owners to reach out to their customers. Its features can be leveraged and used by healthcare industries also.
In that account, you can provide details of your healthcare business such as,
- Name of the business
- Location of your business with directions
- Contact details
- Patient’s reviews and rating
- Patient’s testimonials
- Website address in case you have one
- Working hours of the business
- Services provided
- Appointment details etc.
You can enter all the details mentioned above and optimize your “Google My Business” profile. Once it is optimized, your healthcare business will rank at the top when customers search for keywords similar to it.
- Being available on other local listings.
Instead of putting all of your eggs in a single basket, you can diversify your listings. You can use other websites such as JustDial, Yellowpages, Yelp, etc. to increase your business’s visibility. Syncing your Google My Business profile with other sites can be done to make the listing an easier process.
Once synced, there are also options for you to check and monitor your SEO progress. You can check the real-time statistics and make decisions on where to adjust your hyperlocal SEO.
Providing accurate information is necessary for doing healthcare SEO services. Updated information about contact details, appointments, etc should be made available. The emergency of the customer should be kept in mind while giving details of your healthcare business.
- Reviews and testimonials of patients
Reviews about your healthcare business that are directly given by people hold more value. Great ratings and reviews from patients about your healthcare business will create a positive impact in the minds of the people.
They play a huge role in converting people who search for your business into your customers. While focusing on positive reviews, the problems of people who gave negative reviews should also be taken care of. Understanding what went wrong and solving their issues will add to your business’s credibility.
Listings with fake testimonials, reviews, and ratings will fall in the search results. In the short run, it might produce good results. But the cost of doing it, in the long run, is not worth the benefit. It might also lead to blocking your local listing permanently if found.
- Optimized and simple website
Every business is expected to have a website to show authenticity. Even healthcare businesses that have a website are looked upon more than others who do not have a website. A website that is optimized for hyperlocal SEO is an important requisite for healthcare businesses whose customers are mostly situated in a particular region.
Such websites are expected to be faster, user-friendly, and contain all the necessary information that a patient might require. Creating and posting content regularly on the website will also lead to organic customer development.
Not only for increasing the visits of the customers but the websites can also be used as an informative source to educate people regarding health and wellness.
- On-page and off-page optimization
SEO will not be complete without talking about on-page and off-page optimization. On-page optimization means optimizing the contents that are on the pages of the websites as per search engines. Similarly, Off-page optimization occurs in many ways. Backlinks, promoting your website on various mediums, etc will fall under this category.
Optimizing your web pages will give a pleasing outlook to your websites. The users would want to spend more time and scroll to know more about your healthcare practice.
Off-page optimization will create brand awareness for your medical business. Many people will get to know about you and will be nudged to visit your healthcare center when in need.
- Optimization of the web page for mobile and voice search
Take extra care to ensure your web page is also visually appealing when visited through Mobile phones. More than half the number of people use mobile phones for quick searches, so your website should work well on mobile devices also.
It is surprising to know that around 41% of adults use voice searches. It will be more in the case of local businesses. So while implementing hyperlocal SEO, special attention should be given to optimizing web pages for voice searches. Keywords related to a particular region, names, and places should be entered throughout the website.
Doing this will help your medical business to stand out from the competition.
- Creating and promoting quality content
The healthcare industry doesn’t need to be traditional anymore. With the advent of technology, even the healthcare industry has a lot of ways to promote itself. One such way is Creating informational, educational, and quality content on social media.
You can create content that is specialized only to your locality. Hyperlocal SEO would help optimize content.
This content creation can be done through
- Blogging
- Social Media such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter
- Creating podcasts related to health
- Writing E-books
- Collaborating with other creators in the market
Any type of content creation is a sure-shot way to increase leads. The more consistently that you post on your website, the more engagement it will create.
How Does Local SEO Affect The Healthcare Industry?
Local SEO affects the healthcare industry in many ways. It has a great impact on how a health care business is viewed by the people who search for it. These are some of the ways on how the local SEO affects the healthcare industry.
- Competitive advantage over other healthcare service providers
Statistics conducted by Inc.com has shown that 63% of the people will choose a doctor who has an online presence in comparison to one who doesn’t have an online presence. These statistics go on to prove how important Hyperlocal SEO is for medical service providers.
The competitive advantage that local SEO provides for the healthcare industry is immense. Because when a hospital or clinic has an active online presence, it will get more patients than the surrounding hospitals and clinics.
- Referrals have become old-fashioned
Earlier, medical businesses used to thrive on word of mouth, the traditional way. Nowadays, such referrals have lost their importance.
When someone refers a healthcare center to another person, he double checks the medical center’s online presence before actually booking an appointment with them. That is why it is advised to have an online presence and enable hyperlocal SEO for your healthcare services. In that way, customers will find you as an authentic medical service provider.
- Creation of awareness
Even if your healthcare business is in the same place as it has been for 10 years, nobody would know about it without proper marketing. Marketing is a means to create awareness about your business and services to prospective customers.
Marketing should not be seen as taboo. Rather it should be seen as a way of promoting your high-quality medical services. To position yourself better online, Local SEO is the only option.
- The top position always receives the utmost attention
Healthcare industries that occupy the top 3 places during search results receive more calls and appointments. In comparison to the health care service providers below them, the top 3 positions are always profitable.
It is because people naturally assume that whoever occupies the top position is the best in that field. But all it takes to reach the top position is proper search engine optimization with relevant keywords.
The Figures Do Not Lie
The health industry has become more crowded than ever due to the high demand for good healthcare. And also due to the pandemic, many hospital chains have started offering their service online.
But making your healthcare business stand out is a challenging task. But if you utilize hyperlocal SEO in the healthcare industry, you can easily overcome this obstacle. And you might find it difficult to believe and might also think that it’s a lie, but humans lie, but numbers don’t.
These numbers clearly show how good SEO can help you increase your online traffic. Not only this, but it also leads to increased customer action on your website leading to more conversions.
So wait no more and start utilizing the power of hyperlocal SEO for your healthcare industry and take your business to new heights.
Start Using Local SEO For The Healthcare Industry
Necessary steps need to be taken by healthcare professionals to implement Local SEO. The health care industry’s customers generally come from local places. The patients search for doctors who can be visited at the earliest while searching for hospitals online.
Conducting competitor analysis and managing your position as a healthcare service provider is essential for the growth of your business. Along with that, retaining current patients and taking care of their needs should also be given proper importance.
So Local SEO should be understood clearly by all the persons in the healthcare industry, and they should start using it immediately.
Final Thoughts
As we can conclude, Hyperlocal SEO is very much useful in creating clients for local businesses. The stigma prevailing in society that health care industries should not be advertised needs to be broken. You can only serve many patients when more people are informed about you and your medical services. Having a strong online presence will help you accomplish that.
Local SEO is also done to ease customers’ burden of going through a long process to find a good quality health care center. The client takes a look at the profile of the health care center and book appointments, which saves their time. Such a hassle-free procedure is what the client’s expectation also.
The benefits of using Local SEO are numerous for both customers and the healthcare industries. It is in the hands of the healthcare industries to make good use of it.
Frequently Asked Questions:
- Does local SEO increase the footfall for your healthcare business?
Absolutely yes. Local SEO increases your site’s visibility in your locality, leading to more visits to your healthcare business. Local SEO is the only organic way to reach out to more customers who later become your patients.
- How can reviews affect your local SEO business?
The first thing that a person notices about your business is the number of positive and negative reviews that your business has on its profile. The more the number of positive reviews, the more will be the chances of the person converting into your customer.
- How local SEO helps to increase ROI & Easier personnel management?
Local SEO has the nature of improving with time. When local SEO is maintained properly over time, it helps to rank your business at the top of the search results. In that way, it generates more revenue for your business and in turn more return on your investment.
- How can local SEO help to increase your leads?
It all comes down to how your business is ranked in google search results. Optimizing your website as per hyperlocal SEO will help you to reach the top position in search results which will help you to increase your leads.
- What is medical SEO?
Medical SEO is the practice of optimizing your health care business, such as hospitals, clinics, pharmacies, etc, as per the needs of search engines. Inserting proper keywords, creating quality content related to the medical field, etc will come under medical SEO.
