Custom, search engine optimized content is crucial to the online success of your practice.
In an internet survey conducted by Pew Research Center, 72 percent of participants said that they searched online for health-related information in the previous year, and 77 percent began their search with a search engine.
These statistics highlight just how important it is to rank highly on Google's search engine results pages. Custom content is one of the most powerful ways that you can improve your online search rankings. With this in mind, how should you optimize your website content to be favored by search engines?
The answer to that question involves implementing several search engine optimization (SEO) best practices that satisfy Google's complex search algorithm. Recent updates to this algorithm have made custom content an increasingly important aspect of search engine optimization to focus on.
A search engine's main goal is to provide users with a list of website that are most relevant to what they are searching for online. Websites that lack substantial content are commonly determined to be spam and lowered in the search rankings.
However, using unnecessary filler text just to satisfy a word length goal, or posting low-quality content in order to make a certain number of blog posts each week is poor practice. In order to provide a valuable resource to visitors to your website and improve your online search rankings, aim to post consistent, informative and relative content to your website.
Search engines are designed to return search results of websites that they have decided are most relevant to the user. Therefore, your audience is the most important factor to consider when you write content for your website. Consider, who are you writing for, and what are they looking for? A simple way to answer this question is to identify if any currently trending health topics apply to your practice and patient population. Once you have identified topics that your patients will find interesting you can then decide what information would be most valuable to them.
Plus, if you are still searching for some content inspiration, a Pew Research internet survey recently revealed that the most frequently researched topics are specific diseases and conditions, treatments or procedures, and profiles of health professionals.
New updates to Google and Facebook give considerable weight to credibility of content as a ranking factor. Now more than ever, the internet is rife with misinformation and articles that are deliberately meant to look credible, but are, in fact, completely false. Pay particular information to the credibility of your sources when drafting custom content, and make sure that it is entirely accurate and up-to-date.
As search engines learn more and more about how internet users make decisions, they do a better job of delivering exactly what users are looking for online. Health-seekers in particular are looking for substantive websites that offer high quality advice and general answers to their health related questions.
Search engines understand this and take measures to keep "click-bait" (websites that offer little value and are designed solely for getting clicks) from ranking highly on search engine results pages.
Click-bait sites are usually superfluously stuffed with keywords in order to gain favorability with search engines. It is okay to use some keywords, but try to keep the focus on quality and providing engaging information.
In previous days, high quality content played only a secondary role in SEO strategy. It is now one of the main ranking factors used by search engine algorithms to judge whether or not a practice website is worthy to be displayed on the first page of the search results page. Now is the time to start focusing on content. If you want to learn more SEO content tips and tricks, download a copy of our FREE Guide to Custom Content Tip Sheet here.
If you lack the time to write your own content for your practice website, it is instrumental to the success of your practice to entrust a professional content writer with the task. Find out how the SEO experts at ChiroMatrix can provide professionally written content designed to drive more potential patients to your practice website and convert them into patients by calling 855.823.9400 or visiting us online here.
Bonnie Kauffman is the content and social media manager at ChiroMatrix where she is responsible for producing educational articles, social media content, eBooks, and more, to help chiropractors improve their knowledge of the digital marketing arena.