Your website is one of the most powerful assets in your marketing toolkit, but only if you optimize it effectively.
Simply publishing a few informational pages is not enough to build a strong online presence that generates web traffic and helps your physical therapy practice grow.
Effective search engine optimization (SEO) helps your practice show up on search engines like Google and Bing to reach more prospective patients. Here’s our short guide to SEO for physical therapy.
What Is SEO?
SEO is a discipline that leverages techniques that improve your website rankings on search engine results pages (SERPS).
To do this, you have to attract the attention of search engine algorithms by adopting some important tactics, such as including industry-standard keywords in your content, utilizing H1 headers and ensuring your website does not host duplicate pages (this will negatively impact your rankings).
Additionally, optimizing content for social media on mobile devices can boost your traffic and ranking as well, which may call for a more comprehensive content marketing approach. Search engines like Google constantly refine their algorithms to deliver more accurate and meaningful search results to users, so make sure to implement a consistent SEO strategy.
SEO For Physical Therapy Practices
Are you unsure whether SEO makes much difference for physical therapy providers? Consider this fact: according to Forbes, 75% of those searching the internet never scroll past the first page of results. This means that the more optimized content your site contains, the better search engines will be able to find you and the higher your site will rank on SERPs.
The fact is: If Google can’t find your site, neither will anyone else.
Get Your PT SEO Groove Going
With effective SEO, you have better chances of being one of the first websites people find when performing a search for physical therapy services or locations near them. To make that happen, check out these few tricks of the trade on how to increase your SERP ranking and visibility. In particular, you should focus on factors that improve your on-page SEO:
- Title tag: displays the specifics of a web page topic on a SERP.
- Meta description: provides a short summary of your page in search engine results.
- Alt-text: describes images to visitors who may have difficulty seeing them.
- Rapid page load time: supports a positive experience by preventing users from staring at a blank screen while waiting for your pages to load.
- Internal linking: helps search engines identify the purpose of your page by linking to related pages on your site.
- Headings: includes titles or subtitles that help search engines index the content and structure of your website.
- Keywords: clarifies the topics and specific ideas found on your web pages. They’re the words and phrases that people input into search engines in hopes of finding you.
When you follow these practices, search engines better recognize your site’s content so that they can reliably fulfill users’ search intentions. In addition, using proper on-page SEO helps users quickly and clearly understand the purpose of your site as well as how it addresses their unique needs.
Make Your Website Awesome
As a physical therapy practice, your website should not only inform viewers about what you do, where you are located and what services you offer but also act as an online outlet for making appointments, verifying insurance coverage or linking educational materials for continuity of care post-discharge. Think of your site as a place for your clients to learn about physical therapy in general but how your practice operates in particular.
Go For Quality Over Quantity
Not only can your site attract new clients, but it can also benefit patients you’re already serving. Your website should focus on providing high-value, relevant content since search engines such as Google look for quality information that offers value to readers. Make certain your content addresses potential problems common to physical therapy patients and focuses on what your patients may be experiencing or topics they may wish to explore more deeply (starting a blog can help).
Make Friends With Your SEO Data
Reviewing your SEO data reports is an important task you should do regularly. You need to monitor your site’s progress from month to month and make the information from your SEO data a cornerstone of your physical therapy practice’s marketing efforts.
At the end of the day, your results will depend on creating relevant content that is educational AND engaging.
Read the Guide:
A Roadmap for Effective, Patient-Centered Marketing
