For health systems and hospital websites, the quality of information and level of optimization of treatment pages is critical in determining ranking for post diagnosis condition keywords.
The fact that authoritative ranking demonstrates a high level of expertise, authority and overall trust in a topic, it is natural that patients will turn to search engines to research potential treatment options after a diagnosis and will assume the higher the ranked organization, the stronger the capabilities and likely success rates of treatment.
This article looks to offer a structure by which heath system websites can structure their treatment pages to maximize their chances of strong ranking versus their local competition.
Healthcare SEO On Page Content Framework
Rule 1 of any core service page content for healthcare and hospital websites (or any website for that matter) is to ensure that the copy is of the highest quality and is relevant to the audience that consumes it.
It must also be optimized for the intent signals that were shown by the keyword that it was written to rank for.
To do this you should evaluate the SERP that you are hoping to disrupt. If that search result page is showing tons of images or maybe videos, you should be incorporating that into your page as well, because clearly that’s what people are looking for.
Healthcare Content Requires Media Format Variety
Make sure the page has an appropriate variety and frequency of formats other than text. For every 600-800 words there should be one video and one image or infographic. This will break up the monotony of a long read, can help articulate processes or experiences in user friendly and preferential formats and overall will offer a more enjoyable user experience for the audience that consumes it and consequently be more valued in the eyes of search engines like Google.
Host the videos on Youtube and embed the files into your content to save bandwidth that would otherwise weigh on page load times and ensure that all infographics and images are optimized by compressing files and adding title file names, and alt text.
Technical On-Page Tips for Healthcare & Hospital SEO
Ok, so now you have the content framework, how do we ensure it is indexed, understood and valued by the crawlers? Below is the fundamentals and pre-requisite inclusions for optimizing your content.
Title tags and meta descriptions
Title tags and meta description are still so important. This is the first impression to many of your visitors on Google. Make Are you enticing a click? Are you making that an enticing call to action to your site?
Header tags & Latent Semantic Indexation (LSI)
H1, H2, and H3 header tags are still super important. You want to make sure that the title of your page is the H1 and so forth. But just to check on all of that would be good.
As you work through the 4 line stanza listed above you should find it natural that your H2’s and H3’s will flow into a next logical segment of content so that the natural thought processes and curiosities of a reader are satisfied. Whilst doing this, ensure that you do not use the same keywords over and over again as you proceed through the copy. If there are synonyms or variations of how individuals may think of the content contextually then ensure that you mix in the variations. This will ensure all potential searches are catered for and can be indexed by the crawlers as natural relevant alternatives but also avoid any demotions in value that can occur from perceived over use or repetition in the structure of sub categories of your content.