How To Drive Traffic to Your Medical Website with More Focused Keywords

Using keywords in a search engine may seem straightforward.

It is for the searcher. Not so much for the people who create the content searchers need.

Searchers Narrow Down Keyword

When trying to find health information or the location of a medical clinic, people get specific. For example, Veronica in Wala Wala, Washington, wants to find out more about cures for depression.

She may just type, ‘cures for depression’ or ‘ways to cure depression’ or ‘therapies for depression.’ After researching for a while, Erica is intrigued by TMS therapy, a newer treatment for depression. 

Medical Practice Meets User in Search Engine

Now, two pain therapy clinics in Wala Wala offer TMS therapy. They have both created quality content. But one clinic shows up higher in search results when our searcher, Erica, searches ‘TMS therapy in Wala Wala.’

Erica finds the clinic that optimized its page with a four-letter keyword that includes the clinic’s physical location. The other clinic doesn’t include their location in the keyword phrase. This mistake leads to a low search engine ranking because the broad keyword is competing with other websites and clinics all over the country.

Longer keywords bring less monthly traffic to your site but indicate strong user intent. In other words, they are probably interested in visiting your medical practice. Shorter, broader keywords bring more monthly traffic but do not clearly show user intent.

Brainstorming Keywords

Now, let’s back up to the keyword creation process. Write down some keywords at least four letters long that include some essential characteristics about your business. For example:

• business location
• area of medicine or specialty
• services and or procedures you intend to provide patients
• common questions you hear from patients

Research Keyword Data

Now it’s time to use some data tools to find out how good your keywords are.

1. Take the keywords you brainstormed and put them in the free (with Google account) Google AdWords Keyword Research Tool.
2. Click ‘Get search volume data and trends’ then enter your keywords.
3. Click ‘Get search volume’ (generally, keywords with a monthly search volume of 100 or more are good). 

Plugging Keywords into Quality Content

Now that you have created your own focused, or long-tail keywords, it’s time to create content around them.

Plan out each long-tail keyword as one page topic. Make sure to not use a keyword for more than one page so that none of your pages compete with one another.

Give your medical practice the best chance to rank highly in search rankings by including keywords in:

• title tags: The titles that appear on the tabs of browsers.
• headers: The h1 and h2 headings on your content pages.