You are in a cutthroat industry, whether you specialize in reconstructive or cosmetic plastic surgery, and the objective of search engine optimization (SEO) is straightforward: to improve the online visibility of your plastic surgery practice and to raise your rankings in search results by utilizing tried and true methods. These strategies might range from improving the structure and code of your website to producing content that provides answers to the questions asked by searchers and places you in an appropriate manner as an expert.
Have you not hired a specialist plastic surgery SEO company? This is what you’re not getting out of it.
Using search engine optimization to expand your plastic surgery practice is all about the numbers:
On a Google search results page, the very first result has an average click-through rate (CTR) of 28.5 percent. This indicates that more than a quarter of people searching click on the very first result they see. Below the display of ads and maps on a Google search results page is the very first result.
After the first organic result, there is a significant reduction in clicks to subsequent results; the result that is in the second position receives 15 percent of the clicks, and the result that is in the third place receives 11 percent.
A click-through rate that is ten times higher than that of the tenth position is achieved by the first organic result.
The main point from this is that the plastic surgery practices that are displayed in the top few results are only there because of the effective SEO methods that they employ. And search engine optimization is the only way for you to go ahead of them.
Enhancing the performance of your plastic surgery website.
You can now evaluate your plastic surgery website to ensure that you are making the most of all of the ranking signals that are at your disposal now that you have built a keyword strategy.
Examine your website in order to identify areas in which it could be improved.
You can:
- Examine the content you already have to determine whether it can be improved in any way, such as by being updated, enlarged, or made more optimized.
- Check each of the links that lead to other pages on your site as well as ones that lead to sites outside of your own to determine if any of them need to be updated or fixed.
- Make sure that the title tags on your pages are up to date.
- Add any missing Meta descriptions.
- To encourage people to stay on your site for longer, add more links to other pages within it.
Page speed is another factor that can affect a website’s ranking in search results, and it plays a role in both desktop and mobile search. Even if Google claimed in 2018 that the only pages that will be penalized from an SEO standpoint are those that “provide the slowest experience to consumers,” this is not the only factor that will be taken into account.
People are impatient. If a page takes too long to load, visitors may become frustrated and leave your website to see a rival’s. (Think about how frequently you’ve been guilty of doing it yourself.) Because of this, we make sure that issues regarding page speed are at the forefront of our clients’ minds. In addition, if your website is one of the slowest loading sites, not only will you have less visibility on Google, but you’ll also have to battle with potential patients visiting the website of a competitor instead.
Lighthouse is a service that will test the speed of your website. This is a tool that is open source and is aimed to improve the overall quality of websites, which includes the speed at which the pages load. After you enter a URL, the automatic programmed does a series of audits and makes a comparison between it and other websites before delivering a report to you.
In the event that the audits reveal an issue, you will also be provided with instructions on how to resolve the matter. You are welcome to seek our assistance in the event that any of the questions appear overly technical.
Using Google’s accelerated mobile pages, you’ll be able to make your mobile pages load significantly faster (AMP). The Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) project developed by Google has its share of positives and negatives.
In addition to this, now is the time to evaluate and improve the structure of your website, which is a process that will be detailed in the following section. At a minimum, you’ll need a responsive site design.
Put your attention on the structure, engagement, and user experience of the website.
To begin, you should organize the architecture of your website in such a way that it is intuitive and simple to use, while also giving priority to the information that is most vital to the acquisition of patients. For instance, you should carefully evaluate what should belong in the main navigation bar of the site in order to simplify how visitors use it, and position the selection of services to the far left of the page.
Why? Because you will want to make it easy for potential patients to locate that button in the shortest amount of time possible. Then, beneath the navigation for the services you offer, make it just as easy to find the specific treatments that you provide.
The goal is to have your service pages rank highly in search engine results and be very easy to locate. This will assist in converting a greater number of people who are searching for your services into patients. Furthermore, this placement helps to send authority signals to Google. (At Dagmar, we’ve researched click patterns on a number of different client websites and found that, on web pages with this structure, site users go to the services pages before going to other sorts of pages.)
You might include rhinoplasty, breast augmentation or reduction, and facial lifts on your list of cosmetic surgery procedures to improve SEO. Repair of cleft palates, bone regeneration, and treatment of burns may be included in the scope of reconstructive surgery SEO.
Explore other avenues to deliver a high-quality user experience (UX), often known as helping users feel at ease when using a website. In practice, maintaining people’s engagement on your website plays an increasingly significant part in the search engine optimization of your plastic surgery website. Studies have revealed that there is a considerable correlation between the level of engagement that site visitors have with the content of a website and the ranking of that website. High-ranked websites are often those that have a high level of visitor engagement.
Google has said that measures related to user interaction are not directly used as a ranking element. Therefore, the algorithm employs it in more complicated and less clear ways, much like it does with some of the other ranking indicators that come with this search engine.
What is most important to understand is that having good engagement can aid sites, while having a low on-page/on-site time and a high bounce rate are both measured by the algorithm and produce results that are less desired for the owners of the site.
The following are examples of additional information pertaining to UX:
Think of each and every one of the pages on your website as a potential entrance: People who find your website through organic keyword searches will arrive at the page that ranks highest for their keyword when they visit your website. If they search for “nose job near me,” and you’ve included that phrase on your rhinoplasty service page, possibly in the frequently asked questions section, then it’s likely that they’ll enter your website through the rhinoplasty page.
Add new pages in a strategic manner: It may be tempting to keep adding buttons to the main navigation menu, but a strategy that is more streamlined and efficient is to create sidebar navigation elements on specific pages. These features will enable site visitors to explore more deeply into a subject. If you want to highlight a new benefit of how you perform cleft lip surgeries, for instance, you could write a blog post about it as well as a page that links from your main page that discusses cleft lip reconstruction services. Another option would be to create a page that links from your main page that discusses cleft lip reconstruction services.
Include suitable site maps: This makes it simpler for search engines to locate and index the content on your website. What Google has to say about site maps is as follows.
Optimize your URLs using keywords in a strategic manner, but avoid using them too frequently. For instance, you shouldn’t include “plastic surgery” in each and every one of them; here’s an example of something you shouldn’t do: “www.domain-name.com/plastic-surgery-about-us.”
We bring this up as an example of keyword stuffing, which is when the use of keywords gets excessive to the point that it might be detrimental to your search engine optimization for your cosmetic surgery website. Instead, you might want to take a look at this: www.domain-name.com/about-plastic-surgeons. If the page provides information about all of the surgeons who work at your practice, then this might be successful.
Take notice that you should implement these strategies whenever you add new pages to your website. Another significant factor to take into account is whether or not you have already-existing pages that you have not yet optimized for search engines. There is a very good chance that Google has indexed these pages. If this is the case, then it might be for the best to keep the URLs in their current state. This approach will involve more advanced search engine optimization strategies in the event that it is discovered that changing those URLs that are currently in place could be beneficial. Should this situation be handled incorrectly, it has the potential to cause your cosmetic surgery clinic to lose its existing search engine presence for those sites. Therefore, before making any changes to URLs, do get in touch with us.
By maintaining a blog on plastic surgery, you can establish yourself as an authority in the field.
It is essential for any cosmetic surgery or reconstructive surgery practice to have a blog and update it on a consistent basis with information that has been optimized.
The following are some of the benefits of blogging:
- Sites that consistently add new content will fare well in the freshness ranking signal implemented by Google.
- You can generate material that is interesting to readers by using keywords based on research; these terms frequently receive a lot of traffic and are ones that you typically cannot utilize effectively on service sites.
- Blogs are an effective tool for driving visitors to your website.
- Blogs have the ability to attract quality inbound links (more about that later in this guide).
You are able to make blog entries to give the most recent information regarding your surgical practice.
For instance, the question “How Does Plastic Surgery Work?” may serve as the title for an in-depth essay, and the fact that it receives 480 monthly searches (almost 6,000 a year) demonstrates that people are interested in the answer.
If you run a practice that specializes in reconstructive plastic surgery, the question “Does Insurance Cover Plastic Surgery?” is a great way to start a conversation about the significance of the medically necessary procedures that your business provides, and the number of people who ask that question is proportional to the number of people who are interested in finding out the answer.
There is also the option to add geographical tags to the titles, such as “How Does Plastic Surgery Work in Florida?” After that, you optimize the content of the blog for various search terms in each individual post.
These search numbers have a national scope and do not pertain specifically to your state or region; nonetheless, that is perfectly acceptable. Even if you don’t have a specialization that’s in high demand and brings patients from all over the country to your practice, the number of people searching for you on a national scale is still valuable.
People who live in the area that is typically covered by your office will read the message, and it is possible that this will encourage them to schedule an appointment with you. Additionally, having people who are not located in the same geographic location as you read the content will enhance your engagement numbers, which in turn can help your rankings.
When writing blog entries, it’s helpful to keep in mind the various readers you’ll be reaching out to:
- Potential patients
- Visitors to the website who, as a result of reading it, will:
- Make a contribution to the engagement metrics you’re tracking.
- It will broaden your digital reach significantly if you share it on social media.
- They should suggest it to a person they know who is in need of the information.
- You should link to the content because it will boost the authority of your website.
You may cultivate a consistent following if you provide your readers with new content on a consistent basis. People will be able to find the new content you’ve added when they search using the terms you’ve provided as well as associated keywords as soon as Google crawls and indexes it. Create content on a variety of subjects connected to your line of business, employing long-tail keywords that are typically at least three and up to five words long.
If you are an expert in breast augmentation, for instance, the following is a list of the kinds of questions you might be able to answer and the information you might be able to supply in a series of blog articles (all of which can be located through keyword research):
What is meant by the term “breast augmentation”?
How much does it cost to get breast implants?
Time required for recovery after breast augmentation
Different kinds of breast augmentations
Recovery after breast augmentation taking place day by day
Take into account the questions that your patients ask you as well. Questions like this might be as general as “what should they wear on the day of surgery?” and “how long will it take for them to recover?” They could also be more particular, like “can the area be tattooed afterward?” Every piece should conclude with a call to action, such as encouraging readers to get in touch with you to schedule a consultation appointment.
In general, you will want to cover a wide variety of topics to keep people interested, but you should place more of an emphasis on the issues that are more relevant to your practice. Creating an editorial schedule for a period of time that works for you—for example, three months, one year, or even more—can be helpful.
Long-form pieces should be a part of the mix, but you should also leave place for postings that you can’t predict (like if you win an award or if there is breaking news relevant to what you do). This is due to the fact that long-form posts can improve your practice in a broad range of different ways that are powerful.
When developing editorial calendars, it is important to keep your target consumers in mind and, ideally, to make use of the personas you have developed. It is important that each piece of content be developed with a particular sort of patient in mind, and you may use personas to capture the characteristics of each type of patient. The end goal is to drive the appropriate traffic to your website and office.
To obtain information about your target audiences, if at all possible, do interviews with patients or with other surgeons working in your practice. For instance, it can be helpful to know how they might investigate the many alternatives for plastic surgery and on what technologies they might do so. Construct a demographic profile for each individual, including information such as their age, level of education, income bracket, and location, as well as their job title and the sector in which they work. You are free to fill in the blanks with personal information (such as your family, for instance), but you should also determine their concerns and areas of discomfort. In the context of a plastic surgery procedure, what exactly do they mean when they say it was a “success”?
It is highly likely that each of your prospects can be placed into one of these groups. You are able to name each one and supply information that is relatively detailed about each one. After that, you’ll be able to assign a certain persona to each of the proposed blog posts. It can make it simpler to imagine that you are writing to a specific person, and it will likely resonate much better with the people you want to target if you do this.
You should also divide your content into one of the three stages of a buyer’s journey and ensure that you have an adequate volume of each sort of content:
When a potential patient is thinking about a certain treatment, they are considered to be at the awareness stage. I’m at the point where I can say things like, “Maybe now is the time to get my nose corrected,” or “I’m ready to look at choices for reconstruction.” When it comes to engaging with prospects, instructional information is a great tool to have at your disposal.
Consideration: “It appears that I will need to make a decision regarding which surgical option is best for me.” Guides and white papers might be of assistance to prospective patients in determining the best course of action.
A determination was made to say, “I’m going to see which plastic surgeon is best qualified to help me.” During the phase of the procedure where decisions are made. Along with showcasing your distinctive qualifications and areas of expertise, making use of pros/cons lists can be helpful.
Choose components of conversion at each stage to guide site visitors further along the path toward scheduling a consultation for plastic surgery. It is important that you avoid having duplicate content anywhere on your website; you can check for problems at Copyscape.com for a small price.
Web pages should be optimized to perform better in rankings.
In addition to having a home page that is properly written and strategically optimized, you’ll also want the following in order for it to rank well in Google:
Page of landing for services related to plastic surgery: Give patients a page that explains your plastic surgery treatments in general and why they should choose you rather than another surgeon. After that, you should connect to pages that describe individual specialties while also ensuring that each key service has its own page. Utilize high-level terms that are congruent with the way that consumers search for such services, making use of geo-modifiers in a reasonable manner. Include distinct calls to action on each page, utilizing all of the accessible channels, such as online contact forms, email, and telephone.
Position landing pages as follows: If you have more than one office or surgical centre, you should develop a landing page that connects out to each location, followed by individual sites that include the city and state, as well as specific contact information for each location. This is the ideal location to make use of geo-targeted keywords, which will bring in traffic from searches conducted in those areas.
Incorporate reviews and testimonials in a thoughtful and strategic manner throughout the site. People are influenced by what is known as “social proof,” which refers to what other patients have to say about a certain treatment.
In addition to a page dedicated to frequently asked questions, your website should provide checkboxes, bulleted lists, and checklists. It’s possible that Google will grab this content and put it in their Answer Box feature, which is located at the very top of organic search results (also known as “position zero”).
Ensure that each page is optimized for the applicable keywords, and add at least one thousand words to each service page. Google does give more weight to longer material, but there is no magic number to use. Here are some pointers:
Enhance the readability of a post or page’s title. This is the h1 tag: h1; remember to only use one of these for each URL.
Optimize the subheadings whenever you have the ability to make them read properly and naturally. They assist site users in navigating the content of your website and provide clues to search engines. They should be marked up with H2 tags (h2>). If you have a subsection within a subheading, you’ll need to use a h3 tag for that. You have access to all of the levels, up to and including level six, but it is quite unlikely that you will ever need to advance beyond levels two or three.
Optimize the body copy in a style that is easy to read, but don’t go overboard, as Google gives low priority to websites that contain content that it regards to be spammy. Additionally, you should link, or internally link, between the pages on your website in order to assist site users in moving from one page to the next in a manner that is useful. For optimal search engine optimization, position keywords close to or within the internal link.
