While print advertising campaigns, commercials, and word-of-mouth advertising still have a place at the table when it comes to business growth, today, with a massive 97% of consumers heading online to research and discover local businesses, you can’t afford to let your online marketing strategy linger. Up the ante and set your business up for continued success with these six simple search engine optimization (SEO) tips to give your medical aesthetics business a better online presence.
Start with Analytics
In order to determine how successful your SEO efforts are, you’ll need to know where you began. Start by setting up an analytics program, such as Google Analytics, on your website to tangibly measure and see the results of your SEO strategies. Metrics like sources for incoming traffic, conversions, page views, keyword searches, referrals, and more can help provide a better overview of the effectiveness of your overall SEO campaign. Set up a custom SEO dashboard to get all the important analytics you want to track gathered in one easy-to-read page. Of course, patience and grit are imperative to see an improvement in your analytics. Maintaining an SEO strategy takes continuous effort and results may not be statistically significant for several weeks, potentially even a couple of months after consistently following your new strategy, so stick to your strategy and don’t get absorbed in the data too early on.
Know Your Keywords
Google is the most commonly used search engine, with the tech giant holding 74.5% of the global net market share in 2017 and up to 86.3% of desktop market share as of April 2018. For this reason, Google is often investing more and more in building algorithms that monitor keyword usage, user patterns, and even more user data to better serve its users. With this in mind, Google’s Keyword Planner will likely be your best resource when researching which keywords to pursue. Use this tool to create a keyword planner by searching terms and seeing which offer the best targeted traffic for your business. Don’t forget to focus in on local keywords, as drawing in traffic within your clinic’s geographical area is much more likely to set the seed for improved consultation bookings and long-term patient-provider relationships.
Look for Links
Creating quality content for your desired clientele is essential for ranking higher in search results. When you develop engaging content, readers are much more likely to remain on the site for a longer period of time. Search engines consider time spent on a website as a significant metric of your site’s value, thereby ranking it higher in search results. In simpler terms, the longer users are on your site, the more likely your site will rank higher on the search results page. Therefore, it is definitely worth the time and effort to develop quality, regular content for your site.
The secondary benefit to producing high-quality, shareable content—think blog posts that offer little-known tips or a video of interesting behind-the-scenes content—is that other sites will want to share it. As they build out content around yours, referencing and linking back to your site, your online footprint grows. In fact, these inbound links, or links to your content posted on other sites or social media feeds, are another powerful measurement search engines use to determine search page rankings. The more inbound links you’re able to gather, particularly from authoritative sources, the more likely you are to appear in the top spot on local searches.
Diversify Your Efforts
Don’t just focus on your website’s search engine optimization. While it’s a solid start that shouldn’t be taken lightly, diversifying your clinic’s online footprint will better help your business stand out to search engines. Natural steps to diversifying content may be utilizing social media sites, such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, creating a YouTube account for video content, or setting up profiles on online review sites, such as Yelp or RealSelf, to encourage more online reviews. Whenever creating new accounts on social media or establishing profiles elsewhere online, ensure that your business name (username or social media handle) remains consistent to make it easier for search engines to round up your entire online footprint with ease.
Go Back to Your Analytics
Once you’ve started to implement your SEO strategy and are publishing new content to your site and social channels regularly, review your analytics. Note what pages or content is getting the most traffic, how much time users are spending on your site, where your traffic is coming from, and what content is getting the most shares or engagement on social. Use this information to inform any changes to your SEO strategy. While your main goal when utilizing SEO is always to gain better visibility in search engines, the ultimate target should be to attract your ideal client. On a regular basis, review your analytics in turn with new bookings to inform your efforts moving forward and alter or pivot your strategy as needed for business success.
Hire an SEO Expert or Marketing Agency
While it’s beneficial to know the basics of how SEO impacts your clinic’s online footprint and Web traffic, the topic can be a little too complex to grasp and master alone, particularly if you’re tight on time. If you’re unable to hire someone with SEO experience to join your team permanently, consider bringing on a freelance SEO expert to complete some initial keyword research and build out an SEO-friendly marketing strategy you can follow for the year.
Alternatively, consider teaming up with a company in the medical aesthetics field that offers marketing support as part of their client partnerships. Thanks to our unique business model featuring unmatched post-sale support, a partnership with Venus Concept will grant you access to our unparalleled practice enhancement programs and equip you with the tools your medical aesthetics business needs to excel. Working with our dedicated business experts, we help each of our partners develop strategic marketing plans while offering marketing, operational, and profitability strategy support to help guide your clinic toward continued growth and success.
Now, exclusively for Venus Concept customers looking for extended marketing support is the opportunity to partner with our ad agency 2Two5™. 2Two5™ is an industry-specific ad agency under Venus Concept that is staffed by a team of advertising experts with extensive experience in digital marketing, graphic design, and medical aesthetics. Basic and affordable packages are available to assist small to mid-sized medical aesthetics businesses to establish their online presence. While high-end packages allow for more tailored customization to increase online traffic.
To learn more about our practice enhancement programs or how a partnership with our exclusive 2Two5™ advertising agency can help your medical aesthetics clinic build a better online presence, contact us today.
Practice Enhancement Tips
