6 Essential SEO Steps for Healthcare Brands

In today’s digital landscape, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) has become a vital element of any healthcare marketing strategy. It’s not just about having a website; it’s about ensuring that your pharma brand, healthcare product, or medical device ranks prominently in search engine results. After all, when healthcare professionals and patients are scouring the internet for information on treatments and conditions, you want your brand to be discoverable and visible.

So why is healthcare SEO now so crucial?

A staggering 59% of people in the UK will now turn to Google to search their health symptoms, before consulting a healthcare professional. The same is certainly true around the world too. This reliance on the search engines, and “Dr. Google” underscores the importance of having a strong online presence in the healthcare industry. As more individuals seek information online to inform their healthcare decisions, the significance of SEO for healthcare businesses and brands continues to grow.

Despite its importance, many healthcare, pharmaceutical, and medical device brands overlook the potential search marketing can have on their brand and business. This oversight may stem from a lack of understanding of SEO’s value and uncertainty about optimising web presence, while adhering to industry regulations.

Over the years of helping healthcare businesses leverage Google & the search engines, for maximum online visibility, within medical compliance frameworks, we at Varn Health have crafted six essential SEO steps for healthcare brands:

1. Obtain market insights & understanding to shape your healthcare SEO strategy

Conducting a comprehensive audit of your specific healthcare market from an SEO perspective is essential. This will include analysing web traffic data, identifying emerging trends and understanding what your competitors are up to.

From this you will garner website optimisations and enhancements, aimed at boosting Google rankings, increasing visibility on search engine results pages, hence driving website traffic, and improving conversion rates.

2. Keyword research to enhance brand awareness for your healthcare brand, product or medical device

As healthcare professionals (HCPs) and patients increasingly turn to online resources for researching new products, diagnoses, treatments, and healthcare solutions, it’s crucial for your brand to establish visibility in search engine results. Conducting thorough keyword research will be essential to pinpoint content gaps on your website, enabling you to build brand awareness when people search content where you want your medical device or product to appear.

Identifying relevant phrases and keywords that HCPs and patients are likely to search for, along with understanding their original intent in a search, helps to develop a tailored keyword strategy, optimising each webpage to align with these target keywords, ensuring maximum visibility and impact.

3. Leveraging backlinks for brand exposure

Backlinks from external trusted websites play a pivotal role in SEO. Backlinks, essentially, are links from external websites to yours. Achieving backlinks involves implementing a robust off-site SEO strategy, which encompasses content creation, digital PR, and communication activities beyond your own website. They contribute to increased website traffic, heightened brand visibility, enhanced trustworthiness, and improved organic search rankings.

Notably, they area fundamental aspect of Google’s algorithm. It’s essential to prioritise acquiring these links from reputable sources, such as established institutions, national newspapers, or prominent businesses.

4. Ensuring your website is user-friendly

Developing a keyword strategy for your healthcare brand is crucial, as this lays the foundation for creating a concise and user friendly website structure. A well-structured website offers numerous benefits, including enhanced user experience.

A streamlined website design facilitates easy navigation for healthcare professionals (HCPs) and patients, enabling them to access relevant information about your medical product or device with ease. Additionally, it aids web crawlers in efficiently indexing your site, ultimately improving your search page rankings.

5. Building trust for your healthcare brand

It’s important to ensure that your healthcare brand, product or device is easily discoverable when patients and HCP’s are searching online and that your website then provides valuable answers to individual’s and healthcare professional’s queries. If your website then also promptly addresses their search queries, it fosters trust, credibility and awareness in your brand.

A priority is to ensure that your website not only ranks well in search results, but also effectively conveys your brand message, sets you apart from competitors, and establishes your authority within the healthcare sector; all while adhering to industry regulations.

6. Implementing paid search strategies

Paid social and search advertising can help to drive traffic and build brand awareness for healthcare brands, particularly in the short term. Targeting key audiences and platforms such as Google and LinkedIn can effectively enhance your online visibility quickly. However it is always key to ensure your paid and SEO work are integrated and working to achieve the same goals.

Healthcare SEO is not just about ranking higher in search results; it’s about building brand visibility, trust, and credibility in an increasingly online landscape. By following these 6 essential SEO steps you will be setting the foundations for success!

Tom Vaughton is the CEO and founder of Varn Health, expert SEO and search marketing consultancy working globally within the health sector.