SEO Explained for Plastic Surgeon Practices – Search engine optimization (SEO) is a means through which a plastic surgeon practice can gain traction online. This process aims to improve the overall appearance and ranking of a website in search engine results. But what else should you know?
This article looks closely at SEO and how plastic surgeon practices can harness this to increase traffic, inquiries, and sales.
What is SEO for Plastic Surgeon Practices?
Search engines use bots to crawl and index web pages from all over the internet. With this in mind, bots try to understand the content of your website and assess where these web pages should appear in the search results. Relevance and authority are buzzwords that help determine this ranking, and the task of SEO is to improve both.
There are different types of SEO:
Technical – Focuses on the website speed, security, organization, etc.
Content – This might include blogs, images, videos,, or web pages.
On-Page – This includes everything from the structure and layout of a website to the content and metadata in between.
Off-Page – Refers to external backlinks, listings, citations, etc.
Why SEO is so Important for Plastic Surgeon Practices
SEO is vital for a plastic surgeon’s practice because this process dictates how many visitors the website will receive. For instance, if a prospective client goes to Google and types “best plastic surgeon,” the search results will include whichever practice has used SEO to target these specific words.
In other words, if a plastic surgeon’s practice takes time to optimize their website, they can expect much better search rankings and highly targeted traffic.
It’s necessary to perform a full review of a website to understand what type of optimization is required. Therefore, checking all links for any mistakes with tags, titles, and descriptions should be fixed before deciding how to proceed with SEO.
1. Perform Research and Deploy a Mix of Keywords
A keyword indicates the main topic of a web page and helps online users find a piece of content through an online search. With this in mind, keywords play a critical role in SEO and should be placed strategically throughout the website.
Keywords might not be “everything” for SEO, but a low research strategy will fail. Research is essential for identifying a strategy’s best short and long-tail keywords. Keywords should be highly targeted and subjected to high levels of traffic. There should also be competition for these keywords but not so much that a plastic surgeon practice will not gain significant traffic or return on investment.
2. Pay Close Attention to Permalinks
A permalink refers to the part of the URL that points to a specific web page, and these links help bots better understand the website structure. Therefore, ensuring these permalinks use clear words that accurately describe the page is vital. The result is a hierarchy of site links with organized website information.
Please remember that all permalinks are permanent, meaning you must get these right the first time you ask. It’s essential to think ahead and avoid using dates or any information that might change in the medium-long term.
3. Focus on Backlinks and Internal Links
Search engines use backlinking to determine the authority and relevance of websites. A backlink is a link from one website to another. Marketers work hard to build a portfolio of high-quality links to plastic surgeon websites to improve their ranking.
Internal linking creates a better user experience by helping visitors navigate the most useful website content. In addition, it also helps with search engine optimization because it enables bots to index pages and content for Google, etc.
For example, refer to something you have already covered in another blog post. Then, you can use a hyperlink to point to that piece of content. Bots can then know what to index and rank for different search queries.
4. Use High-Quality Content/Writers
You must write high-quality content regularly to maintain a decent ranking in search engine results. In addition, this content should be informative and relevant, and ideally, topics or answers pertain to your target market’s needs.
Search engines use algorithms to assess this content and word count is something to which they pay close attention. That is to say, articles should be at least 750-1000 words, and web pages should ideally consist of more than 500 words.
What’s more, this content should be straightforward at all times and conversational as much as possible. While it’s never a good idea to litter a piece of content with keywords, a portfolio of plastic surgeon articles is something that search engines will notice for the right reasons.
5. Optimize Images for Search Engine Algorithms
It’s easy to forget that content includes images that search engines need to optimize. Perform a search for a particular keyword and click on the images tab on Google. You should see optimized pictures that will show up first.
Algorithms crawl images and rank them according to different factors. For instance, each image requires alt-text and is essentially a description that helps bots understand what they see. Similarly, algorithms will consider speed, so it’s important to compress images to reduce the loading time.
Moral of the story: SEO is necessary for images.
6. Think Mobile-Friendly and Increase Page Speed
Speed is vital as search engines know that online users will likely avoid slow websites. “Bounce rate” refers to users who decide not to wait around for pages to load, and it’s possible to optimize websites to increase this speed.
For similar reasons, websites must be mobile-friendly to provide the best possible user experience. We also know that search engines consider this because Google recently announced plans to begin a mobile-first approach to indexing. Digital Authority Partners says this is why plastic surgeons’ practices should double down on user experience as part of their SEO.
7. Keep All Pages and Content Updated
Marketers know to check specific metrics as part of an SEO audit because trends and algorithms constantly change. Therefore, outdated websites are often penalized regarding search rankings, while others benefit when everything is up to date. It also makes sense to focus on existing content as it requires much less time and effort than writing and optimizing a new piece of content.
Either way, it’s necessary to review old pages and articles and ensure that all content is relevant. Then, remove certain content if it is no longer needed because the ultimate goal is to provide the most pertinent and current information.
Final thoughts
Search engine optimization is the key to gaining traction online for any plastic surgeon practice. However, a website can fall down the rankings without a specific strategy, and outdated content will only expedite this decline. SEO is also a significant task that requires skills, tools, and experience. So while it’s possible to keep the job in-house, an expert marketing agency will produce a much greater return on investment.
