Why SEO matters for hospital websites

Use keywords to make every page a home page

In the real world, patients can follow the arrows on those blue ‘H’ signs right to the front door of your hospital. When looking for healthcare information online, however, most patients use a keyword search to pinpoint the content that’s most relevant to them.

Since the most informative and valuable content on your hospital website probably resides deep in your site, these prospective patients are coming in everywhere EXCEPT the home page. An understanding of search engine optimization (SEO) can make every page an entry point, a search destination that can equal, or even outperform your home page, and drive more traffic to your site.

Here are some SEO tips to improve search rankings for every page on your site:

• Choose the right keywords and phrases–Use analytics tools to identify the most popular search terms for your category (as well as those with little competition).
• Be specific–It’s better to use two- to four-word search phrases that accurately describe your organization than single keywords that are too broad and unlikely to rank in search results (such as “hospital”). Attract local searchers by choosing a geographic-specific phrase such as “New York hospital.”
• Assign one keyword per page–Identify the main subject of each page and deliver 200+ words of focused, substantive content to rank higher in search results and avoid competing against other pages on your site.
• Reinforce keywords in URLs, meta titles and H-tags–Search engines rate content based on several page elements, so repeat or use variations of keyword phrases in your page titles, meta data and smart urls to strengthen the relevance and depth of content for higher rankings.

Search engines review billions of pages of web content to locate the very best information sources. By highlighting what’s unique and relevant about each of the dozens or hundreds of subpages on your site, each becomes an opportunity to generate site traffic. Since the top-ranked results on the first page of Google searches usually get 90% of the click-throughs, it pays to refine your keywords to get every page to rank.