16 Jan
Over the years, SEO has remained one of the most dynamic and fundamental pillars of digital marketing. This is because Google is always upgrading its ranking algorithm to improve user experience and offer relevant and authoritative content to its users.
For all online businesses and practices, this means they have to keep up with the ever-shifting SEO trends influencing the search engine landscape every year.
Though many online businesses and practices were already quite focused on SEO, the pandemic accelerated its effectiveness, and now post-pandemic, it has become the lifeline for the online e-commerce industry.
This is also the reason why so many companies and practices hire the services of an SEO agency to help them stay relevant.
Because SEO trends are continuously changing, what was effective in 2022 is probably not the best tactic in 2023.
This is why it’s important for doctors and online medical practices to adapt their medical marketing strategies to stay on track with Google’s SEO updates and ensure that their medical services and content keep occupying the top ranks in SERPs.
Essential 2023 and Medical SEO Updates Doctors Should Implement
This year, the focus has shifted to offering users high-performing web pages by highlighting the knowledge and value in the content. Google is growing better at analysing which content genuinely complies with these requirements. Here are the 2023 and medical SEO updates that online medical businesses should incorporate into their medical websites and content:
1. “EEAT” Not “EAT”
As of December 2022, Experience has been added to Google’s renowned “EAT” acronym (Expertise, Authority, Trust) for evaluating online content. When determining the quality of a piece of content, Google will now consider the author’s experience. Now, for a website to rank high, Google needs to know that the content producer has actual, hands-on experience in the subject under discussion.
For instance, as the owner of an online medical practice, you’d have direct experience in producing authoritative medical content. If however, you were to produce content regarding the best legal practices for insurance, that would undermine the quality and source of the content if you have no experience or background in law.
This implies that more websites would need to pay attention to who writes their content and what subjects they’re focusing on.
To implement this update, ensure that the people providing your content are subject experts in their fields and demonstrate this with the following steps:
- Include author bios to convey the qualifications of your content creators.
- Create author pages and connect to all of the articles written by the author on your medical website.
- Connect the social media profiles of your authors
2. SEO Automation
Digital marketers have always benefited from online SEO tools and solutions, and in 2023, it’s expected for SEO to become more automated to provide solid results.
All your online medical PPC, SEO, and SMM campaigns will be primarily managed by AI to target potential patients more effectively: This can be:
- Tasks that formerly needed a lot of manual spreadsheet effort will be automated with keyword research tools.
- Website updates and technical problems will be automatically detected using tools for site auditing and monitoring.
- Medical websites that aren’t optimized enough will be able to use website graders to find necessary adjustments and set their conversion goals accordingly.
3. Emphasized Competitor Analysis
Analyzing competitors has always been a wise way to develop an SEO strategy, in 2023 and medical SEO tools will make competitor analysis much simpler and more successful.
Reviewing the competitors in your medical field will prove to be an excellent approach to determine what kind of content in your industry will rank high since Google now places more importance on industry expertise.
To compare the medical content, backlinks, domain authority, and other factors of your competitors, you’d be able to use advanced SEO competitor tools.
You’d be able to utilize these insights in your own medical SEO campaigns and content strategy by observing how your competitors are demonstrating their knowledge, expertise, and authority through both on-page and off-page strategies.
4. Updated Image SEO
Images are an important content feature in a website and are the most overlooked even though they play an important part in higher image search ranks.
They can also offer chances for you to use alt text as a way to incorporate more keywords and semantically related terms into your medical website’s content.
To provide its crawlers with a better understanding of the content of images, Google prefers to have alt text and schema markup and favors websites that offer up their content to a broader audience.
For people with visual impairments or those with connectivity or bandwidth issues, alt text improves their user experience, resulting in the website ranking high in 2023.
5. Voice Search and Conversational Queries Optimization
More people will use voice search in 2023, according to SEO analysts. Google’s first priority is to provide a prompt and accurate response to a user’s query. To assist its search engine in better interpretation of natural and conversational speech, it has developed the LaMDA AI language system.
For instance, LaMDA can swiftly interpret a patient’s inquiry about the best urgent care service near them and provide the most relevant answers. In 2023, SEO for medical practices should focus on optimizing their medical website for voice searches and conversational queries.
6. Semantically Related Keywords
In 2023 and medical SEO, Google developed a smart method for filtering keyword searches by integrating similar terms, linking keywords, and keyword combinations for relevant keywords in its search to rank the best web pages on the topic.
With this, your chances of being noticed by Google and receiving a higher ranking will increase as you include more semantically related keywords in your medical content.
Using similar keywords to your focus ones can help you elaborate on a topic and provide further value to the patients visiting your medical website. This increases the chance of them finding your medical content more helpful, making you a subject expert in front of Google.
What’s New for SEO in 2023 for Online Medical Businesses…
SEO will keep shifting and changing as years come and go, but the bottom line is that your online medical practice shouldn’t suffer because of it.
Instead, you should use these updates as a chance to constantly push yourself to the top and scale up your online medical practice. This entails keeping up with the most recent SEO trends to outperform your medical rivals.
An updated SEO strategy can help you maintain your ranking in the SERPs and bring more qualified patient leads to your medical website. It’s crucial to keep in mind that what works now could not work tomorrow.
The future of SEO is constantly changing and should be carefully considered. But if you’re running an online medical business, it might be difficult to keep up.
This is why many doctors choose to have an expert digital medical marketing agency take over the reins and devise a revitalized SEO strategy to increase their online visibility and patient base across platforms
