20 Sep
As a doctor who has been striving to market their medical business or services, you may have come to the realization that marketing can be visualized as a process of mix and match. So it comes to nobody’s surprise that medical SEO is very integrally connected with your social media marketing (SMM) strategies.
SEO and SMM are two crucial pillars of any medical marketing structure. While SEO is an umbrella term for all strategies that are used to increase your medical site’s visibility in order to acquire online patient leads organically, SMM focuses more on building your medical business’s image on your social platforms and guiding potential patients on them to your medical site.
Expert marketers have now found ways which are accumulated in a term called “Social SEO” in which you can use social media to enhance your medical SEO. Using your SMM in a certain way can benefit you in terms of more backlinks, improved patient engagement, higher SERP ranking and more. Furthermore, using SMM and SEO provides a better understanding on both channels and assists you with performing better on both marketing channels.
What is Social SEO?
Social SEO is a term born from the result that is achieved with the combination of the channels “SEO” and “Social Media Marketing”, which alludes to using social media marketing strategies in a way that benefits a site’s SEO.
While SMM does not directly improve your medical SEO, however, the interaction and engagement (sharing and posting your medical content, liking and commenting on it, giving reviews, etc) done by both your patients on you on your social platforms adds up internally impacting your medical site’s SEO.
A study done at Google’s ranking algorithm in 2016 found that online businesses with high SMM results had SERP high rankings as well, which was later concluded that SMM does have an integral impact on a site’s SEO, just not directly. Still, the impact rate is enough to make Social SEO a part of your medical marketing strategy.
How Does SMM Strategies Enhance Your Site’s Medical SEO?
Since SMM strategies are relatively new and they are still in the process of discovering how much exactly do they enhance a site’s SEO, however the proved ones follow as:
Improves Medical Site’s Backlinks
Backlinks are the spine of medical SEO and the most certain way that SMM enhances medical SEO is by providing quality backlinks. You can build more certified links by sharing your own high-quality medical content which gives you a position of authority in Google’s eyes. When you share your medical content on your social platforms, you’re placing it before a crowd of patients who will share and post it to their own acquaintances’ groups, creating a pool of links.
Acquires Patient Traffic While Medical SEO Activates
Blending SEO and SMM is known to drive more site traffic, particularly if a site has just been activated. While implementing medical SEO strategies can benefit you with organic patient leads and increased exposure, it also takes some time to start generating results.
This way you don’t have to wait for patients to start becoming aware of your medical business, after your medical site is up and running and your medical SEO is activated you can start generating patients from both channels, simultaneously. Google will see if your medical site is being used or visited and therefore it would start considering it for rankings
Quick Medical Content Indexing
Content is a big part of SEO. Using social platforms to post medical content can start getting clicks on it rapidly. This way you are indexing your medical content. As patients click and share the medical content, Google gets an initiative that that page should be indexed and ranked as well, increasing your medical SEO stability.
Improved Medical SEO Ranking
Your medical SEO is also supported by the patient visiting time on your medical site. Visits from your social platforms can impact the normal time patients spend on your medical site’s pages and your bounce rate. If your medical content is excerpted from your medical site’s content or is linked to it, every click and visit will increase your SEO stability.
Your medical business’s social platforms pages add another space for your intended patient group to look you up, permitting you to develop your patient crowd and your business image. Furthermore, the business development on your social platform means more organic patient traffic will be guided to your medical site, resulting in enhancing your overall medical SEO.
How Can Social Media Enhance Your Medical SEO?
Now that SMM has been well-established in terms of enhancing a site’s SEO, here are some ways you can use them for your medical SEO as well:
Post And Profile Optimization
Your social platforms are your search tools, keeping this in mind, create your medical posts and profile in a way that collaborates both SEO-driven traffic and social media-driven patient traffic. Optimize them in order to show up on SERPs if a patient looks them up.
Linking Back and Forth
No matter the type of medical content you post, make sure to always link back to your medical site. The same should be done with your medical site’s content. Back and forth linking creates a pool for patients to follow to both channels, which increases their visibility and in the end, your medical SEO.
Hashtagging The Right Way
Hashtags are how patients look up the medical content they have searched on social platforms similar to how keywords work for your site’s content. Using hashtags the right way enables patients to look up your medical pages more easily, increasing their visibility. You can use the tool Hashtags.org for this.
Creating Short Optimized Posts
If you are planning on posting on your medical site, make sure to create optimized short posts on your social platforms that promote it there. That way, when you post, patients will know that you did and can track it down on your medical site easily, increasing its views, exposure, and sharing.
Is Your Medical SEO Entwined With Your Medical SMM?
While SMM can’t directly impact SEO, it can affect factors that influence its rankings. Using SMM is a smart way to amp your medical SEO services if it needs a little revamping. Medical businesses can benefit from “Social SEO” since a lot of their patients are derived from their social platforms.
