3 Simple Steps to Boost Your Practice Website’s SEO That You Can Do Today

Search Engine Optimization (SEO): how to make your website appear trustworthy, organized, and authoritative to search engines like Google. 

We get it – improving your clinic website’s SEO, or “Search Engine Optimization,” can feel complicated! But there are things every practice owner can do to improve it. And when your SEO improves, your practice website will appear higher on Google. That gets you more new patients. 

Here are 3 simple things you can do TODAY to boost your website’s SEO:

1. Create a Google My Business profile.

If you don’t have a Google My Business account, create one now! While you’re at it, add photos of your clinic and staff. People like to see smiling faces! Make sure your business name, hours, phone number, website address, and location are all accurate. This will help you show up on Google Local, which is basically Google Maps plus more. 

There are actually 3 places to rank on Google:

1. Google Ads – You pay to get your practice name at the top of Google when people search for things like “physical therapy near me.”
2. Google Local Search – Google shows a snippet from Google Maps at the top of the search results. 
3. Google Organic – When you show up in search results for free. This includes articles and sometimes things like Questions other users have asked

Here’s an example:

Our client, Appalachian Physical Therapy, shows up as a Google Ad, in the Google Local section, and in the Google Organic search results! 

 

2. Update your practice’s information on local business directories. 

This is a free, no-brainer move that you can definitely do today! Google rewards businesses that look reputable online. So, in order to increase your ranking on Google (you want to be first!), make sure your practice’s name, location, days / times that you’re open, phone number, email address, and website address are consistent on all of these sites. This will build your online authority immensely!

Make sure you appear on these sites, at a minimum:

• Google My Business (you should have already done this in Step 1!) 
• Yelp
• Rehab.com 
• Whitepages
• Yellowpages 
• Facebook

Hint: Google sees your practice as more valuable when your information is on many other websites that link back to yours.

3. Update your Google snippet. 

When your website appears on Google organic (unpaid) search results, Google shows a “snippet”, or a title and a short description. This is the first interaction your patient has with your practice! Follow these tips to get your snippet ranking higher:

• Page Title: Make sure your title includes “Physical Therapy in [Your City, State]”, and then your practice name! This will make sure you show up at the top of searches like “physical therapy harrisonburg va”. Check out this example of the first three organic (free) results for “physical therapy harrisonburg va.” All of them have “Physical Therapy Harrisonburg” in the title!

Make sure you don’t use vague titles like “home.”  

You can update your title on the backend of your website.

For step-by-step instructions on updating your snippet, click here. 

SEO is complicated. But every single practice owner can make these 3 changes today. Improve your SEO. Improve your patient volume. Get your practice better known in your community. 

We’d love to help you improve your online ranking. See what’s included in our Website + SEO services here.